Good questions all. Reclaim claims are most likely the most abused source of misinformation in our business. It's easy to claim filtration down to a set point, usually around 5 microns, but difficult to measure. Here's my answers, given from my myoptic point of view.
1. Depends on the type of wash, i.e. self serve, tunnell, or automatic. I guess around 80% of tunnels, maybe 40% of touchless automatics, and maybe 5% of self serve. A lot of washes have a reclaim system due to cities requiring them, but a lot are never used.
2. Mostly used for areas where water quality isn't important, such as undercarriage, side blasters, and first pass on an automatic.
3. A micron is 0.000 039 370 078 74 inch, so 5 microns is pretty small. You are mostly taking a manufacturers word on filtration. There are accepted filtration devices, filters. that are rated at different levels, but they have to be maintained and changed to be precise. I've seen some systems that use just a settling pit to get rid of the dirt, and some very fancy ones that can produce almost tap water quality. The majority of them fall in between, which means they don't have rocks in them and the water doesn't smell.
