Fighting Winter Slop in Garage

[ozweepay]

I made my garage sparkly clean before taking delivery of my MS but recently it's covered in wet mud, deposited by ice and snow sloughing off of my car. Additionally, the charging cable has to be uncoiled from the wall holster and laid across the garage floor in the muddy water.

Any tips from those of you who live in areas where it snows? How to combat the dirt and slop? What do you do?

 

[JenniferQ]

No idea here in SoCal, as that sounds awful; but, you definitely "laid" the charge cable. Not "lain." Transitive. :smile:

 

[Vip]

I hate bringing in the dirty snow into my garage. The wheel wells in the S are big and hard to get to. What I usually do is stop on the road by my house before I pull into my driveway. I get out and try to kick out the snow as much as possible or try to use my ice scraper. You could do it on your driveway but I have found that the salt in the snow eats up the concrete on my driveway.

 

[StaceyS]

I try to knock the blobs of snow off the car before I put it away, but its tough. The only positive of having a detached, unheated garage with manual doors: the residual heat from driving, charging and preheating makes the snow drop off the car, but not melt. The next time we use the car, we just push the snow out after backing out. (Our ICE would melt it all, where it would turn to muddy ice, and be there until it warmed up again).

For the cord, I have it looped and hung from the ceiling. Its all off the ground. Our garage is a 2 car garage with 2 doors. We installed a NEMA 14-50 on the space between the doors, so the UMC is literally 2' from the charge port.

 

[Kandiru]

Ditto on the pre-, I have a dedicated broom in the garage, after I wipe off the snow I hit the front of each
wheel well with the rubberized end of the handle, giant blocks fall off.

I am lucky to have a central vacuum system. I have a dirty hose I use in the workshop and garage only.

Elbow work is the only solution for dirt.

A trip to Lowe's will get you a giant ShopVac, see if you can mount it on the wall. That IMHO is the best option,
they clean very easily too.

Another option is to buy a surplus central vac unit, get active with the blowtorch and the PVC pipes and install it in
a corner in the garage exhausting outside. A neighbor did this, and afer 3 months hooked up whole house, holes in
walls and all, there is nothing like having it.

 

[ozweepay]

I have this on the wall to hold my charging cable:

Tesla Replacement Wall Connector Cable Organizer

Which is nice and clean when not charging. But the cable lies on the garage floor when I am charging, which is gross.

I have seen garage mats and flooring for sale, but not sure if it really helps with this problem?! And I have a ShopVac, which allegedly can pick up water, but not sure if I should use it for this.

 

[Skotty]

Shop Broom (a.k.a. Push Broom). You can also get a Floor Squeegee if your garage is holding a lot of water. You can get them from lots of places. Here's a page that shows a variety of useful garage cleaning equipment: Shop Brooms, Workshop Brushes + Squeegees | Construction | Northern Tool + Equipment

I'm lucky enough to have a drain in my garage (pretty sure they don't allow that anymore) and all the snow melt drains into it. Then, when the floor is pretty much dry, I brush out all the leaves and dirt with the shop broom.

 

[green1]

Recommend hanging the cord from the ceiling, For the slop, get your concrete sealed or painted and get a hose and one of those big push squeegees (rubber blade on a broom handle) hose it down and push it to a sump or out the door.

Of course I say that, because that's what I want to be able to do. We do it in the ambulance bay all the time and the bay is always sparkling clean, but my home garage is a disaster, uneven concrete, unheated, and full of junk... I have all sorts of plans to fix things, but I just don't see it happening any time soon.

 

[Lyon]

Floor squeegee. Don't forget to order the handle, too.

 

[ElectricTundra]

There are a few easy ways to keep the cable off the floor. I have a pulley over the mid point between the hanger and MS port and another in the corner with a bit of rope from the cable through the pulleys and to a weight hanging in the corner. Some auto parts places also have spring loaded pulley's that do the same thing. There are also ceiling mounted hose reels that can work.

 

[green1]

You don't even need a reel, For our ambulance we simply have the cord measured to the right length so it hangs from the ceiling beside the port, we pull in, grab the cord, and plug in. No fancy retracting required. Of course our ambulance plug is also better designed than the Tesla one in that when we hop in it automatically ejects the cord so we don't have to unplug, the cord just pops out and dangles there about 6" away from the side of the truck, then a spring pulls the cover shut on the side of the truck.

 

[2krazykats]

Has anyone tried spraying this on their wheel wells? Not sure how corrosive it is but has great reviews for multiple surfaces.

Amazon.com: DuPont Teflon Snow and Ice Repellant, 10-Ounce: Sports Outdoors