A small car wash installed at Cal State San Marcos this month is enabling the university to save water and time, and university officials say they expect to be able to add money to the list soon.

Employees in the university's facility services department built the $30,000 facility in a breezeway outside their building off La Moree Road on the northeast corner of the campus.

The self-serve, high-pressure car wash includes three underground tanks that, together, hold about 1,200 gallons of water.

A collection system and series of filters cleans the water so that it can recycled and reused for up to two months.

CSUSM has a fleet of vehicles that includes more than 45 electric carts, trucks, vans, and mail-delivery cars that maintenance workers and other employees use to get around the Twin Oaks Valley Road campus.

Facility services Director Ed Johnson said last week that university mechanics request that the vehicles be washed before they are brought in for routine maintenance or repairs.

The vehicles also get cleaned whenever they start to look dirty, he said.

Before the car wash was installed, Johnson said, the washing had to be done by hand or at an off-campus facility. Employees therefore love the new facility because it saves them driving and cleaning time, he said.

The new facility also furthers the university's efforts to be as environmentally friendly as possible, Johnson said.

"We're trying to be ahead of any environmental issues that might come up as a result of carwashing, as well as saving water," he said. "It's really cool, and it's working out great."

Pat Simpson, a project supervisor in the facility services department, and energy and utility manager Floyd Dudley said employees have also found it is much easier to wash vehicles in the new car wash, because its high-pressure wands enable users to blast off dirt with a low volumes of water.

Recycling the water also reduces the amount of water that would otherwise go into the sewer, the two said.

Johnson said the car wash is also being used to clean Dumpsters, trash bins and similar equipment used around the campus. He predicted the university's monthly water and sewer bills will drop by at least 10 percent now that handwashing is no longer necessary.

Call staff writer Andrea Moss at 760-739-6654.