How To Snow Foam? 

Snow foaming is the first step taken to thoroughly clean your car, motorbike or truck. However, it’s not recommended you use it to replace the standard car shampoo and mitt/sponge wash.

Snowfoaming is absolutely essential in avoiding creating swirl marks, micro-scratches and abrasions on your paintwork. The key is to remove as much dust and dirt as you can before actually physically touching the car with a mitt.

Snow foam products are generally applied and allowed to dwell for several minutes for it to do its work. It’s a non-contact step that softens dirt and surrounds the larger particles slowly pulling them down and away from the surface of your paintwork. This includes dust, dirt, grit, insects and bird and bat poop. The snow foam is then rinsed off with a pressure washer.

How to use Snow Foam

You will need:

• Snow foam cannon / lance (the sprayer and bottle which connects to the pressure washer)
• Snow foam detergent (your choice of foam or our Fireball Premium Active Snow Foam),
• Pressure washer

Snow Foams are usually slightly alkaline, but our Fireball range is ph neutral. They are usually (and hopefully) concentrated and need to be diluted in the bottle before applying it through the snow foam cannon. Please check the snow foam manufacturer’s directions for dilution ratios. Usually it’s 1:10 or 1:5. Our cannon will only need 1:20 of Fireball snow foam in comparison. Once mixed with water, attach it to your lance head and gently shake the bottle to ensure its mixed well. Then attach the cannon to your pressure washer.

Now you can begin foaming! Make sure your vehicle is out of direct sunlight. You ideally want a single layer of foam that runs just slightly to drag the dirt down. Try to spread it as efficiently as possible to avoid wastage (only one layer is needed!).  When the whole car is covered in foam, allow it to dwell for 2-3 minutes to ensure it effectively does what its designed to do.  

Then disconnect the snow foam cannon and rinse the whole car, starting from the top and working your way down.

When finished, most of the dirt from the car should have been removed without even touching it. If not – you either need more detergent, a better detergent, or more dwell time. For overly dirty cars (two weeks without a wash), the next step is to move to your standard wash mitt and shampoo wash.

For mildly dirty cars (one week without a wash), you could foam the car up once more, go over it with the mitt and then rinse off with the pressure washer. We recommend using two different mitts to further minimize the risk of swirls or scratches.  

For cars with light dust or very light dirt, using just the snow foam cannon and a rinse should be enough. You could do a second application of snow foam if needed.

Buy our Snow Foam Cannon here.