SLO neighborhood fed up with noise from car wash

Jermaine Washington is fed up with the noise from the car wash next to his house.

“No one wants to open their windows, no one wants to work in the yard, no one can come home from work and actually enjoy their outdoor patios because of this nuisance of a sound,” Washington explained.

Washington says himself and several neighbors paid a professional sound consultant to do a study proving Quiky Car Wash was emitting sound above the decibel level set by the city.

“The neighbors and I, we are really irritated in the amount of time that the sound is really impacting us and disturbed that this has taken place after the neighborhood was actually established here,” Washington said.

Quiky Car Wash was fined for the volume levels once San Luis Obispo’s Community Development Department took a look at that study.

The city also discovered the car wash had actually installed six blowers when they were only permitted for one. Quiky Car Wash was fined for that and they took out the extra five machines earlier this year.

Washington said he thought the sound would get better after that, but it just hasn’t.

“It’s very easy to kinda sit back and say you know we’re just being sort of nimbys and we’re just being complainers and whiners but it’s important to understand that the residential area was here before the business got approved,” he explained.

Washington wants to see the business do more to coexist with them and possibly even have the city reevaluate the car wash’s permits.

“Maybe it’s a case where you don’t need this very heavy industrial blower system to dry cars. There are some other businesses that exist in this city that actually hand wash cars,” he said.

Washington adds the city told him they were going to create an administrative review, in which himself and other neighbors would be able to have an open dialogue with the owners of the car wash.

We reached out to those owners several times Tuesday and did not hear back.