Your car, spa treated. Open all night.

Yes. AK Auto Spa at 108 Mayor Magrath Drive North is a self-serve car wash open 24 hours a day, every day, including holidays. All three bays are lit and heated, so the wash works at 3am in January as well as it does on a summer afternoon.

Yes. AK Auto Spa is the former LA Auto Spa on Mayor Magrath Drive North in Lethbridge. The wash sat closed for a while and has reopened under new ownership with the same three bays rebuilt: heated bays, automatic doors, softened and heated water, heated chemicals and a reverse-osmosis spot-free rinse.

AK Auto Spa's three bays on Mayor Magrath Drive North are heated, with automatic doors that close behind you to keep the heat in and the wind off the car. The water and the chemicals are both heated, which matters in a southern Alberta winter: cold soap barely lifts road salt, and warm soap does. The water lines are freeze-protected so the bays stay open through a cold snap.

AK Auto Spa charges $1.00 per minute, which is the entire price list -- the same rate for the pressure wand, the vacuum and the air. You pay only for the time you use, you can add more at any point without losing the minutes you have left, and the 30-second pause lets you stop the clock between steps.

At AK Auto Spa the pause button stops your paid time for 30 seconds, up to three times per wash. It is there for the gaps that normally cost you money: walking round to the other side of the car, moving the mats, swapping the dial to the next setting, or checking whether you actually got the back bumper. The clock restarts when you do.

Soften them first and never scrub them dry. At AK Auto Spa, select the pre-soak, coat the front end, bumper and mirrors, and give it a minute to dwell -- the warm chemical breaks down the proteins that glue bug splatter to the paint. Then lift it off with the high-pressure rinse rather than a brush. Dried-on bugs scrubbed dry will scratch clear coat, and on a hot day they bond harder the longer they sit.

A spot-free rinse uses reverse-osmosis water with the dissolved minerals taken out, so when it evaporates it leaves nothing behind. At AK Auto Spa you can finish on the spot-free rinse and let the car drip dry without water spots, which is the whole point -- no towel, and no white marks on dark paint. Ordinary tap water in Lethbridge is hard enough to spot a car badly as it dries.

Lethbridge draws its water from the Oldman River and it is hard -- around 14 grains per gallon. Those dissolved minerals are what leave white marks as the car dries, and they also make soap work poorly, so you use more of it for less result. AK Auto Spa softens the water before it is pressurised, so the minerals never reach your paint in the first place.

Yes. AK Auto Spa takes tap, chip, phone wallets and coins in all three bays. Time is added the moment the payment approves, and you can top up mid-wash without losing the time you have already bought.

Yes. Each of AK Auto Spa's three bays has an automatic door that opens for you and closes behind you. It keeps the heat inside the bay in winter and keeps the wind from blowing spray and grit back onto a car you have just cleaned.

Yes. AK Auto Spa has vacuum and high-volume air in every bay, on the same dial and the same $1.00-per-minute clock as the wash, so you can finish the inside without moving the car or paying separately. The air is for blowing water out of door jambs, mirrors and trim before it dries in them and runs down the paint later.

The dial in each bay has eight positions: pre-soak, wash soap, rinse, wax, foam brush, triple foam conditioner, vacuum and air. A good order is pre-soak first and let it dwell, then soap top to bottom, then rinse, then wax, and finish on the spot-free rinse so the car dries without spots.

AK Auto Spa is at 108 Mayor Magrath Drive North, Lethbridge, Alberta -- on the city's busiest north-south road, in the corridor where Highways 3, 4 and 5 come together. It is an easy in-and-out stop on the way to wherever you were already going, and the phone number is (587) 394-2195.

A self-serve bay gives you control an automatic tunnel cannot: you choose how long the pre-soak dwells on the bugs, you get the wheel arches and the sills that a tunnel misses, and nothing mechanical touches your paint except the foam brush, which you can skip. It costs less too. The trade is your own ten minutes. At AK Auto Spa those ten minutes are in a heated bay with the door shut, which is the part that makes doing it yourself in a Lethbridge winter reasonable.

Pickups, SUVs and vans are routine in all three bays at AK Auto Spa, and the high-pressure wand reaches a full-size truck roof without a step. If you are bringing something unusually tall or long -- a dually with a canopy, a cube van, a trailer still hitched -- call (587) 394-2195 first and we will tell you honestly whether it will clear the bay door.

The bay walls at AK Auto Spa are hand-painted rather than bare concrete. It is a small thing that makes the ten minutes you spend in there considerably better, and it is the reason most people take a photo on their first visit.