[NA] Educate me on pressure washers

Danger: Having a power washer will make you start finding things to power wash you would never have thought of before.

Additional danger: a power washer *will* remove paint from a car if you get too close with a narrow stream.

And don't *even* try to tell us you didn't draw something at least a little naughty in the concrete before you washed it all off.
 
SCCutler said:
Danger: Having a power washer will make you start finding things to power wash you would never have thought of before.

Additional danger: a power washer *will* remove paint from a car if you get too close with a narrow stream.

And don't *even* try to tell us you didn't draw something at least a little naughty in the concrete before you washed it all off.
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I remember the salesman warning me that my washer would blow the mortar out of brick walls if I got to close.
 
If we're playing rock/paper/scissors/spock/water jet/granite/laser....

Remember that granite blocks are sometimes used as safety blocks at the end of high powered lasers, while water jets are routinely used to cut large granite blocks.
 
I use this before reaching for the power washer. Works good on my concrete sidewalk, siding (mildew), patio (moss in between pavers), and roof (mildew/moss).

Wet & Forget Ready-To-Use No Scrub Outdoor Cleaner Product Information

Wet & Forget Ready-To-Use, perfect for cleaning black and green stains from small outdoor surfaces. Clean patio umbrellas, planters, outdoor rugs or fountain in minutes.
www.wetandforget.com
 
Timely thread. I recently was given a 3100 PSI PW. Years ago, my overenthusiatic wife took like 20 years off the life of our driveway power washing it so I was overly cautious. I used it to wash a new car. I first rinsed the car with the white/40 degree nozel. Used the black detergent nozel to apply soap. Waited 5 minutes. Then used the white nozel again to rinse never getting closer than two feet from the car. Worthless. I figured I wouldn't use it again. Would love to hear how people are using them.

I was hoping to use it for the upcoming spring cleaning of my boat. I'm similarly concerned about causing damage.
 
Mahneuvers said:
I used it to wash a new car. I first rinsed the car with the white/40 degree nozel. Used the black detergent nozel to apply soap. Waited 5 minutes. Then used the white nozel again to rinse never getting closer than two feet from the car. Worthless. I figured I wouldn't use it again. Would love to hear how people are using them.
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Two words: foam cannon.

And a really good car wash formulation.
 
Mahneuvers said:
Timely thread. I recently was given a 3100 PSI PW. Years ago, my overenthusiatic wife took like 20 years off the life of our driveway power washing it so I was overly cautious. I used it to wash a new car. I first rinsed the car with the white/40 degree nozel. Used the black detergent nozel to apply soap. Waited 5 minutes. Then used the white nozel again to rinse never getting closer than two feet from the car. Worthless. I figured I wouldn't use it again. Would love to hear how people are using them.

I was hoping to use it for the upcoming spring cleaning of my boat. I'm similarly concerned about causing damage.
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I think they work very well on concrete, brick, stone, and most other types of outdoor masonry. If you use it on wood there's a good chance you will remove some of the wood. We have a composite deck, polyethylene capped wood flour. I would not pressure wash that either, it cleans very well with an oygenated cleaner (Corte-clean). The pressure washer I have is a Ryobi, 3300 psi and 2.3 gpm, and a Honda engine. It powers a 15 inch surface cleaner well, if you wanted a bigger one, I'd get a pressure washer with more gpm.

This will be its fourth season. Once a year I pull it out, pressure wash the driveway, the entry stairs, sidewalks, paver deck, and all the paver walls and surfaces, of which we have many. Once I'm done for the season, I run it dry of gasoline, change the oil, pull the spark plug, squirt some fogging oil in the cylinder, run some pump protector through it, and put it in the basement for the next 11 and a half months.
 
Mahneuvers said:
Timely thread. I recently was given a 3100 PSI PW. Years ago, my overenthusiatic wife took like 20 years off the life of our driveway power washing it so I was overly cautious. I used it to wash a new car. I first rinsed the car with the white/40 degree nozel. Used the black detergent nozel to apply soap. Waited 5 minutes. Then used the white nozel again to rinse never getting closer than two feet from the car. Worthless. I figured I wouldn't use it again. Would love to hear how people are using them.

I was hoping to use it for the upcoming spring cleaning of my boat. I'm similarly concerned about causing damage.
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I have a dedicated Westinghouse(see prev post) unit on my boat and it does a great job. I only use the 45deg nozzle and mine is limited to 1900PSI and 1.4GPM rating. It won't hurt gelcoat on any boat I can think of, I also will do the console but not up close. If you keep the nozzle more than 3-4' back from the instruments and controls it'll be safe.

I start at the flybridge cover, then the flybridge console, seats and deck. It all flow off the back cockpit down into the lower cockpit. Then I go up front and just work it from top front to back along the gunwales, windows, railing. It does great on spider webs and spiders. I use it at least 4 times a year and the small unit stays on the boat. I have a bigger Simpson gas setup for other places I can haul around.
 
Brad W said:
i'm a fan of the little electrics for small things around the house.
Listening to a gas engine while spraying a driveway for an hour or two drives me nuts!
the little ones I've had make slow work of things like a driveway, compared to a bigger commercial-grade thing...so if you goal is to get it done, it might be better to rent.

I rented a hot water pressure washer a while back to strip decals off my RV. It was a trailer-mounted beast of a thing and I did a lot of unintended damage with the thing...but for a more appropriate application like cleaning a driveway, something like that thing with one of those rotary things would be the way to go. It would make very short work of it.
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I also vote for an electric version. Gas is just another thing to maintain, while electric is use, put away wet and forget about it.
 
I have a Ryobi Honda-powered pressure washer. Something like 2.3 GPM at 3000 PSI. It’s adequate for the patio and driveway, but takes longer, and not at all enough for the exterior of the hangar. One of these days I’ll get one with a triplex pump that flows 4 GPM or better. I figure it’ll be close to two grand out the door, but that will be the last pressure washer I’ll need to buy.

Pressure washing is the one chore that I hate to do, but even with the cost of a prosumer grade machine, it’ll pay for itself in a couple years, considering how much people charge to do it.
 
asicer said:
Two words: foam cannon.

And a really good car wash formulation.
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I assume a foam cannon that connects to a pressure washer is preferred over one that connects to a hose. Any recommendations considering you can spend $15-120?
 
Mahneuvers said:
I assume a foam cannon that connects to a pressure washer is preferred over one that connects to a hose. Any recommendations considering you can spend $15-120?
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Soap is not applied under pressure, so it doesn't matter if it attaches to your hose or your pressure washer.
 
172andyou said:
Soap is not applied under pressure, so it doesn't matter if it attaches to your hose or your pressure washer.
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Not exactly correct. A foam cannon uses a pressure washer to generate a thick foam. I don’t think there’s a huge difference in the cheap vs expensive versions.

The theoretical benefit is being able to foam the entire car quickly and get the dirt sliding off to reduce friction and scratches
 
Hang 4 said:
Not exactly correct. A foam cannon uses a pressure washer to generate a thick foam. I don’t think there’s a huge difference in the cheap vs expensive versions.

The theoretical benefit is being able to foam the entire car quickly and get the dirt sliding off to reduce friction and scratches
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Having to pull out the pressure washer to wash the car seems like overkill to me. Maybe if you have a show car with a $20,000 paint job, but for cars that actually get driven, I have to think that the the damage is mostly done when the car is getting dirty, not when it's getting washed.

I have PPF on the front of my Cayman and professionally applied ceramic to the whole car. So far, so good.
 
Mahneuvers said:
I assume a foam cannon that connects to a pressure washer is preferred over one that connects to a hose. Any recommendations considering you can spend $15-120?
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I got two different foam cannons from Amazon to review. The first one was difficult to pour soap into because the bottle opening was small, but the container had lots of graduations on the side to help with mixing the soap up with the correct amount of water. The 2nd had a giant mouth to pour the soap into, was all around "nicer" but didn't have enough markings to get a 5:1 ratio easily mixed for the particular soap I was using.

So ideally, you want some wide mouth bottle with plenty of markings. Probably in the $25-$30 range?

I am still figuring out the sheeting agent business to rinse off with. My well water is a nightmare for washing and leaves spots on glass and paint.

I also ended up with one of the underbody sprayers. Fun toy and makes me feel better than leaving all the mud etc that a truck picks up out there in the big bad world.
 
Mahneuvers said:
I assume a foam cannon that connects to a pressure washer is preferred over one that connects to a hose.
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Foam cannon versus foam popgun :)
Mahneuvers said:
Any recommendations considering you can spend $15-120?
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I picked the most popular one on Amazon. @bentmettle gave some good tips above. Mine is probably the same as the the small neck with gradations. It's a little inconvenient but not a deal-breaker, for me at least.
 
FormerHangie said:
Having to pull out the pressure washer to wash the car seems like overkill to me. Maybe if you have a show car with a $20,000 paint job, but for cars that actually get driven, I have to think that the the damage is mostly done when the car is getting dirty, not when it's getting washed.
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Agree. I don't have one, but I do like to detail my cars myself. That world has it's own forums that will argue endlessly about processes, products etc. Just like we talk about what oil to use, oversquare, shock cooling and high vs low wing. Oh and of course, LOP vs ROP.
 
FormerHangie said:
Having to pull out the pressure washer to wash the car seems like overkill to me. Maybe if you have a show car with a $20,000 paint job, but for cars that actually get driven, I have to think that the the damage is mostly done when the car is getting dirty, not when it's getting washed.

I have PPF on the front of my Cayman and professionally applied ceramic to the whole car. So far, so good.
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For me, it's not about the effort. Time yourself. For me it takes all of two or three extra minutes to pull out the pressure washer. It's not about the time. It's about the wash quality and I just don't think that touchless (the only reason to use a pressure washer) does as good a job. So I just use a hose and a giant sponge.
 
I keep a steam pressure washer hooked up and plugged in all the time at home. Hose reel is in the garage.
Pull the hose out from the reel and select which spray wand you want to use . One rocker switch turns it on.
I don’t use it on my classic cars as they get the detail spray bottle treatment.

The pressure washer has endless uses around your the house and yard.


We recently got a pigeon coop, I have already used the pressure washer to clean it. I built the coop with the pressure washer in mind.
 
i can clean the car far faster with the power washer and foam cannon than with traditional hose, and the results are better.
 
I have always used well water and a regular hose to wash my cars. The first time using a pressure washer it just wasn't that clean. It was much cleaner using a foam canon but I had little white spots all over the car apparently from well water mineral deposits and the volume of water the pressure washer dispenses. Apparently I need to dry the car more quickly with one recommendation suggesting using a leaf blower. Another recommendation is using a rinsing agent or adding an in line filter. Sure seems like I'm going down a rabbit hole here! :-)
 
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Mahneuvers said:
I have always used well water and regular hose to wash my cars. The first time using a pressure washer it just wasn't that clean. It was much cleaner using a foam canon but I had little white spots all over the car apparently from well water mineral deposits and the volume of water the pressure washer dispenses. Apparently I need to dry the car more quickly with one recommendation suggesting using a leaf blower. Another recommendation is using a rinsing agent or adding an in line filter. Sure seems like I'm going down a rabbit hole here! :-)
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A long time ago I washed my car in the driveway then dried it with my leaf blower. A coupl’a neighbors laughed at me. Soon enough they were all doing it. Bastages.
 
I use a leaf blower for years now after a pressure washing. Works great out in the sun because it dries faster versus the shade.

Same way the car wash does it, lots of forced air.
 
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