Pressure Washers - Do You Own One? Are They Worth It?

1886

Not worth it if you just want to clean your car. By the time you've got the power cable attached to it and the hose pipe and messed around moving the unit and lance to reach the other side of your car I would have finished cleaning my car.

They're a good idea if you need that sort of power for block paving etc. but overkill on a normal car. If you do buy one be careful, you could easily damage/remove any loose paint

gilbert_and_sullivan

One poster above mentioned this.

Is it possible to get a proper standard multifit attachment in order to make round the corner cleaning easier, an L shaped piece allowing you to put the lance past a wheel and give the suspension and underbody a clean up..

Richard53

1886 wrote: »

Not worth it if you just want to clean your car. By the time you've got the power cable attached to it and the hose pipe and messed around moving the unit and lance to reach the other side of your car I would have finished cleaning my car.

I have an outside tap and run an extension reel out from the garage, so setting up takes about a minute. Running a hose from an inside tap and an extension cord from the living room does make the whole thing pretty tedious, I will admit. But the washer does so much of the hard work it makes washing the car far easier, and you don't end up with a bucket full of mud and grit that gets on your sponge and ultimately makes a mess of your paintwork.

As others have said above, there are a few warnings:

Don't use on loose paint or decals. I stripped most of the paint off a Land Rover door once using a Karcher (it was flaking already, though).

Don't get the jet anywhere near bearings or oil seals. This is pretty easy to do on a car, but jet washing a motorbike needs a bit of care around the wheel hubs, gear linkages, steering head, brakes etc., and any exposed electrical connectors.

It is possible (actually, easy) to bend the fins on a radiator, so take care when jet washing the front of the car. On a bike, again, much easier to cause harm so more care needed.

Make sure your windows are properly wound up, as the jet will force its way into the slightest gap.

As said above, if you have a powerful model, don't get the jet too close to the tyres.

Karcher do a lance with a 90deg bend at the end that will let you get all the way under the car to clean the dirty bits.

savemoney

You can get away cleaning car with pw if you want to. Not much more effort than filling a bucket to clean and or them swilling car with buckets or hosepipe. I tend to use pw to hose off muck and apply a good quality car shampoo

I have a L shaped attachment on mine to do underneath tend to use it in winter/spring to remove salt its quite powerful when that's one

Likewise I use a good quality snow foam lance to do car once in a while and let it soak. Car looks like its full of snow I get a few odd looks sometimes and some folk never seen snow foam before

gilbert_and_sullivan

Richard53 wrote: »

hough).

Karcher do a lance with a 90deg bend at the end that will let you get all the way under the car to clean the dirty bits.

I'll have a poke nose for one of those, many thanks.

nickcc

gilbert_and_sullivan wrote: »

One poster above mentioned this.

Is it possible to get a proper standard multifit attachment in order to make round the corner cleaning easier, an L shaped piece allowing you to put the lance past a wheel and give the suspension and underbody a clean up..

Nilfisk do the underbody angled jet, unfortunately, at about £25, its quite expensive ( certainly does the job though)

savemoney

I got mine in a pack for just over £20 at The Range last year came with brush, two heads, and some cleaner for wheels, body

It was quite cheap compared with other places it look shabby the box as it must have been on shelves for ages they had a couple of boxes like that

nickcc wrote: »

Nilfisk do the underbody angled jet, unfortunately, at about £25, its quite expensive ( certainly does the job though)

nickcc

savemoney wrote: »

I got mine in a pack for just over £20 at The Range last year came with brush, two heads, and some cleaner for wheels, body

It was quite cheap compared with other places it look shabby the box as it must have been on shelves for ages they had a couple of boxes like that

As the say should have gone to the range

savemoney

I only saw them by chance wouldn't normally spend £45 or so on some attachments. pw is great though I got it on recommendation from other car users same with snow foam spray

nickcc wrote: »

As the say should have gone to the range

27col

We have just cleaned our all-weather bowling green using domestic sprayers of various makes. That is a serious bit of pressure cleaning as the area is over 9,000 sqft. The amount of mud that was produced was absolutely amazing. Bucket after bucket of it. The surrounding shrub beds have never had such a good top dressing.