I want to get a pressure washer, generally to clean cars (including one dirty Land Rover Defender), and cleaning decking/patio etc. Are 'Karcher' still regarded as the ones to go for? If so, which model (I've around £150-£200 to spend, and I'm happy to get one off eBay to save a few quid)? Don't want to go for a petrol one.
Peter
Got one of these and boy is it powerful. Forget ebay otherwise you cant send it back if it fails after a few months use ie no guarentee.
In message , SpiderMan wrote
Some background reading
Well I purchased a Karcher 550M a couple of years ago and have absolutely no complaints.
It appears they are on a good deal at Amazon:
Or
Even better value if you are a member of CostCo, =A376 (might have been =
=A373 *inc* VAT) I've got one but yet to use it, too damn cold! Primary =
use is to be car cleaning (Land Rover Discovery) but may well do the odd bit of patio work. TBH you don't want that much umph otherwise you run the risk of damaging the paint work, tyres or other "soft" parts of the car.
I did it lasted 2 months and took it back, hence me buying the one I posted. :-)
-- Sir Benjamin Middlethwaite
Karcher are certainly the brand name, but that's only due to a lot of marketing. Nothing special about them.
Read the pressure washer FAQ for more info.
Others to look at are Comet
Dave
Urban myth mate! Completely impossible for a normal HPC to remove or damage sound paint. If the paint is at all loose or flakey then it will come off, but sound paint no.
You can remove paint & rust with ultra high pressure 1,000 bar +, that's how they clean gasometers & the like prior to painting.
Dave
In message , SpiderMan writes
Whatever make you decide on I suggest that you ensure that the model has a metal pump. Having gone through 2 Karchers with split plastic pump housings after limited domestic use I brought a Stihl electric model with an aluminium pump head, which appears to be very effective, comparatively quiet and better constructed that the Karcher equivalent. It cost £200 from our local Stihl dealer which was cheaper than the best online price I could find. Karcher do make kit with metal pumps - 500 series and up from memory.
Good advice. Even better get a brass pump head. Plastic pump heads are as much use as a chocolate teapot.
Stihl are a another good brand, made for them by WAP in Germany.
Dave
Tell that to a friend who bought a domestic pressure washer and promptly removed from the bumper of his car... OK it may already have been loose but not noticeably so and I woud rather put money on a car having a iffy paintwork somewhere rather than being 100% perfect.
Real world mate, real world.
How many times did it get used in those two months? I wash the car once a year wether it needs it or not...
Car once a month. Backyard twice a week, the canine lives out there. :-)
It just might have been a faulty unit/batch but once bitten twice shy when buying an electrical item is my moto.
-- Sir Benjamin Middlethwaite
The bloke next door but one is always using his on the car every sunday.
-- Sir Benjamin Middlethwaite
Thirty years of selling the buggers mate, thirty years :-)
Everything from the 'I could pee faster' domestic machines 100bar @ 6 litres/min to the real stuff 250bar @ 40 litres/min.
If the paint came off it was faulty paint and only a matter of time.
Dave
Tell that to Vauxhalls, I took the paint off the bumper of a Vectra. Painted plastic mind you! Also cut the rubber around the front screen. This was with a domestic Karcher.
Hmmm! paint off 2 bumpers,this sounds to me like the paint was (matt paint)? in which case PW would shift it.
-- Sir Benjamin Middlethwaite
Painted plastic is asking for trouble IMO. I doubt it was factory painted. If it was it had a weak area and the jet got under it.
Rubber is bloody near impossible to damage with a high pressure jet! It absorbs the energy - precisely why shotblast cabinets are lined in rubber.
Most domestic HPC are use with a 'pencil' jet rather than a fan jet to compensate for thier crap performance. Possibly you hit a join in the screen rubber.
There simply isn't enough energy being produced by a domestic machine to break a proper paint to substrate bond.
Dave
Brand new car, I was using a a fine jet, pencil? It left an asteric shaped mark where it had cut the paint and then removed it, I did this a couple of times before I noticed. After that even with the fan shaped jet I had to be careful as once it was damaged it was easy to lift as the water got under the edge of the paint.
Again with the fine jet, I was using it to remove dirt from beside the rubber, never again!
The lesson learned from all of this was to treat the washer with respect and move towards the item being cleaned, rather than start close up, and then stop when I was close enough to clean it without damage.
My other slight embarrassment was cutting some fine lines in a tarmac drive while removing moss from it.
Still a darn good tool for cleaning concrete paths, I wouldn't be without it.
So thats 2 + 8 * 2 = 18 years, That'll do me. B-)
I looked at the Alto models as the factory is only 20 miles away... Trouble is they don't do one with the features I wanted. Namely detergent bottle attached to the main body (not freestanding to be knocked over or on the end of the lance making it unweildy), the accessory range also appeared limited.
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