Can anyone personally recommend a 'good' (so, value for money, reliable, functional, spares readily-available, accessories-available) continuous use pressure washer, suitable for 'mostly' cleaning patios and the like please?
Don't mind petrol or electric, just whatever works and lasts (and isn't 'too' expensive, maybe ~3-400 quid)?
Cheers, T i m
p.s. Something as good as my little Kew Hobby washer but bigger. ;-)
The equivalent to that these days would be the Interpump Boxjet. They are a bit of a legend in the trade.
Be aware pressure isn't everything. Domestic machines quote "max" pressure which won't resemble the actual working pressure and flow rate is low. 1 litre a minute is worth 10 bar.
It's a Karcher MPDS intended for decontamination nuclear irradiated battle field equipment, introduced towards the end of the cold war. I bought mine on eBay a few years back, and it's been very good - I did a re-furb on it at the end of last year as ignition of the steam boiler was slightly flaky, but it is very good now. A bit about it here:
You are right, I do, however, not having a truck and a JCB to load it on with ... ;-)
Very interesting. ;-)
I think Davids suggestion of the 'Interpump Boxjet' has reminded me my little Kew Hobby may well be what we are looking for, at least as an experiment. I see you can also buy adaptors to convert the various HP connection types so we may just try the Kew with an eBay Nilfisk patio head thing and see how we go.
Funnily enough that was the one we were considering, given the slightly higher flow rate etc.
I like the system Dave pointed me to on the d-i-y Wiki re the "Cleaning Effect".
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Pressure (bar) x Flow (litres/min) / 600 and anything less than 1 is probably going to struggle on anything bigger than a muddy mountain bike.
That would make the 'Quicky': 100 x 10 / 600 so a 'Cleaning Effect of
1.7.
I wonder if that Wiki guide is using the (probably) over optimistic values of 'working' pressure and 'working' flow rate and so machines like the Boxjet / Quicky are effectively underrated?
The little Karcher K2 is supposed to be 110 x 6 / 600 = 1.1 and my little 'Kew Hobby' (that weighs about 5 x that of the K2) is 70 x 5.5 / 600 = .64. ;-(
However, at least the spec on the Hobby gives a Max of 90 bar so it suggests it's being honest with the 70. ;-)
Since asking about these pressure washers we have found Mum has one in her garage that was bought by Dad and forgotten about (until I uncovered it the other day) and I have the Hobby so we are first going to try those on some test areas and see how well they actually work (or not). If they really are too slow then we will look at something like the Boxjet / Quicky or *maybe* something petrol powered (probably with a brass Interpump pump and a Honda engine).
I was using working real pressure when I wrote the guide. It's likely that the KEW & the Boxjet are using real pressure & flow. Ksarcher cheat like mad.
And the 110 bar is probably what we used to call "marketing bar" :-)
The weight difference is universal motor v induction motor.
Yes, I thought that might be the case (and was already suggested here / the Wiki etc).
And plastic v metal (even some alloy) pump I'm assuming?
Good (if not generally cheap).
But what do they say, 'Buy cheap buy twice' but that said, if it come with a 3 year warranty, you don't 'abuse' it and it had the minimum specs in the first place you can have some 'cheap' stuff that lasts for ages.
Cheers, T i m
p.s. Daughter bought the Lidl Li drill, jigsaw and circular saw when it came up here a bit back. I borrowed and used all of them the other day and found them more than serviceable, cutting up a 2.5m x 5 plank T&G pine 'board' I'd glued up to make some display stand side cheeks.
The only 'surprise' was how fast the circular saw finally cut out (I did the whole job with just 2 batteries used across all the tools), I'm more used to stuff dying more slowly (Nicad / NiMH etc).
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