Learn me: Home Pressure Washers

Spring's here and I'm thinking about getting a modest pressure washer. GRM thoughts?

Primary uses:
Rinsing/washing cars
Cleaning driveway/sidewalks/patio
Cleaning sides of house, vinyl fence, maybe rinsing windows
Cleaning garage floor - it's painted with one-part epoxy, so care is needed!
Any gardening uses for a pressure washer?

Corded electric seems fine, since it will need a water hose. A wheeled unit seems easier to handle. Battery units with self-contained water tank are nicely portable, but probably a pain for anything bigger than washing the car. Easy storage is ideal.

Only cold water and the faucets are not near the driveway. (A separate project could be a homemade PVC extension to the faucet.)

I think it'll be pretty light use and I'm pretty value-oriented, so nothing super-capable or expensive. What should I look for re: PSI and flow? Other issues?
Thanks...

If you want to clean a car, corded electric is awesome. I have a Ryobi. If you want to clean siding and driveways, you need more power. If I am trying to clean something that needs real pressure, I have to be really close. Extra pressure means extra distance an cleaning area at the same effective pressure.

I bought a sunjoe from sams on clearance last fall. Didn't get a chance to use it because as soon as I could, it snowed.

I've had a gas pressure washer for many years, but once I got my corded electric, it rarely gets used. The electric can do 90% of what the gas one can with less hassle. If I'm cleaning my deck to prepare for staining it, or concrete or something, yeah, give me the extra PSI of the gas model, but other than that, the electric does just fine. Mine is a cheap SunJoe I got on Amazon.

I've had a few over the years and recommend an electric unit for 99% of the projects around the house. I personally like the more compact designs vs the bigger upright versions. It makes it much easier to store . You can throw it on a shelf or on a hook against the wall. 
 

Pay attention to BOTH flow and pressure numbers when shopping. Don't get caught up in the xxxx psi hype. Think more in terms of: pressure x flow = cleaning power

Make sure to store it in a heated area during the winter so it doesn't freeze, otherwise pump some RV water tank antifreeze (cheap) through it before you put it away. 

WillG80 said:

Make sure to store it in a heated area during the winter so it doesn't freeze, otherwise pump some RV water tank antifreeze (cheap) through it before you put it away. 

I blow all the water out of mine with compressed air every fall. Seems to get the job done.

I've got a relatively powerful one with a Honda gas engine on it. Does everything I ever asked it to do.

But, knowing what I know now, I'd go electric. With gas once you start the engine you feel compelled to do it all in one session. I'd prefer an electric one that was a simple on and off by pressing the handle. Would sure beat starting and stopping a gas engine many times. Even a good running Honda engine is still annoying to deal with.

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

WillG80 said:

Make sure to store it in a heated area during the winter so it doesn't freeze, otherwise pump some RV water tank antifreeze (cheap) through it before you put it away. 

I blow all the water out of mine with compressed air every fall. Seems to get the job done.

Oh crap, that would have been the thing to do before putting in the trailer to get it out of the way.

I'm pretty sure I have this one: https://www.homedepot.com/p/RYOBI-2300-PSI-1-2-GPM-High-Performance-Cold-Water-Corded-Electric-Pressure-Washer-RY142300/300405751 I'd check but it's cold outside. Anyway, we really like it. Cleans the driveway just fine with one of the spinny brush attachments, cleans siding, etc.  It's also nice and quiet. So much so that I can talk to my wife while I'm using it without yelling. 

I got a Honda-powered one about a decade ago, free from a relative who no longer needed it.  Apart from oil changes, it's needed nothing, and works perfectly.  I strongly hate dealing with cords AND hoses, so having to cope with both is a non-starter for me.  It'll run seemingly forever on a tiny tankful of fuel.  And it'll blast a hole in a piece of wood.

Honda is the way.  

EDIT:  I have found that a pressure washer makes a highly efficient gutter cleaner.  Climb ladder, blast out gutters, climb down while rinsing off siding.  

Pressure washers are dangerous tools, the water can literally blow a hole through your hand.  I have heard of people dying from water getting in their blood and making a bubble somewhere.  Not sure if that's a wive's tale or possibly true.  Anyway, be careful.  Also, a whole day using a pressure washer will make your arms sore- legs too, if you're on a ladder.  Take breaks, and don't do it all day.  

I had an electric one and bought a gas powered one for deck and siding cleaning. Big difference in how fast you can get the job done.

The gas one also does a better job of blasting grimy-rusty car parts into just rusty car parts. Might have to add a sand syphon!

volvoclearinghouse said:

Pressure washers are dangerous tools, the water can literally blow a hole through your hand.  I have heard of people dying from water getting in their blood and making a bubble somewhere.  Not sure if that's a wive's tale or possibly true.  Anyway, be careful.  Also, a whole day using a pressure washer will make your arms sore- legs too, if you're on a ladder.  Take breaks, and don't do it all day.  

When I was a teenager working at Pizza Hut, one day they asked me to take all the garbage cans to the local quarter car wash and clean them. Being a dumbass 16-year-old, I got a little careless with the spray wand while holding one of the cans, and it sliced the back of my hand open pretty good. Ever since then I have tremendous respect for pressure washers.

I had a gas-powered one and rarely used it since it was a pain. I gave it away. Been considering an electric one yet at the same time haven’t found myself needing one.

I have an electric and a gas machine. Which one comes out depends on what I'm doing. 

Blasting the driveway or house, the gas machine is multiple times faster at getting the job done. Blasting serious grime and grunge out of an engine bay, the gas machine does a better job. 

Washing a car or some other small job that isn't baked on gunk, the electric machine does fine. 

I have strong opinions about these.

Corded electric will work for most of what you outlined.  The one thing they tend to lack is GPM.  For a given power, as PSI rises, GPM falls and vice versa.  Don't shop for PSI, shop for both pressure and flow.  I avoid electric for a few reasons.

• proprietary parts.  The one time you leave a little bit of water in it for the winter, it's not like you can just order a new pump for $40 like you can with a gas washer.  You're looking at contacting the manufacturer, likely paying as much as you would for a new pressure washer, and that's only if they haven't stopped making the pump which they do about every two years.
• planned obsolescence.  Pressure washers have a limited life and it's not a secret.  Homeowner electric washers are designed for an expected X hours of service and then they're done.
• Extra cord to drag around

Gas pressure washers eliminate all of that.  They use standard bolt patterns and standard sizes, so if your engine explodes, you can bolt on a Briggs or Honda or Kohler or Tecumseh, or Predator or Robin engine that you find practically for free from someone's discarded lawn mower and keep going.  If the pump dies, you can bolt on any one of 5000 pumps in three different styles (radial, axial, piston) that can be had on Amazon for $40. 

The other thing about most gas pressure washers is that they have adjustable regulators.  Washing the car or the epoxy garage floor?  Turn it down for lower pressure and the flow goes up.  No damage, and quicker work.  Need to blast moss and grease from your concrete driveway?  Turn it up and you can get a deep clean.

I bought my cheapy gas pressure washer about 12 years ago from Home Depot for $279.  It's a Craftsman, which (for that week) used a Chinese copy of a Subaru Robin 5hp engine and a cheap axial pump.  The pump finally died a couple years ago so I replaced it with a good piston pump (more efficient) for $85 that puts out 3600 psi and something like 3.2 GPM.  I can do anything with it.  I use it for siding, patio, mower decks, gutters, cars, boats, RVs, you name it.  It can gently push leaves out of a gutter without covering you in muck, or it can remove the chrome from a bumper (ok, not really, but it gets pretty wicked when you crank it up.)

If you end up with a gas washer, a couple thoughts.  There are vertical and horizontal.  Vertical can be a bit of a pain sometimes since the hookups are usually under the deck.  They are also typically cheaper, and the engines are ubiquitously free.  Just watch in your neighborhood on trash day and grab any lawn mower and you're in business.

Horizontal washers are usually more efficient and easier to use since you're not limited by ground clearance on the pump.

If I were buying one today for your exact uses, I would probably buy this one.  It's a wee bit overkill, but WEN is one of the cheaper overseas brands that has proven to be very good quality.

... and on the topic of overseas... you'll find zero that are made in the USA.  Even if they say "made in USA," it means they were assembled here with overseas parts.

It might just be me, but there is something about using a corded electric anything while potentially standing in a puddle of water that just bothers me.

But that is just me.  *Grabs toaster to have a bagel and take a bath at the same time*

My electric Ryobi does not have a regulator, but the different nozzles have different flow, which results in different pressure.

Cost is also a factor. I just snagged a cheap and cruddy Greenworks washer for $50 that was open box; I'll still look for a gas washer like Curtis described, but only because they got tossed out on the reg when they might need just $20 in parts. But I need it for the homeowner tasks, and like others said the boxmart stuff is meant to be used up and tossed away.

In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :

I, for one, never had the problems people seem to have with gas lawn stuff.  I buy plain gas with ethanol, never use stablizer, and when I'm done with it at the end of the season I shove it in a corner of my shed.  Come spring time, I give it two pulls and it starts.  If I have something that sits for two years and it doesn't start after a few pulls, I take the bowl off the carb, shoot some brake cleaner in the jet, and it always starts.

Having said that, some people describe having problems, and since I was formerly in small engine repair, I agree.  If it didn't happen, I would have been out of business.  But it's really not a big deal to me.  Small engines are just bulletproof things that will run forever.  Dad had a Briggs on a log splitter that seized up while he was using it because the oil fill plug had vibrated out and shook the oil out of it.  He let it cool, put new oil in it, and three years later it's still working fine.

I am still using one of a dozen free lawnmowers that I picked up on trash day.  I have a few 5hp engines that came off of decks that rusted and got set out.  I have had about a dozen lawn mowers that just had a bit of crud in the bowl, and a handful of pressure washers that needed a $40 pump or maybe a recoil rope.

Gas stuff tends to be super cheap to maintain.  If you're the kind of person who rolls their lawnmower to the curb if it doesn't start on the first pull, gas stuff maybe isn't for you.  If you're the type of person who realizes that they are the dirt-simplest thing and can be fixed with a 5/16 socket and a $2 part, then gas is the way to go.  When I worked for HD repair, there would be a line out the door of snowblowers the first time there was snow in the forecast.  "Fill this out, go shop for 20 minutes and spend money in our store, and come back."  Never failed.  Bowl off, squirt squirt, first pull.  "That will be $45 please."

I got this one on sale at Costco.  I had an electric POS that every time I used it I was annoyed so one day it's into the garbage.  

I like it - it does a lot for my home projects.   I also bought from Amazon one of those round rotating concrete brushes.  I'd go gas and deal with taking care of it.  
 

Pressure washers are kind of like welders.  If you're starting to learn to weld, the worst thing you can do is buy a cheap welder.  You'll never learn to weld well because your skills will outpace the crappy welder and you'll be upgrading.  Electric pressure washers are much like the cheap welder.  If you're just tacking a craft together for some windchimes or a lawn ornament, great.  If you're building a tube-frame chassis, not so much.  

An electric will work fine for most things, but the key part is pressure and flow.  You can get a super-inexpensive 2000 psi electric and think that the price point makes it more attractive than the 2500 psi gas.  Plus, it's the size of a briefcase, what's not to love, right?  But when it comes down to brass tacks, the 2500 psi gas might be able to do all of your siding in 2 hours and look great, while the 2000 psi electric might take a day and a half and look like you drew lines in the stains with your finger because you had to get really close for it to be effective with its lower GPM.  It's like tyring to paint a car with rattle cans vs an HVLP gun.  They both get the job done, but one takes hours and has streaks, the other is even and takes 30 minutes.

That's an exaggeration, but there really is a difference.  They DO make really good quality electric pressure washers, but they're about $1500 compared to a slightly better-performing $350 gas unit.

If you think about it, to get 3000-ish PSI and 2.5gpm, you need about a 6.5hp gas engine, which is about 4800 watts, or about 40-45 amps at 120v.  Of course, electric is a bit more efficient, but there is just no way a 10-amp, 120v electric will compare to even the smallest gas unit.  What it really boils down to is what you intend to do with it, and how long you want it to last.  We used to rent high-end electric washers at HD.  They cost us $1800 each to purchase, and they were completely outgunned in performance by any of the $250 gas washers on the shelf for sale.  The main difference was that the $1800 electrics were top-quality units that we could rent 20 times a month and know they would perform while the $250 gas washers were the cheapest junk you could find, but as far as getting a job done, being able to repair inexpensively, and bang for the buck, gas is light years ahead of electric.  The reason I compare the commercial electrics we had to the cheap gas stuff we sold is because (in terms of performance alone), you can do way more with a $250-350 gas (and repair it for free or $50 when it breaks) compared to doing less work with a $1500 electric that will last a long time. (but cost $400 to repair when if it breaks)  It's totally apples and oranges.  They are two different machines with two different uses.  

TL;DR... if you're looking to squirt some water on your car for washing it 5 times a year, electric is great.  If you're looking for doing actual work with it, gas every day and twice on Sunday.

[/polarizingopinion]

I can see the appeal of an electric one, but some years back a buddy had a small part break on his Karcher, no replacement was available, and so into the landfill it went.

Not sure how practical it is for many people, and it depends on what you want to do, but renting them works for me: all the grunt of a gas unit, no space lost, no worries about maintenance. That said, I live close to three rental shops. 

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

I subscribe to the Small Engine Gospel according to Curtis. 

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

Did I just invent Curtism?