Yo,Yo,Yo…Luke…
Yessir, started out window cleaning in '03, added “pressure cleaning” in '04.
In 2014 started looking at “soft washing”, have been in the soft washing window cleaning niche since 2015. Both window cleaning and soft washing are very compatible. Would love to chat…
Terry
I added it to mine reactly
Long storey short, my deck and patio furniture needed serious cleaning. We were having people over this weekend, and figured instead of spending hours scrubbing, or money on a new patio set, decided instead for the company to buy a 3400psi, 4 gpm pressure washer. Composite deck and furniture turned out great (except for the cheap fabric recliner that was uv degraded and now has a huge tear in it). Curious what to use for washing the wood fences to bring them back a bit before staining. I don’t like the bleached look, but definitely need to brighten it up a bit. For the composite and the vinyl I just used a jug of simple green concentrate. There’s probably a ton of better stuff out there.
And of course I figure add it into the services offered.
When you are cleaning fabrics or UV exposed plastic/vinyl, since you are using a 4 gpm machine, I would use a 12 or 15 gpm tip while still running at full pressure. This should drop your output pressure to between 400-700psi while maintaining your flow rate. Depending on your water supply source, you may over draw your system if there is not enough water flow from the source to keep up. Normally, my machine runs at 10 gpm at 4500psi when running at full throttle. (It is a trailer mounted system with a 35hp V-twin engine.) But I often run it at reduced throttle when pressure washing to save fuel and wear on my pump. I clean with a 4 gpm tip and I do a post rinse and soft material cleaning with a 15 gpm tip. I also use this for cleaning my screens. I spray them down with a diluted bleach based detergent that I run from a separate tank via a 5 gpm 12v diaphragm pump so no bleach ever goes through my High Pressure pump, and then rinse with the lower pressure but higher volume from the 15 gpm tip. However, I often over draw my water source and that is why I have a 200 gallon buffer tank that directly feeds the pump.
Try the lower pressure by using a higher gpm tip, just play with the size to find what works for your pump without running out of flow.
Oh man, so much to learn.
Thanks for the reply. I really do appreciate it. My gun has an adjustable pressure dial, and according to cub cadet means on low it drops it to 2200psi on the low end. With the fans that come with it, how do you know what GPM they are. I’m guessing the 0degree is really the only one at 3400 psi and the fans as the area is spread out quite a bit the pressure is significantly less, but would they all be rated at 4gpm?
I’d be careful running at half throttle, small engines are designed to run full throttle to keep it cool. They are air cooled, unless you have a radiator type PW engine. Just a thought.
With asking about the wood fencing, I usually use my 2600 psi washer with the yellow tip, no bleach unless grime is super thick. Using lower psi helps me to not cut into the wood and leave bad streaks. That’s just me though. If you run higher psi, you might try the green or white tips, just find whichever works best. I’ve just seen so many people over do it on wood surfaces and it comes out looking terrible.
Earlier in this thread @JoeyGee mentioned the PWRA forums that is where your will really find the most information. Basically the same thing as this forum but focused more on the Pressure Washing aspects. I’m sure you will find more information there from many more experienced people.
That being said, when you use the same gpm tips, the color of the tip/degree of the fan spray does not effect the pressure. A 40° or white tip with a 3 Gallon Per Minute orifice will produce the same amount of pressure as a 0° (Red) 3 gpm tip. On the side of the tip there should be a printed or enscribed set of 5 digits that will tell you what the tips is. The first 2 are the degree of the fan (or lack there of in the case of the 0°). The next 3 digits will tell you the gallons per minute. So a tip marked 40055 is a 40° 5.5 gpm tip. A 25020 is a 25° 2 gpm tip. Some of the MEG tips have the numbers printed next to the orifice rather than the side/barrel.
What does change when you adjust the degree of the fan is the effective range of the pressure. I don’t know the exact measurements, but essentially, if your pump is producing 3000 psi, a 40° tip will produce 3000 psi up to 4-6 inches from the tip before significantly dropping off the further away you go. You may feel 100 psi or less at 2ft from the tip. On the opposite end of the spectrum, a 0° tip will have a 3000 psi range of 3-4ft depending on the gpm, then dropping off at a slower rate since the stream is more focused.
Whichever tips came with your machine should be the same gpm but you can check the numbers on the side. The adjustable pressure dial may be a flow restricter? The wider the fan flow, the higher the volume, the lower the pressure. In my first post I was recommending the same thing but with non-adjustable tips.
@SimplyCleanKentucky - I agree with you when it comes to smaller machines, that you need to make sure that you keep water flowing through the pump to keep it cool. A lot of the machines that break down are from people leaving them running for the entire duration of the house cleaning process without water continuously flowing. The heat builds up in the pump and warps or ruins the seals and it can no longer produce the proper pressure. I don’t use the small machines to have experience with heat build up in the engines. The few times I have used them, I did run them at full throttle and used the screw down pressure regulator to adjust the output. But as I mentioned in my particular case, and only in my situation because of the equipment I have, I can adjust my machine’s output by both changing the gpm of the tip or by decreasing the throttle because I have a 993cc 35Hp Vanguard V-Twin engine that has a blower and fan wheel for cooling the cylinders along with a separate oil cooling radiator.
