What to Buy?
You are a home owner do it yourself man and your wife is nagging you to clean the drive way or the walls of the house. So you think, what is the easiest way to do this? Do I use a scrubbing brush which will take weeks or do I look for something simpler?
Well the simplest implement to use is a pressure washer. But there are hundreds of pressure washers on the market that are suited for all kinds of different applications.
There are electric operated cold water and hot water machines and gas cold water and hot water machines all with different strengths and different prices.
Lets look at the home owner do it yourselfer first.
Most home owners will probably only use a pressure washer for 20 hours per year. This is to clean the car, drive way and walls of the house. So it would be insane to spend a large amount of money to do these chores. In this case I would advise a cheap electric model that uses 110 volt 15 amp plug that is standard in all United States homes. This unit would push out between 1000 pounds per square inch (psi) to 1500 psi. This is ample for the type of work at home it would be used for.
Why are they cheap?
To keep the costs down the manufacturers have used cast aluminum heads and plastic parts instead of forged brass pump heads and stainless steel valves which are found on the commercial machines.
Using less expensive parts keeps the price down but when it comes to repairs it becomes uneconomical and therefore is only built to last between 250 and 400 hours, after which it can be thrown away.
But if you fall into this category, for less than $200, you get a machine that will do the job you have bought it for and will probably last 10 years.
