John T

You can't beat that price :) I hope to get an hour or so in the trade show between the wood certification class I'm taking.

I use all types of gloves also. Mainly when just Powerwashing I wear rubber gloves so I can save my hands from abuse. OF course because My hands get sweaty sometimes my skin breaks out in some type of fungus where my skin just peels away on my hands. This never hurts but it can look nasty. Still I rather protect my hands from getting blasted or from having stains/chemicals on them so I always where some type of glove.

Yes the Cabot Rep did say that. He also added that even though bleach does do a good job when you know how to use it you have to be careful when you mix the bleach with other soaps. Because If I understood him correctly once you do that like we all do if something was to go wrong such as one of your workers getting it in there eyes you could be held liable big time because when you mix products you now become like a manufacturer and you must have MSDS sheets on your mixture. That I found very interesting. But yes The Cabot Rep did say you can use Bleach and he was excellent as a speaker. He also said that some in the industry are against bleach and some are for it. I know from one or two Vendors telling me that they will almost always say bleach is no good because that way they can sell other cleaners at a much higher cost just to do what Bleach does but included in that cost is the MSDS sheets where you won't have that when you mix your own brew. Knowing how to use chemicals is the key.

Another max question. Does anyone know what the Max gpm's is for the Elite Big guy 30" Surface machine is?? I was able to find that both my Hydrotek 27" and my pressure tek Bad Boy 30" can handle up to 10 gpm but I can't find the info on the Elite. Here's a picture of my Elite. Thanks

On a typical 3000psi hose does anyone know what is the max gpm's that can travel thru them? I can find the psi of course and the max temp but not the gpm's. Thanks

OK I just got off the phone with Envirospec and initially they were telling me that any amount of gpm can run through these hoses. Of course that doesn't make sense so I had them ask the technician there and he stated that there 3000psi hose's whether there serpintine or whatever hose that they sell all of the 3000psi hoses are rated up to 12gpm. So far everything is looking good.

I guess I should go right to the source where I've been buying my hoses for years which is Envirospec. I had great successes with there hoses.

I have to be certain that Surface Cleaner is rated at 10gpm because If I hook up my two machines together I am talking about 9.5gpm's and the last thing I'll need is to mess up two pumps on these PW's if the gpm's are off somewhere...this would be my luck.

I sure will. I still have another problem to work out where I need the water from my tank to go slightly uphill to feed my powerwasher in my Van since the water tank is on my trailer. Here's a picture of my two hot water powerwashers with the the one in the back of my bucket truck now being in my Van but its still higher then the tank. I have another pump that is used for RV'S that pumps 5 gal a minute which is what I am going to use to incorportate into this set-up still I'm not sure as to how I'm going to do this. I'm thinking of running a small water tank in the neighborhood of 50 gallons to put into my van that the other tank will feed into first then it will go to the Powerwasher, I can't go any bigger then that because my Van is jammed with goodies on the inside already.

That is so true. Safety must always come first with Cleaning coming a distant second. Thats amazing he survived that fall. There was a story awhile back where a Powerwasher was electrocuted when the spray from his wand hit the power line to a house. There's also a few stories of guys getting killed and even a child getting killed when they were mixing chemicals. OF course since I own a bucket truck there's tons of stories of guys getting thrown out of them. That just happened by me last year where a tree trimmer fell out of the bucket. So whats the point...SAFETY comes first and you can NEVER be to careful even though we all take those risk every now and then.

You can make alot the first year if you can figure out the advertising angle in your area plus if you are a fast learner and handy at doing this type of work. I would suggest that you consider on traveling up to Ohio to go to the PWNA convention and take there classes and NETWORK NETWOR NETWORK with the people there. You will get excited and Pumped to kick some butt!! If you want some more info on the PWNA either call my business phone at 631-544-4971 or shoot me an e-mail with any questions that you may have.

The thing about hooking two machines together which is what I'm aiming on doing is that it will only take a minute or two to disconnect them so they can run seperately. This is why I am looking on buying Delco's $95 hose connector to do just that. Of course the beauty of having the one machine that is capable of running two seperate surface cleaners at 5 gpm each or running one at 10gpm this machine takes up much less space and you can clean Commercial flat work so much faster then the one 5 gpm set-up. Also a 10 gpm machine is usually a little cheaper to purchase then buying two seperate 5gpm machines but since I already have the 2 hot water machines I need to go the cost effectice route which is to connect them together. Of course I have a cousin in this business who has 8gpm machines and his operation is much bigger then mine. Not only is he bigger so are his machines. SO there goes that theory about bigger not being better but with a little alteration here I can be bigger :)

The problem with getting a larger Pump is that I would need a larger engine to run it and that is not cost effective. My 2 powerwashers have 16 hp engine and at most they can probably run a 5.5gpm pump. Maybe even less. There is a chart out there that tells you what size engine you need to run different size pumps. To get a pump that runs 9.5 gpm's would be expensive and the engine to run that would probably be a couple of grand itself. If I had any $$$$ I would just sell the two Powerwashers and then buy that 2 man Powerwasher that has a 10 gpm pump. That would be sweet :)

The higher rated Pump will not work because then I'll need a higher Horsepower engine to run that pump. Both of my engines are 16 hp and to get at least an 8pm pump to work I would need probably at the very least a 24 hp engine. There's a chart out there that tells you what size hp engine you need to run certain pump sizes. 16 hp engines probably can't work with pumps larger then 5.5gpm. Maybe even less.

I charge between $75-$125 with Aprox $95 being about average. For whatever reason I can't charge that much for this type of service here because the field to do this is completely saturated.

Yes I know Delco sells that hose set-up to do this which is what I was thinking about using. My goal is to set these two machines up together when Flatwork needs to be done. I also have 2 cold water belt PW's that we use for House cleanings and Decks. I just want more GPM's when doing the flat work and since I have pretty large surface cleaners that are 2-30" and 1-27" the more gpm's will let these machines kick it up a notch. Now of course I will have to find out how much GPM's my Big Guy 30",Pressure teck Bad Boy 30" and my Hydrotek 27" can handle.

I had very little experience before I started back in 96. I did my house, my parents and my sisters houses before I started to go out and make a few bucks doing this. I pretty much learned as I went. Today you are light years ahead of us guys because of these bb' and for some such as myself the PWNA Organization where thru these avenue's you can network with others with common goals.

Hey Tony, I believe you can pay for a one day pass for the Convention. If you go to www.pwna.org you can download the Online Registration. They should have all the prices broken down there. You can also call PWNA headquarters like Beth stated to get some more info. I'm taking the wood certification class Friday and Saturday so I only have a few hours in between to check out the trade show. Hopefully I'll see you there.

John Orr and others, It was a tough decision that we all agreed to make. We are taking a completely different direction and in doing so there are a few tough decisions that will have to be done along the way that won't please everyone. Along with some of my bb friends agreeing with this move some of my best BB friends such as Ron ********** disagree's with this move and that hasn't effected our friendship one bit. I really don't want to say much more because no matter what, my answers will draw some negativety from a few because of that famous line "You just can't please everyone" and I hate to see this post get Bad and I was to blame. Beth can answer any other questions that you and others may have here so this will be my only statement here concerning this thread. I will just add that alot of people are excited about the direction we have taken and I am optimistic of what the end results will be. And no I don't consider us an elitist group. IF we where I wouldn't be volunteering for anything because I would be getting paid.

Here's a beautiful Ford pickup truck that I was eying on Ebay. It was just to beautiful to use in this business. http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4525335036&rd=1

I'll take the Ford,Chevy or Dodge. I would even take the Frieght liner if I could justify it. For Now My wife drives a Chevy Tahoo, I drive a GMC Yukon and for business I have the Ford Van Gasser and the Diesel Ford F-350 bucket truck(I love this truck). WHo knows what type Vehicle I'll purchase in the future but there are so many great trucks out there the choices are unbelievable. I do know that my Buick eats Fords for lunch. :)

Ken, I've been in contact with Tom Vogel who has a Powerwashing Vendor business in PA and he is very excited about hosting or helping with a roundtable in your home state. He is well known and well like thruout the industry. Just a few weeks ago I was tallking with this guy that works for the Cleaner Times magazine about the Roundtable that I'm hosting and I mentioned Tom Vogel's name to him and he also said he knows him and what a nice guy. If you want go to PWNA's home page at www.pwna.org and look up the Powerwashers in your home state. You will see Tom Vogels number there. Give him a call...you will like him right away. A real sweet natured guy..............

Nice pictures. I think Jax did a great job also. I have only 2 questions--Whats up with the jackets was it that cold there and How did you get a picture of my yacht(I wish)

Mcnabb blew the game. The problem that the Eagles had was that they needed Mcnabb to be at his very best to beat the best and maybe because of the Patriots rock solid defense Mcnabb was forced into mistakes and critical ones they were. Besides the score here is a HUGE stat for the game which can predict the outcome. McNabb 3 int's and Brady 0!!! End result--Patriots are a Dynasty and Brady is an instant Hall of Famer at the very least and he's heading into the direction as one of the alltime greats..He has the alltime best playoff record 9-0, 3 Super Bowls, 2 Super Bowl MWP's, etc. etc. etc. and he's only 27!!! AMAZING. Oh yea I rooted for the Eagles...No wonder why they lost:)

I am starting to get use to this new look and to be honest I am just to Lazy to change the colors here...How lazy is that :) As long as I can read the post OK then I have no problems with any changes.. Just a quick thought I would look for the colors that you want to represent this site/ business. Like they do with sport teams so when You see the colors you pretty much have an idea who they represent. Example's-"The purple people eaters" represented the Purple Minn Vikings in NFL football, Gang Green here represents the NY Jets, The Famous White and black pinstripes represent the NY Yankees, etc. etc. Its almost like a logo where people remember it. Has anyone noticed on the Cleaner Network bb that Steve has changed his board colors to Hooters Orange. Steve is one smart dude as is Beth is one smart dudette(Can't find that word in my spellcheck but it means Beth :) )