Neil

OK, I just checked the water flow rate at our house here in Seattle and my five gallon bucket filled up in 20 seconds. So, if most of Seattle is like that, I'm good with almost any unit I want to buy . But I know many do not flow that fast-probably because of clogged plumbing. I love it when I can know the facts so directly. :)

I don't really want to haul it up stairs. :) My hose is only fifty feet long so far. longer hose could be good :)

I guess the question is : is a heated pressure washer needed for cleaning siding and gutters? Probably not, right? I think a good cold unit as back up makes sense . Have you seen how large the heated skids are? They are huge. I am sort of in the same boat right now. Have you seen my thread? I'm currently considering buying a quality cold unit and I put up links to a couple of them that I found so far. Neil

I love the common sense idea of the five gallon bucket and a timer to check local flow rates. I need to do that soon and I will. But as far as I know, usually Seattle has really good flow rates at residents. But as a window washer that sometimes uses a Tucker pole for multi-story building window cleaning, I know that flow rates really can be bad here if the building is old. I was thinking about this today while I was earning money pressure washing :) ( I love this stuff BTW) One idea I'm liking is that I could just hold on to my current Karcher 4k @ 3.6 for times when I suspect the flow rate at the supply is slow and then if the flow is good, go ahead and use a 4k @ 5.5 machine. That way I just use the machine the water flow will allow and forget about using a buffer tank . I do like the idea of using a buffer tank for the flow rate reason and the bypass reason, but I like just having the ability to bring the PW up to the area I'm working a lot. Unless there is a portable buffer tank option I don't know about, I can't really see running this thing from my van attached to a buffer tank. Which begs the question- is there a portable buffer tank option? I guess you could mount one of these portables to a frame with wheels on it and then attach the buffer tank to that frame. But it wouldn't be all that portable by the time you did that. I can't see lugging that up stairs for example. And once it comes to the buffer tank thing, I assume these high end machines are all adaptable with the proper ports for such things on the pump somewhere. ( not having done that before :) ) Doug, what do you mean by "small buffer tank" ? How big are you talking? And I assume you are talking about your machine being mounted in your trailer or van or whatever you have? chow for now :) Neil

oops, just talked to another salesperson who told me I probably will need a buffer tank even with these "portable" machines. I was under the impression that a flow of 5.5 would be OK with regular city water spigots. She made the point that usually it probably would work ok but if it wasn't that good it could damage the machine. So, apparently I need a buffer tank with that much flow which mean I lean towards the skid mounted one I listed above. HMM :)

Thanks for the links Doug. That first link to the "portable" pressure washer has the lowest listed prices I've seen for a 4000 @ 5.5 machine- under $3K I have checked Northern for a PW in that same pressure and volume range but they don't have one. Too bad since their prices are pretty good. Good to know your Northern ended up being a good buy though. Neil

I found a couple of pressure washers that fit what I'm thinking would be a good fit for my Hammerhead surface cleaner. Both are cold water machines. One is portable listed on this page: Pro Max Pressure Washers. and the other a smaller size skid mount unit : PWMall-HDCV5540HG-4000PSI Gas Pressure Washer 5.5GPM GP, Honda GX630 E/S

Well, I went to a local Seattle Hydro Tek dealer today called Ben's Cleaner Sales, Inc. I learned a ton of little factoids about pressure washing equipment from the very friendly and non-pushy salesman named Jerry. I'm sure you guys take most of that stuff for granted after a while. Like I think it's sort of amazing that these little portable units put out so much pressure and fairly good volume almost comparable to the big commercial units that cost so much more. But we're talking about commercial machines that can run way more hours and get daily use and put out hot water. But I had been thinking in terms of possibly putting one of those commercial units in my van , ha! After I saw how huge they are I had major second thoughts on that idea. Plus my van probably wouldn't be big enough weight capacity wise or horsepower wise since it's only a 6 banger. Anyway, those big pressure washing machines just look like over kill to put in my van. Jerry did tell me they do put them in vans for guys. They work for about 8 hours installing them he told me and charge about 500 bucks to do it. It just seemed like if I would go that route , the thing to do would be to go buy a new-ish van with more horses and weight capacity or a Pick up truck actually, although, I like the van idea for the higher security as well as the ease of parking and street maneuvering. He told me sometimes these nice pressure washers do get stolen from trucks. On the trailer front, Jerry told me that Hydro Tek comes out with a sale every year on their trailers and he thought a trailer with water recovery and filtration included would end up costing around 10 grand which I think is a fantastic deal given that some of the systems on trailers cost two and a half times more than that. But these are cookie cutter deals. The buyer can not choose to switch to another PW skid for example. You take the deal as listed or not but get a great deal if that is what you wanted. Anyway, I thought that sort of thing might be a good entry level trailer for me. For now, the good news is that my little portable pressure washer putting out 4000 psi and 3.6 gpm was totally capable of driving my newly purchased Hammerhead 18 inch surface cleaner. I tried that on my driveway today. Just as I thought, I had to use it as a way to loosen the surface dirt and then follow up with a white tip on the wand to rinse off the dirt , but that worked well and , of course, was much faster than just using the wand. At any rate, I think for decks and normal non- oiled driveways and sidewalks around Seattle for the wealthy residential folks I work for, this sort of portable cold water pressure washer is looking like a quite functional answer. But I do wonder about the idea of finding a portable with higher flow rate at 4000 psi. As I said before, mine puts out 4k psi @ 3.6 .. I've been scanning the net searching for higher flow cold machines @ 4 k psi since this Hammerhead can handle up to a flow of 4 k psi @ 8 . So does anyone know of such a machine of good quality? Thanks for listening and thanks for the encouragement :) Neil Another

sure, this isn't the first forum I've ever joined. I know about searching. But if you are too new to something , you don't even know what to use as search terms. But thanks for providing those and for taking the time to write what you did. Neil

Thaniks for the link. I have a feeling I'll need to go with something like what they have there since I doubt I can afford a Landa.. Sometimes I wish they'd just list the price of things like that on the net ...sheesh. :) I imagine Landa tells it's distributors not to list prices on the net though. I'm not far enough into pressure washing to know what you mean by needing buffer tank to not have to run back to turn off the machine to let the chems dwell. Care to fill me in? Sorry, I'm fairly new to this. Neil

Please, anybody?

Russ, do you think you can sell cheaper to me in Seattle? I would think shipping would be the problem with these heavy pressure washers? Neil