Natural Gas Pressure Washers

anyone ever coverted there machine to run off natural gas/propane? They say a 20lb cylinder is about the same as 5 gallons of fuel. I know all the schwans trucks run off natural gas. I looked into buying one of those a while back. Would be pretty kewl to run my machine, truck, and burner off one fuel source. The conversion kits for the small engines are actually pretty cheap

Well not running the engine off propane or natural gas we have a Landa VHP hot water machine that uses propane for the burner and it is very efficient and can run wide open for about 5 hrs on a 40 lb tank. Doing KEC work there are certian places where a diesel burner can not be used.

Propane won't work as well if you ever work at higher altitude. We have a truck that runs on it and the oils are extremely clean when we change the oil. Seen too many trucks on fire from propane burners screwing up that we won't ever go that route.

In FL the highest elevation is a fast food drive through and it's hardly above sea level... I've always considered it for KEC and the clean exhaust. We have propane generators. It's not the efficiency, but the fact that a propane tank can be stored for a VERY long time and the generator will fire up almost immediately.
To use it day to day...it's too hard to purchase after hours, even during the day sometimes.

what a great thread.. good job guys !
you're fast Russ. very fast.
..I visualized the Becket power burner Lp too.
I know what to do with these.

Availability for fuel should also be a factor in your fuel choice. If you have 24/7 access to propane or NG then go for it. I know I can get gas or diesel via a cardlock anytime of the day or week. Also consider when you want to power your truck with this you need a gas engine and typically in what we use them for gas gets 20-30% less fuel MPG's then a diesel.

I had propane burners awhile back and they run much cleaner then diesel. There are also much less parts to a propane burner.. In some of these parking garages we do I sometimes wish I still had those burners because they ran so clean.

The drawbacks is trying to find a propane place in the middle of the night if you need to fill up. We had a bunch of Kohl stores a few years ago that required us to travel the 4-5 states to service these stores and what a pain to try and find propane in the middle of the night. Also since I live and work in a cold region it was at times just about impossible to get those burners to fire when it was bone chilling weather outside. The propane lines seemed to freeze up which rendered the burner useless.

They burn cleaner but it wasn't worth it for us.

i think a burner running off kerosene burns as clean as propane plus produce more heat per unit than propane.

Nice thing is you don't have to carry fuel cans around with you. I have a 50 gallon propane tank for the burner and a 18 gallon gas tank for my Vanguard 18HP. I can run a full 14 or 15 hour day or night and not have to worry about refueling anything. I can normally get about 30 - 35 total hours out of my 50 gallon propane though for the burner.