I waited way tooooooooooo long

Mark 8262

Residential and Commercial Pressure Washing Specia
I started my business in 2005 with a 4 gpm 4000 psi home depot cold water machine and soon added a 4 gpm 4000 psi hot water machine. Soon we upgraded to 5.6 gpm 3500 psi hot water machines and thought that we would never need more than that. Well last month we built a new rig, One 7.5 gpm 3500 psi hot water, One 10gpm 3000 psi cold water and air compressor with roof cleaning set up.

For those of you who are about to purchase or build new equipment you should really consider the larger volume machines. 5.6 gpm will get the job done but 7,8,9,10 gpm machines will increase your productivity more than you can imagine. I never thought the increased water volume would make that much difference, but BOY WAS I WRONG. You can wash and rinse a house or building so much faster and you can push your surface cleaners much faster. Like most of you I do some residential and some commercial and stay pretty busy year round since we live in the south. With this new rig we can probably do an extra job each day in the same amount of time.

If possible....bite the bullet and spend the extra money or wait a little longer until you saved enough. You will not be disappointed
 
Agree on vertical cleaning, just is simple physics more volume faster washing on vertical surfaces.

I still like lower volume 6 gpm 3500 for interior and most horizontal surfaces.

If I'm washing sidewalks in regular Maint larger volumes of water can make more work rinsing rather than easy evap a few feet off walk. Plus water supply never has restrictions. Sometimes taking waiting time or additional washing it's not always about physics. Cleaning units are scientific proof, job assessment will define some of those variables and play with the science.


I agree larger will clean faster in most circumstances.




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Water evaporation is something that most people don't have a big problem with, only people in the hot dry climates.
It is interesting how different pressure washing can be based on the area of the country you live in.

Evaporation is an issue for you but mold and algae play virtually no part in your business (I think) Without mold and algae
we would have no business. In the south mold and algae growth drives our business.
 
Water evaporation is something that most people don't have a big problem with, only people in the hot dry climates.
It is interesting how different pressure washing can be based on the area of the country you live in.

Evaporation is an issue for you but mold and algae play virtually no part in your business (I think) Without mold and algae
we would have no business. In the south mold and algae growth drives our business.

I think residential wise that's likely true.

Commercial pressure cleaning is growing everywhere. Can't be stopped by anyone it's a needed service by business to maintain there investment.

Water volume would matter on a pier next to a marina or near a pond of coy.

I won't go into any interior with 8 gpm , just to much and creates more hassle. I can run inside with six. Prefer 4 inside

Now inside a large garage doing walls and ceiling if interceptors are built in I would run larger. If I have to capture no chance.

Big is better but not always


Oct event San Diego free free text me for more details !!
 
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Agree on vertical cleaning, just is simple physics more volume faster washing on vertical surfaces.

I still like lower volume 6 gpm 3500 for interior and most horizontal surfaces.

If I'm washing sidewalks in regular Maint larger volumes of water can make more work rinsing rather than easy evap a few feet off walk. Plus water supply never has restrictions. Sometimes taking waiting time or additional washing it's not always about physics. Cleaning units are scientific proof, job assessment will define some of those variables and play with the science.


I agree larger will clean faster in most circumstances.




Oct event San Diego free free text me for more details !!

Ron did you stay at a holiday inn express last night?
 
So which would you choose:

8.6 gpm @ 3500 psi or 10 gpm @ 3000 psi??

My concern with any much larger than my 8gpm would be water supply. At least in my area. Typical residential water faucets many times struggle to keep up with my flow. Strange how there can be so much variance between houses. 1/4 can't keep up 1/2 stay about even and less than 1/4 actually really fill up my tank faster than I pump.
 
We have a 100 gallon tank on our water dragon skid from powerwashstore.com in the bed of the pick up. We have never ran dry (8gpm) on a residential job, and in fact never even got close. As Pat mentioned, water supply differs by area too.
 
Haven't had any issues with the water supply so far. I'm sure it will happen at some point. We always hook up to the water as soon as we stop so we can get a head start. We have many jobs that we can run both machines and fill up the tank at the same time.
 
Down here the water supply varies from job to job, house to house as some houses have older galvanized piping where the minerals clog it down so where you have a 1" line to the house from the meter, you can now have the inside as small as a pencil because of blockage. This is what was happening in my house when I bought it so we changed out all pipes to pvc and never a problem since but most houses out there have not changed as this is expensive to do but most newer houses are all pvc so not many issues on the newer houses.

Commercial properties have those vacuum breakers and most are not working, some have hardly any flow coming out of them (brand new) and the owners don't know about them as they don't use those faucets hardly ever so when you use them, sometimes it is the first time it is used and they are wondering why it does not work when it is still new.

Never assume you will have good flow, I have experienced this when working in lots of small towns by where I live and other cities and towns like Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Texas City, La Marque, etc.....You don't know what you have until you turn on the faucet.
 
Every third or fourth job we do has some water issues. Running 11.2 gpm will do that (two 5.6 gpm units). For me to add an 8 gpm as planned to replace a 5.6 gpm, will up my usage to 13.6 gpm and I will expect even more issues despite having a 325 gallon tank. Water supply is weak on many houses, especially the older ones and I live in our country's oldest city!
 
Running 8 GPM is never a problem for me. If I hook up to a water supply with my tank half empty, and start washing, the tank stays at about the same level. I could probably use 10 GPM on my 200 gallon tank and wash for about an hour and a half before I needed to refill the tank.

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If you have the water supply 10 gpm is nice we just went to 10 gpm earlier this year and it definitely drains the 525 tank(thinking about putting 750 gal tank on truck). We run almost exclusively off of hydrants and can still empty the tank when we run both machines full throttle. 10 gpm certainly makes a surface cleaner fly we run big guys and maximas mostly and we can do about 400 linear feet of sidewalk in about 15 minutes with one machine. When we run three 8 gpm we get about 20 minutes run time between fill ups. When we are doing any interior cleaning we don't run more than 5 gpm because it is easier to deal with less water if a hose was to blow.
 
Dave my goal is to maximize profit per job that means finishing the job in less time with less hassle. 18 gpm does that for me yesterday we did over 1400 linear feet of split rail fence two subdivision brick entry walls and four 8 ft brick monuments less than 700 gallons of water under 1 1/2 hour of run time. With a 5 gpm machine that would have been a couple day job. We use 3/8 hose all day only time you need 1/2 hose is when your trying to get every bit of psi out of your machine.
 
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