Tomdurbin
New member
I have been on this board quite a bit since I joined. I have read as people dicussed numerous topics. I have seen alot of advice given some good and some bad. I have to say the thing that scares me and completely blows my mind is the number of you guys building your own pressure washers. I understand that now a days you can kind of piece one together yourself. The thing is this is very dangerous. An injury from a pressure washer is the same as a gunshot wound when it comes to treatment. They are costly to have treated and very painful. Something alot of you might not know is the major pressure washing manufacturers have about 50 lawsuits going at any given time. These range from an employee that got something in his eye, to falling off scaffolding to actual equipment malfunction. Now here is were it gets interesting. If you as an employer or business take it upon yourself to build your washer then you are considered the manufacturer. If something as simple as a hose bursts and injuries a passerby or one of your employees then you are the only party to the lawsuit. You will be sued, you will definitely be found negligent. You see without a manufacturer to be named in the lawsuit you will foot 100% of all of the legal bills and hospital bills. Now if its an employee and you get lucky and he doesn't sue you then you will only have to worry about the comp carrier. They will want to know what happened. They could end up coming back and sueing you as a manufacturer to recover their costs. Your comp rates will definitely skyrocket. They will ask questions like is the equipment ul or csa certified. The next question will be is such equipment available. Now remember they never ask a question that they don't already know the answer. If it happens to be a passerby you will end wishing you had that hack machine from home depot. You all buy insurance to protect yourselves. Then when you make your own pressure washer saving a couple of hundred bucks or even a thousand you leave yourself exposed to liability. This is not a good idea. The funniest thing is you get to write this money off as a business investment. So really Uncle same pays the added costs anyway. Now I know the hate will spew because I sell equipment. But the fact of the matter is several pressure washing companies have already been sued and put out of business for this exact reason. Remeber when you buy a complete unit that is safety certified you will pay more but you are getting more bang for your buck. The manufacturer will have no choice but to provide legal representation. You are paying for their engineering, their manufacturing experience and most of all you are paying for their support. I don't care what you do its none of my business. However I would be remiss if I continued to read these posts and never said anything.