"Is Pressure Washing Really Just About Pressure, or Is there More to It?"

Most people assume that when it comes to pressure washing, the more ppi or pounds per square inch the machine can put on the surface the better. Its actually the flow rate that matters, the amount of water that can be put onto the surface in a given time,

When a customer tells me that they have a pressure washer but it seems to take them all day to clean there patio, and at the end of it, the results are not all that good, thats not the customer doing a bad job, thats because they have a machine thats only capable of pushing out around 7/ 8 liters a minute of water. When you think, the machines that we use are capable of 21 liters a minute, you can begin to see why the job gets done in a fraction of the time. You may have seen men working,cleaning drives or patios. They often have a wheely bin with them, there is a reason for this, they use the bins as a buffer tank. Buffer tanks are used because the volume of water coming out of the machine is greater than the amount of water coming out of the garden tap, so the bin needs filling up then the machine takes the water from the bin when it needs it.

Here is one of our machines, 21 Lpm, 200 bar

Of course, pressure does play a role in cleaning, and is particularly good at getting stuburn dirt off. So getting a good balance of flow rate and pressure is important.

So next time your in the local DIY store looking at pressure washers, ask yourself, is this going to do the job?!!