High Pressure Water Cleaner
- Thread starter Lauren
- Start date
I bought a Karcher too last year. A K3.99 which came with a deck cleaner. Got it at Wallaces in Wellingtonbridge for €245 - I think that was a special offer. It's excellent - powerful enough, nice and solid with great accessories for different uses. Can't fault it at all and I'm glad we weren't tempted to buy a cheap one.
Just a few words of caution.
I bought a Power Devil in Argos a few years back. I power washed the paths around the house a concrete driveway and the cappings on the wall and pillars. Took the best part of a day - and I thought it looked great until I had a closer look. The power washer tends to lift the top layer of the concrete paths exposing the aggregate in the mix just below the once floated smooth surface and the mould came back in a year - just worse than ever now as there were plenty of nooks and crannies.
A friend told me later that he'd never use a power washer on concrete and that he uses a dilute bleach mix (Lidl sells 5 litres for a few euro) and this removes the mould without damaging the concrete.
Oh and be careful with your car also. Power washers can damage colour coded bumpers & electronic components in the engine bay.
I bought a Power Devil in Argos a few years back. I power washed the paths around the house a concrete driveway and the cappings on the wall and pillars. Took the best part of a day - and I thought it looked great until I had a closer look. The power washer tends to lift the top layer of the concrete paths exposing the aggregate in the mix just below the once floated smooth surface and the mould came back in a year - just worse than ever now as there were plenty of nooks and crannies.
A friend told me later that he'd never use a power washer on concrete and that he uses a dilute bleach mix (Lidl sells 5 litres for a few euro) and this removes the mould without damaging the concrete.
Oh and be careful with your car also. Power washers can damage colour coded bumpers & electronic components in the engine bay.
I bought a Karcher 1010KB for around €100 in Woodies a while ago.
It's portable but has plenty of power as well. I live in a 3 bed semi and I use it to clean the driveway, path around the house and decking area at the back with no bother. Because it's one of the smaller ones it took a full day to do this but the difference between my driveway and the neigbours is something else. White v Black kind of job!
You can also use it to wash the car and windows no bother as the pressure isn't too strong to knock off paint, unless you're 2mm from the car or course!!!
If you had a more powerful one I could probably have done the driveway etc. in less time but then I couldn't have used it to clean the car or windows so it's a bit of a swings and roundabouts scenario.
As you'll probably only do the drive and deck once or twice a year and the car many many more times then for me it was the right choice.
If you have a large decking area and drive though maybe it would be better to get a more powerful one. As always only you can decide!
It's portable but has plenty of power as well. I live in a 3 bed semi and I use it to clean the driveway, path around the house and decking area at the back with no bother. Because it's one of the smaller ones it took a full day to do this but the difference between my driveway and the neigbours is something else. White v Black kind of job!
You can also use it to wash the car and windows no bother as the pressure isn't too strong to knock off paint, unless you're 2mm from the car or course!!!
If you had a more powerful one I could probably have done the driveway etc. in less time but then I couldn't have used it to clean the car or windows so it's a bit of a swings and roundabouts scenario.
As you'll probably only do the drive and deck once or twice a year and the car many many more times then for me it was the right choice.
If you have a large decking area and drive though maybe it would be better to get a more powerful one. As always only you can decide!
I wouldn't use a power washer to clean decks- it's just too abrasive and would actually damage the wood fibres I believe. For this I used a standard deck cleaner (brushed on with old sweeping brush) which worked very well on a grubby deck I must say. I wouldn't use a power washer on tarmac either (breaks up the surface with excessive use) and don't use it on concrete either. Power washers are good for cleaning down external areas prior to painting, cleaning garden furniture and equipment, cleaning the underbody of your car, that type of thing. I bought one thinking it was going to be an all round cleaning tool but I was soon aware that it's a little too aggressive for a lot of jobs. Just my thoughts on it.
Whatever method you use is going to need to be pretty abrasive anyway in order to remove that paint/ "preserver" from your deck so I wouldn't worry about it. You situation is a one off; I'm just saying that I wouldn't think it's a great idea to be using one regularly to clean a deck or any other timber construction. In short, yes I would use a power washer for your application.
I would be talking about using a power washer once a year to clean the decking before re-staining-would the same advice apply?
Hi CCOVICH,
One thing you need to be careful of is the brickwork and to make sure not to remove the silca sand. Some of these threads might give advice also.
We bought a cheapie RAC pressure cleaner from Argos a few years ago and it is 1800 watt and did a fine job on the cobblelock. It needs to be done again now so if you have a few spare hours to practice feel free to contact us
Its a boring, wellington boot job.BTW from Argos looks good value. As usual it does not show up on the crap .ie site. The € price is 211.99. There is an explanation of washers on page 1050 of the current Argos catalogue which is helpful.
Thanks suellen. Got a smaller Karcher in Argos for €89.99. Works good, except for the detergent......
And I have enough to occupy me here without doing favours I'm afraid
Well does it do the job?