Gas Washers: why we use them

Gas Washers:

Why we have and use different ones

This is our third instalment in our series of power washers and why we use them. When exiting the field of hood and restaurant cleaning and moving in to the cleaning of concrete and store fronts, we need a certain type of pressure washer. While some of the units we own may look a bit dated they were state of the art washers at the time they were purchased. We keep all our equipment up and serviced, with new parts or components when it is needed and with regular oil changes. When the recession came upon us several years back, business started cutting back on anything that was not their biggest priority and the side-walk cleaning business started to dwindle a bit. We moved into the field of house washing. Part-time at first then full-time and that is where you'll find us today. The pressure washer need to wash houses was different form hood cleaning and commercial cleaning side-walk power washers we had. So we needed to update to different equipment. Three different types of cleaning we have three different pressure washers.

In "hood washing" we need a hot water unit and we need a pump that could also handle hot water from the boiler of the restaurant. These heated or hot water units heat water in a coiled up pipe that is heated by a burner running off of diesel fuel. Electric, propane and natural gas heating units are available also but diesel fuel or kerosene is what you will find in most mobile units. As the pressurized water is pushed through this coil of pipe it is heated by a large burner. The unit we have can also divert some of this heated water back into the system rerunning it again making the temperature rise even higher. Pumps that can handle this have what is called high temperature packings, this enables us to have hot water run through it, either our reheated water or hot water from the kitchen tap. We needed hot water the hotter the better in order to clean the grease and grime inside of the hoods, ducks and filters hot water was more important than pressure (psi) or gallons per minute (gpm) in this type of pressure washing or hood cleaning.

This is our Landa unit mounted in our service truck.

While moving into the field of concrete we need some heat to help remove the gum, oil stains, along with soda pop spills and other sticky items candy and such. We also needed to run the surface cleaner. Have more total cleaning units (tcu) to get the stains lifted off and deep ground in grime powered off was more important now. The concrete cleaner using 2 nozzles and having to spin it takes more water we talked about this in an earlier entry "attachments: surface cleaners and water brooms". So we needed heat and higher pressure and more gallons per minute we updated again to fit the needs. Updating allowed us to do a better job and also to work less while doing more. We talked earlier about the hows and whys of the pressure washer and in order to get more pressure and more gallons per minute we also need more power to run it. For concrete and over all cleaning we used the Landa (brand name) 3500 psi at 4.5 gallon 210 degree with a 18 hp gas driven engine. More water flow bigger motor better for cleaning concrete. We also had the Mi-T-M (brand name) with the same type pump, to save on kits having to stock repair parts for just one model. We also had the ability to change out pumps if needed. The Mi-T-M we had added the bigger vertical burner to get more hot water. It has 3500 psi at 4 gpm but only a 16 hp motor and the larger burner less water moving slower through the larger heating coil meant hotter water, better for grease cleaning. Both these units have their own 110 volt generator running off the motor also, making their own power to run the electric 110 volt burner and fan. This make them the best for mobile cleaning.

This is the Mi-T-M unit when we were changing over to the larger burner unit for more heat.

We can use these units to wash homes, we did and still do for certain jobs but soon found out that Ozarks topography was rough on us. Hills, drop-offs, the lay of the land and ledge rock played a big role in what we did next. We were running back and forth to start and stop the pressure washer, this wasted to much time. The set up and tear-down took more time. The hoses we need to do some jobs were getting longer and longer we have had over 400 feet of hose out on some jobs. Pulling a 400 foot steel-braided hose up and down hills is hard work and was also time consuming. Hoses and unions were always getting stuck in and on the rocks or hitting a coupler while moving it. Hoses will tangling up on vegetation sticks they some how seek out things to become entangled with. In order to soft wash or down-stream we had to start to carry a soap jug and the down-streaming equipment with us, if we reached around 200 ft of hose or it could not draw soap from the truck. It added more time trips back and forth to the truck just more work dragging all this around. We knew there had to be a better way but what could we do? If you guessed; get something different to use you are right. A new unit enters the stable of pressure washers along with new tools and equipment we purchased or built different attachments to use we have written different entries on the attachments, please look at the archives. 

Cleaned by Pete working out of our the service truck.

We looked at what we need to speed up and do a better job on house washing. What we need was a smaller mobile unit, on larger air tires to roll up and down hills and move to where we were washing the home or business. We knew we still wanted heat  for stubborn stains and to help the soap activation but did not need high temperatures. We could drop the power down some and a hose reel with about 100 ft of high pressure hose would be all we needed. A down-stream injector, a gas motor with a direct drive pump in a frame or dollie that was smaller than either of the skid units and most of all something that would last in one package was what was needed. We found a unit that met most of the needs: a commercial quality pressure washer with a 110 volt electric burner for heating the water when needed to 190 degrees tops more like 160 constant run, no onboard  generator saving weight, we'll have to use a powercord and plug it in to the house's electric to run the burner.  The power washer has a 15hp motor, 4000 psi @ 4 gpm direct drive pump. We set up a down-stream injector and coupled in a hose reel with 100 feet of high grade hoses which can bypass the heater and run directly off the pump, installed ball valves and quick connects for easy change over of guns and other equipment. It has a frame to protect the unit form roll overs and large air tires for ease of movement. With a few tweeks and redoing things for minor improvements we had a new unit for house washing, We can move this unit to where we need to clean and it has been very serviceable in this area of cleaning.

This show our little pick-up with our house cleaning unit we have added a hose reel since this picture speeding up set-up and pack-up time. If you look you can see another cold water unit the blue one on the silver-gray frame it also is on air tires we built this unit and the frame as well it is a 16 hp gas engine, with a 4000 psi at 4 gpm AR pump with a nickle head for long live.

I will have another instalment on more of the gas pressure washers we use, and discuss them and there uses. As you can see one pressure wash is not the best for all jobs we do. Different jobs require different washers. Do you need: heated water, more or less pressure, how many gallons per minute, mobility, a larger motor size, onboard 110 volt generators, and the over all physical size of the unit has to be thought about. Hey all power washers have good points and bad points some work better for this and others for that, while you can use one to fit many needs it just may not be as efficient. This is why it is hard to rent or buy a power washer to use around the house for all your cleaning needs. It is why we have all types of washer from small to large, hot water cold water or steam, high pressure to low pressure, more or less gallons per minute and skid units to mobile units even carry abouts, gas or electric, we'll have a machine that fits your need or job. We have talked about the total cleaning units of pressure washers here and in other entries, if you would like, you can see we're keeping up our total cleaning units no matter what unit we use (psi x gpm = tcu hot water is just a plus).