New Pressure washer needed

[Gareth J]

I've got a kranzle 125 which is on the limit if 13a supply. It's been pretty good and dispite being ancient now is still better/ on a par with another one we've got which is a new nilfisk thing "Poseidon 150" springs to mind. Not of the same quality as the kranzle but much cheaper. Again, apparently on the limit of a 13a supply.

Even a little sack truck sized Honda engined thing will outperform those^ and everything on a 13a supply.

A compromise might be to get one that can take "hot" water. Some normal electric ones can handle up to 70C. Much more effective than cold water at shifting oily gunk

 

[tinman123]

Mainly mud and stuff but also oily stuff after a generous helping of old diesel has been applied.

what are you washing all that off ?

do you need the washer to be portable, or is it because you need to wheel it in and out of the shed when you want to use it in much the same place all the time?

 

[tinman123]

The yanmar diesel engines are a good unit, if I was building or buying an engine driven washer it would be my first choice of engine but make sure it has electric start, they are a pig to start manually. Onto that mount an interpump gearbox for all the reasons carbon said.
My choice of pump would be a interpump 15/200 with a suttner unloader valve. This is the pump used by 1000's of turkey & chicken farmers to clean out their houses between batches of fowl and it stands up very well to the abuse it gets. It's also the limit on what most mains supplies can feed, something you need to consider. There's no point in having a huge output pump if you have to keep stopping work to let the water supply catch up!

I'll take a photo later of the setup I have for my water supply tank.

As regards the Kew washers, it depends on which pump you have. They have one with 4 pistons radially driven and it's not a bad unit but service items like seals & valves are expensive. They also have a poor sealing system on the gearbox which allows water into the oil. Nearly every kew pump I saw had milky white oil, though the gearboxes rarely gave trouble.

ive had karcher hot washers here for about 20 yrs now, i have a hds 745 i think it is at the moment, they have worked well enough for me tbh, a few things gave trouble but that mostly was from an odd sharp frost on a night that i got caught un awares on.
ive never had any other brand to compare them to but in all id be happy enough with their performance.
the current one is about 7 yrs old now, the coil sprung a leak in it about a month ago, i pulled it out and lucky for me i got to it by only cutting the clamps on half a coil, i tigged it up and stuck it back in and its been working since, borrowed time but its a bit extra sure.
the pin hole was as if someone had drilled a hole in it, no corrosion just a hole.

if i had to change i dont know if id buy another karcher, id be happy to buy a different brand as long as it was better than one, i dont need steam, which this one is but i do need a diesel burning electric run single phase hot n cold washer.
what is out there thats better in your opinion?.

 

[Spark plug]

what are you washing all that off ?

do you need the washer to be portable, or is it because you need to wheel it in and out of the shed when you want to use it in much the same place all the time?

Tractor, dumper, Land Rover, trailers, stables etc,etc. It won't always be used in the same place, so needs to be reasonably portable, the hot washers are too big and heavy to stick in the back of the motor.

 

[knighty]

sorry, I was assuming just a single phase mahcine

 

[carbon]

Loads of different machines on the market and very difficult to compare between them. Some manufacturers quote max pressure instead of max operating pressure to make the choice more difficult. Really depends on your budget and how often you would use it.

 

[Turbo]

As I posted before, there's no point in buying a high flow pump unless you have the water pressure to feed it. It's like trying to run a die grinder off a small compressor - you will keep having to stop to let the compressor catch up. I have used both the 15 l/m and the 21 l/m interpumps to wash out sheds and while the 21 l/m pump does clean better you actually get more work done with the smaller pump because my water pressure is able to feed it.

That interpump washer I linked to earlier is 12 l/m at 100 bar (1500 psi). It has a 2.2 kw (3 hp) motor which is on it's limit on a 13a supply. It's probably the highest output you can have on a single phase washer. It's a nice compact unit with a built in detergent tank and small enough to go into the back of a landy. We sold hundreds of them with very few returns, hence why I bought it. Any returns were from pure abuse & not the washers fault.

Don't be fooled by salesmen quoting 2000psi from a single phase washer. All they are doing is putting the flow through a smaller hole, increasing the pressure but drastically decreasing the flow, meaning it will be slower at cleaning. Think of what happens when you put your finger over the end of a hose pipe, you get to a stage where you get a fine high pressure spray with no cleaning power. 12 l/m at 100 bar seems to be the best compromise and was used by most of the big names like karcher, kew and wap for their top of the range pumps until they got obsessed by higher pressure outputs.

Another trick used by salesmen is to put a sharp bend in the end of the wash lance which makes it kick more when you pull the trigger.

 

[Turbo]

Y

ive had karcher hot washers here for about 20 yrs now, i have a hds 745 i think it is at the moment, they have worked well enough for me tbh, a few things gave trouble but that mostly was from an odd sharp frost on a night that i got caught un awares on.
ive never had any other brand to compare them to but in all id be happy enough with their performance.
the current one is about 7 yrs old now, the coil sprung a leak in it about a month ago, i pulled it out and lucky for me i got to it by only cutting the clamps on half a coil, i tigged it up and stuck it back in and its been working since, borrowed time but its a bit extra sure.
the pin hole was as if someone had drilled a hole in it, no corrosion just a hole.

if i had to change i dont know if id buy another karcher, id be happy to buy a different brand as long as it was better than one, i dont need steam, which this one is but i do need a diesel burning electric run single phase hot n cold washer.
what is out there thats better in your opinion?.

You were lucky that you were able to get to the hole, 90% of the time they are inaccessible. I'd advise you to move it on before you end up having to fit a new coil. There's a company in England called Exchange Engineering that make spurious coils for washers, might be worth contacting them. I used to work for a Karcher dealer but we went out of them when they started getting too complicated and used cheaper quality components to try to compete with the stuff coming from the Italian market like Interpump. We sold Wap for a while but they were not as good and the parts prices were crazy. We then sold an Italian built hot washer called a Pulicar Cherry which was nice, simple easy to work at and the parts were cheap and easy to get. I left at that stage, over 20 years ago and they've ceased trading since. I'm not really up to date on current hot washers, but buy something simple if you can with an Interpump fitted.

There is a company in Omagh who might be worth a call, here's their site.

http://cleantec.biz/

They do a range of makes & they should be able to match your needs. I bought a turbo nozzle and a few other bits off them & they were keen & good to deal with.

 

[tinman123]

Tractor, dumper, Land Rover, trailers, stables etc,etc. It won't always be used in the same place, so needs to be reasonably portable, the hot washers are too big and heavy to stick in the back of the motor.

i see now.
i used to have a interpump cold 220v one here that was handy in size but i never used it much so gave it to the brother.
i set up my hot n cold in one place and use it nearly every day for something.
the biggest advantage of it is with one throw of a switch its ready to go altho i dont be moving it about, i bring everything to it bar sheds of course but i have a long hose on it so it reaches far enough.
the next washer here ill probably be a 4,500 psi cold washer but id like one on an engine to save tying up a tractor when i need it.

or you could go all fancy and mount a washer on a cheap trailer and just hitch it up when you need to move it.

 

[tinman123]

Y


You were lucky that you were able to get to the hole, 90% of the time they are inaccessible. I'd advise you to move it on before you end up having to fit a new coil. There's a company in England called Exchange Engineering that make spurious coils for washers, might be worth contacting them. I used to work for a Karcher dealer but we went out of them when they started getting too complicated and used cheaper quality components to try to compete with the stuff coming from the Italian market like Interpump. We sold Wap for a while but they were not as good and the parts prices were crazy. We then sold an Italian built hot washer called a Pulicar Cherry which was nice, simple easy to work at and the parts were cheap and easy to get. I left at that stage, over 20 years ago and they've ceased trading since. I'm not really up to date on current hot washers, but buy something simple if you can with an Interpump fitted.

There is a company in Omagh who might be worth a call, here's their site.

http://cleantec.biz/

They do a range of makes & they should be able to match your needs. I bought a turbo nozzle and a few other bits off them & they were keen & good to deal with.

it was about a 5% chance that i could of got to the hole but luck was on my side that time.
im on borrowed time but every day is a bonus i guess altho as you say i should get shot of it now when its going right.

god knows if there was a fault to be found with it i would but so far even with the odd niggly failure on the karchers i have had i wouldnt be afraid to buy another one tbh but thats not saying im stuck to one brand, i like the quality end of things.

iirc this one here came from cleantec, i have a hds550 hot n cold and it came from them too.
kelly cleaning equipment would be a bit closer to me than oma but both crowds are good to deal with ive found.

 

[Spark plug]

Well finally after weeks of searching I've finally squired this:

It's an oldish machine but runs ok. It's probably a bit bigger than I needed but better than being too small.

 

[carbon]

Nice find, I'm not sure why Honda stopped making that engine as they seemed to start and run nicely.
One thing with that don't leave in running in bypass to long as the water doesn't return to the supply tank. Even though its not a hot machine the fact that the water circulates in the pump will generate heat in the water. It can either melt the valve cages or damaged the seals if left running in bypass for long enough or it can crack the pistons due to thermal shock when you pull the trigger again and have a lot of cold water enter the pump

 

[brightspark]

good pump and spares available. same as mine

 

[Spark plug]

Anyone have an idea on age?

 

[carbon]

Sometimes either the pump or gearbox will have a date stamped on them

 

[Spark plug]

Sometimes either the pump or gearbox will have a date stamped on them

Ile have a look arround tomorow.

 

[Spark plug]

Nice find, I'm not sure why Honda stopped making that engine as they seemed to start and run nicely.
One thing with that don't leave in running in bypass to long as the water doesn't return to the supply tank. Even though its not a hot machine the fact that the water circulates in the pump will generate heat in the water. It can either melt the valve cages or damaged the seals if left running in bypass for long enough or it can crack the pistons due to thermal shock when you pull the trigger again and have a lot of cold water enter the pump

what would you define as too long?

 

[carbon]

Usually I don't recommend any longer than about 5 minutes but I think the munfacturers say it's longer. I have seen a lot of trailer mounted units that return water to the tank that have damaged the pump but suspect that most of that is down to the operators

 

[Spark plug]

That's longer than I was expecting, I would imagine if I wasn't useing it for more than a cupple of mins I would turn it off.

Also is it correct what I've heard about running them dry for a few minutes when putting them away for the winter?

 

[brightspark]

That's longer than I was expecting, I would imagine if I wasn't useing it for more than a cupple of mins I would turn it off.

Also is it correct what I've heard about running them dry for a few minutes when putting them away for the winter?

I wouldn't do that . I fill my tank up and put antifreeze in and run it through