One day last fall, I discovered an abandoned bird’s nest attached to our front porch. When I pulled out the garden hose in an attempt to spray it down, I discovered that our spray nozzle had broken. That afternoon I drove down to Home Depot to buy a new sprayer attachment ($5) and came home with a Ryobi Power Washer ($200).
Most of what I know about power washers I have learned since buying one. When I bought mine, all I knew was that they came in two varieties — electric and gasoline — and that Craigslist was full of used gasoline ones that said, “ran last year, won’t start, needs carburetor/spark plug/fuel flush/other work.” Based on that, I bought an electric one.
Power washers have two general metrics: gallons per minute (GPM), and pounds per square inch (PSI). All the electric ones I checked at Home Depot were 1.2 GPM, leaving the only real variables the amount of PSI, and the physical designs. Because I am who I am, I picked the highest electric PSI unit Home Depot had in stock, which was 2,000 PSI. I have since read that the average car wash wand is around 1,500 PSI, and there were several models to choose from at varying prices (1,500 PSI, 1,600 PSI, 1700 PSI, and so on) ranging from $100-$200. Would a smaller one have worked as well? I have no idea. I tend to overbuy when it comes to power tools.
(For what it’s worth, the gasoline-powered units started at 2.3 GPM and 3,000 PSI for around $300, so there is a pretty obvious gap between the electric and gas models.)
The power washer I bought came with three “quick change” tips, similar to those swappable adapters people use with air compressors. There’s a blue nozzle (for washing cars), a 15° orange nozzle (for serious power washing), and a black/spinning turbo nozzle (for taking out your aggression on things, like abandoned bird nests).
One obvious downside of owning an electric power washer is that it needs electricity. It also (like the gas ones) needs to be connected to a water hose. Both the power cord and the hose that goes to the wand are pretty long, so you should be able to reach the exterior walls of your house and all of your driveway with little effort.
So let’s not beat around the bush. After verifying that the bird’s nest was empty, I attached the super mamma jamma turbo nozzle to the wand, turned everything on, hit that nest with 2,000 PSI of water pressure and OOOH YEAH THAT MUDDER NESTER FLEW BABY! Again — would a $5 spray nozzle for our garden hose have cleaned up the nest? Maybe, but I’ll doubt it would have shot pieces 20′ into the air like this baby did.
While experimenting with the turbo nozzle I also blew paint off of one of Susan’s bird houses, and was able to blow leaves off of trees. So, yeah. The turbo nozzle has been retired. According to the manual, the turbo nozzle is only safe for cleaning concrete, brick, and masonry. I later shot the manual with the turbo nozzle and it destroyed it. UNLIMITED POWER!
Next up was the orange (15°) tip. According to the manual, it is also approved for concrete and such, plus siding, gutters, fencing, decks, patios, lawn equipment, boats, and RVs. For every one of those surfaces it says “USE WITH CAUTION” but does a guy who would buy a 2,000 PSI power washer to remove a bird’s nest sound like someone who uses caution?
The main thing I wanted to see was if the orange nozzle would remove oil stains from the driveway, and the answer is… kind of. The stains were definitely lighter after spraying, but still obviously there. But a bigger problem arises when you start spraying your driveway. First of all, every concrete area you spray becomes super clean and white — which means all the areas you don’t spray stand out and look dirty. And second, for the thing to clean concrete you have to hold the wand pretty close to the ground, which gives a spray area of about a quarter. So if you want your entire driveway to be the same color at this point, bring a sandwich because you’re going to be there for a while.
For what it’s worth, either of those adapters will blow the weeds that grow in the cracks on your sidewalk and driveway to the friggin’ moon. It’s like water dynamite. BOOM!
The Ryobi model I purchased has a separate plastic tank attached to the front for holding soap. It takes a special “pressure washer soap” that normally has to be diluted (20:1), but this specific power washer dilutes it for you. This works in conjunction with the third tip, the blue “car washing” nozzle. As advertised, you’re supposed to pour soap into the tank, spray the wand for a few seconds, attach the blue tip, spray down your entire vehicle with soapy water, turn off the power washer, empty the soap reservoir, fill it up with water, spray enough water until the tank is empty, reattach the orange nozzle, and then rinse off your car. I’m not saying it’s the world’s biggest hassle, but after doing it a couple of times you will miss the car-wash experience of simply rotating a switch to go from soap to rinse. Also, full disclosure, I’m a bit hesitant to rinse my car with the orange tip because I’ve seen it shoot the paint right off a piece of wood and I’m a little afraid of what it might do to my car’s paint. YMMV, and distance is key.
So, what else can you clean with a power washer? Well, let me tell you.
Several years ago, I bought a couple of cheap white Rubbermaid trash cans. They were so cheap that I decided not to use liners with them, and just throw them away when they got disgusting. Except I didn’t, and after they turned disgusting, I kept them. When we moved I stacked one gross can inside of the other gross can, and the grossness turned into some kind of gross glue that bonded them together. The inside of the exposed can was mostly black with hints of green. It’s gross.
Earlier this week, I pulled the cans and the power washer out. Using the orange tip (along with some goggles and the neck of my t-shirt pulled up over my nose and mouth), I sprayed out the trash can. The years of muck came off with ease, leaving behind white plastic and a murky goop sloshing around the bottom of the can. Every minute or two I dumped the primordial stew out into the yard and continued spraying. Within just a few minutes, the can was as white as the day I bought it.
I then came up with the genius idea of sticking the power washer’s wand down in between the two cans. My thinking was, the removal of some of the goop, combined with water pressure building up between the two layers, would force the two cans apart. It didn’t work, at least not at first. I had to inject water into the cans multiple times, and even then I had to grip the top can with pliers as Mason wrapped his arms around the bottom can. Eventually, the water trick worked, and the two cans came apart. Success!
Unfortunately during the process, I didn’t notice that the orange tip (the most useful and used tip of the three) had come loose from the wand. then, while holding the spray wand vertically, I pulled the trigger. Let’s just say, 2,000 PSI will launch a piece of plastic into outer space. We searched the yard for ten minutes and never found it.
Fortunately, a set of five replacement tips of varying spreads (0°, 15°, 25°, 40°, and 65°) can be found on Amazon for around $7. The tips arrived yesterday, and I’m looking forward to trying them out — especially that 0° one, which essentially shoots a straight beam of water so strong that I think it could be used to chop down a tree.
So, do you need a pressure washer in your life? Probably not. So far I have used mine to remove a bird’s nest, clean a couple of $5 trash cans, and remove paint from multiple things that I wasn’t supposed to remove paint from. As a cleaning tool I don’t know how much use it will get but as a mischief maker, I am getting my money’s worth out of it already.