Two step cleaning is a fleet-washing method that puts an acidic presoak on a vehicle and then an alkaline soap straight on top of it, with no rinse in between, because the reaction where the two solutions meet on the panel is what releases the dirt. Two chemicals, one rinse, and no brush touches the
Cleaning a lawn mower is one job on one surface — the underside of the cutting deck — and nearly everything that goes wrong is water arriving somewhere else. The deck wants a soak and some agitation. The four things around it that cost money if they get wet are the wheel bearings, the deck
Cleaning awning fabric comes down to one question you can settle in about ten seconds — is it a woven acrylic canvas or a coated vinyl sheet — because bleach, pressure and whether you owe it a re-proofing afterwards all follow from the answer. Most people find that out in the wrong order. The awning
A generator for electric pressure washer duty has to be sized against the machine’s starting surge rather than its running watts, and the surge is around six times the running current — not the three times that gets repeated everywhere. That gap matters, because three is the figure people use to work out how much
Removing graffiti from masonry is a chemistry job with a low-pressure rinse at the end, and the reason is porosity: on a bare brick, block or stone wall the paint has already soaked below the surface, so there is nothing sitting on top for a jet of water to lift off. The tag took eleven
Pressure washing runoff rules almost never come from the federal government, and almost always come from your own municipality — which is why no page on the internet, this one included, can tell you what is permitted at your address. That sounds like a dodge. It is actually the finding, and it is the most
Removing chewing gum is a temperature job, not a pressure job, because gum base is not a stain and not a grease — it is synthetic rubber, and rubber absorbs a jet of water instead of releasing from it. Point a wand at a flattened grey disc and you can watch the problem happen. The
Boat hull cleaning is two unrelated jobs that happen to share a boat, and the thing that separates them is the waterline. Above it you are cleaning a pigmented resin skin twelve to twenty-two thousandths of an inch thick. Below it, on most boats that live in the water, you are cleaning a coat of
Cleaning trash cans properly means warm alkaline detergent, ten minutes of dwell and a long brush — because the film inside a bin is a bacterial biofilm anchored to the plastic, and a jet of water does not remove an anchored film so much as redistribute it, including onto you. That runs against the instinct
Cleaning a motorcycle is the one vehicle job where the manufacturer answers the question for you: Yamaha’s cleaning NOTICE puts high-pressure washers first on the list of things not to use, and names wheel bearings, brakes, transmission seals and electrical devices as what excessive water pressure deteriorates. Honda says the same thing in fewer words.
