Basic Pressure Washing tips for beginners

welcome to Adam DIY I'm Adam Hill in this video I've partnered again with Lowe's and we're gonna show you how to pressure wash your home now I know a lot of people have never used a pressure washer and don't have any idea about how they function or their features so I'm gonna show you a little bit about this one and help you understand how they work now this is a craftsman 2,800 psi gas-powered pressure washer came in a box I attached the handle put on the couple attachments and added the oil and that was basically it it's ready to go you can use fuel stabilizers if you're going to keep fuel in it I usually like to just let the gas tank we run dry and then I put it away and if you're picking out a pressure washer you're gonna want to get one that has a good engine this one has a Honda engine and that's what you want to see that's a great engine it's not going to give you any trouble this washer comes with four nozzle attachments the black one is used for soaps and detergents you don't use soaps or detergents with these these two are the ones are going to use most often this is the lighter pressure it's 2400 psi this one is a 15 degree angle with a 2600 psi and then this red one is the 2800 psi this is a needlepoint it's just gonna blast off things like gum or tar stuff you're having a hard time removing from hard surfaces like concrete and stuff like that okay so setting it up is really easy you have a spray gun here and these are use standard hoses and connections so if you know you need a longer hose you can run out and buy one or you need some different for replacement nozzles you can go buy them they're Universal one end into the pressure washer and the other end of the hose to connect the nozzle just select which one you want I'll take this one you're gonna pull that back insert it in and it pops up and it's locked in place the water is going to come just from your garden hose so you're gonna attach that right here this clear hose is for soaps and detergents you're going to put this end in a bucket of your solution it's gonna feed through here get introduced into the line and come out your sprayer starting it is very simple if you can do a lawnmower you can do this gas in there and you don't have to worry about mixing the well the oil just goes in that side separate flick this to on pull that out and turning that now introduces the fuel to the system and we're going to just give that a Yank and it's going to start right up bugs and dirt seem to be the huge mess I need to clean off my house all the cobwebs that build up over time and all the dirt you can clean with just water alone if you are going to use detergents and cleaners you want to let those soak in and I'll talk about how to use those in a minute when you start spraying you're gonna go from the top to the bottom reason why you go top to bottom is because that's the way the dirt falls if you go bottom up the dirt that falls from the top is gonna go back down to the bottom you have to wash it again the trigger doesn't control the amount of pressure that comes out the trigger is just on or off so if you need to decrease the pressure or increase it you're just gonna move your sprayer closer or further back generally I hold it maybe six inches to a foot away so with this I'm not using any cleaners or scrubbing just using water and it's coming out really clean so what if you need to clean a second-story with this setup I can maybe clean ten to twelve feet up easily any higher than that gets a little difficult you can use the red sprayer to reach higher spots but you really do need to get up on a ladder to clean that effectively you can buy extensions that'll help you reach further I've never used them I've just used a ladder it's worked fine for me but you can check those out if you do need them so what about cleaning windows what kind of results do you get that definitely makes it quicker and what I like is all the dirt that hides in the corners it's all gone especially down in the trough below it blasts it all out they look great so the front of the house is clean and I don't know if you can tell on camera if the paint looks very fresh and nice it before just had this kind of old feel to it but now everything looks brand new and clean so because pressure washers clean so well so quick and so efficiently you're gonna start using it on everything and I've used it on my garbage cans they clean out really well you do get blowback so it's gonna get you a bit wet so I'm ready to put the lawnmower away for the winter and I can get all that caked on grass cleaned out of the bottom work super well for that I use it to clean my car floor mats if you have a wood deck or porch you can see how much it's gonna clean that off now usually you want to use some sort of cleaner with it but you can see how much it's just gonna blast just with water alone and get it looking nice you don't want to use the super high-powered nozzles on soft woods even use it on the barbeque it would have been better with a little bit of a degreasing cleaner but just water is great vinyl fences clean really well with water alone but I do recommend using a cleaner letting it sit for a while I used it to clean my garage floor you can see the difference it's gonna make and now this is just water if I used a cleaner and a degreaser I could get the oil stains off I found the oil stains don't really come off that well without chemical help but you can't get all the dirt off and I used it to clean off the water stains you get from pots left on the concrete it doesn't do a great job with water alone but did a pretty good job nonetheless here's another thing that cleans up really well that black mold and mildew that you sometimes see on concrete water will take it right off so there's things I couldn't really get off well with a pressure washer at least this pressure one thing is these red chalk lines red is permanent and man this is tough to get off I've already tried getting it off with chemicals it's not coming off even with the pressure washer it did an okay job but it's a lot of work another is old paint this paints probably 11 years old now and it's not coming off fresh or new paint no problem comes off so while we're talking about pain pressure washers are awesome for prepping a house you get all the dirt and gunk off that you kind of don't see or don't notice and the paint's gonna have a nice surface to adhere to there are a couple things you can do that will totally ruin a pressure washer you want to make sure you avoid those the first one is to run it without any water hooked up the pump uses the water to cool down make sure you always have the water running before you start it the second thing you can do to ruin a pressure washer is to let it run idle without pulling the trigger again the water gets too hot and it can ruin the pump so pull the trigger at least every two minutes and that way cold water will come in and you won't ruin the pump now with this craftsman model they've solved that problem by adding a thermal relief valve so when the water gets too hot it's gonna let the water out and bring in cool water you don't have to worry about it however it's still good practice that if you're gonna let it run idle pull the trigger every once in while or shut it off and the third thing is if you're gonna leave your pressure washer in freezing temperatures and you have water left inside this pressure washer it's going to expand and destroy the parts so you want to make sure you read your manual and get all the water out learn how to properly care for that let me show you some of the cleaners they have here at Lowe's if you also need a longer hose or some nozzles you can pick those up too there they are so this is all concentrated makes about 11 gallons yeah this one's for house inciting concrete and driveway this one it's going to help dissolve grease what is this a deck infant vehicle and boat and just a general multi-purpose cleaner when you're using detergent I just use an empty container put my diluted mixture in you put the hose in and then just start spraying with the black nozzle as normal so some people want to know if this saves water versus a hose and definitely hunt percent yes the hose uses a ton of water and just blast it out at a low pressure this one uses a little bit of water and blasts it out at a high pressure and cleans much more efficiently than a garden hose with a sprayer nozzle alright well that's gonna do it for this video hopefully it's helped answer some questions you may have had about pressure washing and washing your house if you want to pick up one of these for yourself I'll leave the link in the video description it takes you right to Lowe's website you could buy it right there again this is the craftsman 2800 PSI gas-powered model and I thank you guys for your viewership and support and I will see you next time take care and have an awesome day you

Channel: AdamDIY

Views: 1,064,052

Keywords: Home repair, DIY, AdamDIY, how-to, pressure washer, pressure washer hose, pressure washer soap, pressure washer pump, pressure washer wand, gas pressure washer, pressure washer surface cleaner, how to pressure wash concrete, will pressure washing damage plants, how to pressure wash, pressure wash a house, Craftsman, Gas, 2800psi

Id: d9uulq_mj5U

Length: 9min 27sec (567 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 28 2018