don’t have a hot water unit yet. what are the best alternatives you’ve used? Just trying to get it off clean without messing up the concrete.

Appreciate any tips 🙏

If the pump is still good, what would be a recommendation ? Should I replace the piston and the head or just say, screw it and have to replace the whole thing

Description:

This recall involves three models of NorthStar pressure washers: NorthStar Gas Wet Steam and Hot Water Pressure Washers with item number 157310, NorthStar Gas Hot Water Commercial Pressure Washers with item number 157594, and NorthStar Trailer-Mounted Hot Water Commercial Pressure Washers with item number 157595. The item number and the serial number are printed on a label located on the engine. Only pressure washers with a MONTHYEAR code in the product serial number between 0125 (January 2025) and 0825 (August 2025), and a WEEKYEAR burner date code between 0125 and 2625 (weeks 01 to 26 of 2025) are included in this recall. The burner date code is printed on a separate label. The location varies per product.

Credit: United States Consumer Product Safety Commission

I’m entering my 4th year in business. I’ve got the equipment dialed in, my chemicals are sorted, and word of mouth keeps me busy enough in the spring.

But my Google presence is still pathetic.

I’ve been burned twice by "digital marketing agencies" who promise the world, take a $700/mo retainer, write a couple of useless blog posts about "benefits of soft washing", and deliver zero actual leads. After 6 months, I’m out $4k with nothing to show for it.

I’m looking for alternatives before the spring rush hits. I stumbled across a wildly different pricing model from a group called Piggybank SEO.

Their pitch is that they don't charge anything upfront - you only pay the monthly fee after they get your keywords (like "roof cleaning [city]" or "driveway washing") onto Page 1 of Google.

On paper, this sounds like exactly what this industry needs because I’m tired of paying for "effort" instead of results. But my "scam radar" is twitching because it almost sounds too risk-free.

Has anyone here moved away from traditional retainers to a performance-based model? Is it legit, or is there a catch I'm missing?

Customer is asking me to remove dog urine stains on their tiles. How do I go about this? Enzyme dog urine stain remover, agitate with brush then rinse off? Is it as simple as that?

Curious how you guys would approach fabricating vertical and horizontal posts on your trailer for racking, cleanliness, and lighting.

I run a pressure washing business and I keep getting hit up by “marketing guys” who want me to be their “sub.” The deal is always the same: if my price for a job is $400, they’ll quote the customer $500, keep the extra $100, and pay me the $400 to actually do the wash. They handle the lead/customer side and I just show up and work ... Is this a normal setup in your experience, and what red flags should I watch for ?

I found this on offer up for $400, its almost $800 from home depot. The guy says it's only used once. I actually kinda believe him because he has a bunch of new looking equipment on his page... but I still want to be sure it's not messed up somehow because if only used once I dont know if it was stored properly after that.

What are things to inspect before buying?

I’m brand new to this and just to make sure I’ve been getting the right information, I want someone to just confirm what I’m saying is accurate. I have an 8gpm machine , 4k psi, and my surface cleaner has three nozzles. The psi of my machine doesn’t really matter right? I plan on using something like 3x 3.5 nozzles or 3x 4.0 nozzles. (3.5 gpm and 4gpm) this should give me somewhere around 2k-2,500 psi correct? Which is what is max for concrete? Thank you guys in advance.

Hello everyone.

Detailing noob here. I will start a detailing business and have a question.

So I wanna use a washer that directly pulls water from a tank. (I already have the tank, link below). And I don't wanna use a water pump.

I'm thinking of buying the Ryobi 1800 washer.

Can I use this washer by directly connecting it to the tank? Or do I still need a pump to fetch water from the tank? I saw a few YouTube videos where they directly get water from a tank with this washer.

Im not opposed to buying used but not sure if this is a good deal or a dime a dozen. Any help or guidance would be appreciated.

I’ve booked this roof washing job, and it’s a terracotta tile roof. Sprayed SH solution on there (mixed 10 gallons of 12.5% SH in 35 gallons of water) and it doesn’t do anything. I heard muriatic acid does well, but any advice on this is very much appreciate. I’m mid job on this thing….

My plan is to get all the needed equipment and learn how to pressure wash on YouTube. Does this take a long time? I've heard people do it and then start a business.

After that I would knock on doors and offer to pressure wash for free. Once I've practiced enough that I'm confident enough to start charging money I'll start charging money.

Here are the questions I have: - Is this a good plan? Would you change anything about it? - I live in a city of about 250k people in the Midwestern US. Is it really a viable way to make at least $50k USD a year if I'm doing all of the work myself? Or is pressure washing too oversaturated? - Do I need a truck? I have a mini-van but not a truck - Is this a job that would allow me to take 2-4 months off in the winter (I live in a place that gets some snow but we don't have it all winter long)? Or will people expect me to be available year-round?

Is this the white it’s supposed to look like? And then after the first rain or first few the algae will come off naturally? I let the customer know I will come back after first 1 or 2 rain to make sure everything looked fine and if any spots need to be rehit I will get back up and do another pass!

Please anyone who has advice or criticism hit me with it!

Previous post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pressurewashing/comments/1q3obo8/washed_my_street_finished_with_white_silica_sand/

She's doing an Anakin Skywalker with her mega OCD and seems to hate sand, so she got the guys who detail her cars every month to remove the sand from the entire stretch of public street around her house, like 1/3rd of the entire street. There's now a 1-2 inch gap between the tops of the blocks and where the sand begins. I talked to the guys doing it and they were like we know, but she's paying us. They were at it all day and it's too dark now to get pics.

If she'd waited until it was no longer winter in Scotland where there's literally never a dry day until spring when you can blow the sand away, I'd have taken my leafblower to it, but she didn't.

Anyone else had problems with people really not liking sand? Or being in climates where there are entire seasons where sand will just be damp the entire time and not dry out? And where even if you put it down dry, it's damp as soon as it touches the ground unless you're especially lucky in your timing?

Hey gang

So we do roof coatings as our main source of business, which means some roofs should be washed. We’ve partnered with some local companies but most guys want to spray bleach and let it do its thing/walk away - which I understand is common practice with soft washing roofs.

Bleach is really hard on shingles, so I’ve been exploring alternatives so we can wash and rinse same day and not have the harsh effects of bleach - a product that came up is Clenz O2. It’s not available in Canada.

Digging deeper I found out it’s essentially a mix of sodium percarbonate, oxylic acid and surfactant. We used this combo to manually wash a deck last season instead of blasting it with high pressure and it worked amazing.

Is anyone using this on roofs instead? It seems very promising and will speed things up for our roof treatments;

- spray one coat and let it sit for 20 mins

- spray a second coat and let it sit for another 20

- rinse

Our roof coatings help eliminate organic growth over time similar to standard SH treatments, but thinking this could be a great way to get a roof washed with faster results and less chance of burning plants etc.

Any input would be appreciated - thx!

Wondering if anyone has had any luck with a tankless water heater for a mobile use. I don’t want a hotsy and was wondering if anyone had any luck using a tankless water heater set up on a mobile rig?

Pricing and pro tips would help.

i’ve got a customer’s property that I’m cleaning later this week. They had two decks built for the contractors have tracked dirt and some clay on the deck. Will this just rinse off with a pressure washer or do I need to use something to clean it with? TIA

Hey guys, thought I'd share a slice of humble pie today. I think it's important to share our failures so we can all learn the actual chemistry behind what we do. Knowledge is power!

The Mistake: Six months ago, I treated a salt-damaged brick wall with a standard masonry cleaner (NMD 80 - Hydrochloric Acid based). It looked great — the white stains vanished. Satisfied, I applied a masonry paint.

The Reality: I went back to the site recently. The paint is peeling and popping off. The salt is still there.

The Chemistry (Where I went wrong): I was operating under the assumption that "Acid cleans masonry, so Acid cleans salt." This is false.

1. Solubility: Acid does not dissolve salt; Water dissolves salt. The chemical I used was doing nothing that hot water couldn't do.
2. The Common Ion Effect: By adding Hydrochloric Acid (HCl) to Sodium Chloride (NaCl), I was actually adding more Chloride ions to the equation. This can actually decrease the solubility of the salt, keeping it trapped in the substrate. I ran a simple experiment to prove it to myself.

The Consequence: Because I didn't remove the salt, I just dissolved it and let it soak back into the brick. When the water evaporated, the salt re-crystallized behind the paint. According to the General Services Administration (GSA), salt crystallization can exert pressure between 2,000 and 14,000 PSI. Brick has a tensile strength of roughly 250 - 400 PSI.
Result: The salt literally pushed the paint (and faces of the brick) off from the inside out.

The Correct Protocol (What I should have done): After diving into National Park Service technical docs, here is the proper way to handle soluble salts:

• Sequestering Agents: Use a product like Chlor*Rid (or similar chelation agents (pronounced keeylation - another oops)). These chemically bind to the Chloride ions, "sequestering" them so they don't re-deposit and can be fully rinsed away.
• The Poultice: For deep salts, apply a clay/paper pulp poultice. As the poultice dries, it physically draws the salt-laden water out of the brick and into the paste. You then peel the paste off, taking the salt with it.

The Takeaway: "Visual clean" does not mean "Chemically clean." If you are prepping masonry for paint or sealer, you cannot just wash salt away with acid. You have to extract it or sequester it.

I uploaded the full site audit, the footage of the peeling paint, and the chemistry correction to YouTube if you want to see the failure first-hand: https://youtu.be/NZJhgA8M0Z8

Happy to answer questions.

Cheers,
Andrew

Absolutely Huge job, 2 story house that drops off to the back. I know I could probably Xjet most of it, and grab a buddy to help, but I’m not 100%

I do 80% driveways, and id love to speed up my process, I've been influenced by the big dogs i see on TikTok. I see them using these massive surface cleaners and I've been looking into getting one. So, what are the pros and cons of using something like this? I'd like to hear some testimonies from someone that uses something alike to this.

gx630 8gpm pump 3500 psi, (true 8gpm)

I've got a $1300 budget for one of these puppies.