Hot water cleans , cold water sorta cleans. Has anyone tried using warm or hot water in a standard pressure washer. Not the steam jenny type, but just a 2500 psi machine from sears or tractor supply. What would be the max temp "tap" water than can be run thru one of these machines without a meltdown.
My cold water washer can withstand hot water from a household water heater. The washer is a Mi-T-M. I would consult the owner's manual for your particular washer before trying it, though.
I agree but the first thing to get lost is the manual. Does the hot water give you extra cleaning power?
davidd, the hot water makes a huge difference on grease and oil. Some of the aggressive detergents work pretty well with cold water, and the hot water just makes the process faster. For dirt, and general cleaning, I don't bother with hot water.
This past April I rented a "steam jenny" to clean my machine. The results were excellent. It now needs to be cleaned again prior to painting. So I also thinking about using my pressure washer with hot water. My pressure washer will only use detergent through a suction line on the pump of the washer and it is just plain worthless.I was considering hooking the input hose of the pressure washer to a barrel. That way I could add detergent to the barrel full of hot water. Then I would have high pressure detergent like a car wash. I was wondering if anyone has tried this.
You are going to want to be careful of using hot water in your Pressure Washers. I know the electric unit that our FD has uses the water to cool the pumps. they have burnt stuff out on it several times because they where using strait hot water with it and the machine over heated.
I have had several cold pressure washers. The suction line is a farce. I just mix my detergent into a small pumpup sprayer and prespray the area to be cleaned. This also lets it sit and work for a while. I , wanting to try the hot water on the input but am concerned about how hot can the water be. The gear pump is probably made of plastic or nylon. Letting it run with out delivery will cause the pump to heat up within a few minutes. Water heater thermostats can be set to any degree. My thought was to set it at just above hand warm or perhaps a little higher. Of course I could keep increasing the thermostat until meltdown occurrs and then back down a few degrees. ON the next pump. I believe the warmer water would really help on that black baked on oil and grease. But how hot is hot???
Well if your getting your supply water from your hot water heater, you should be fine i would think.