Pressure washers

I am looking to buy a pressure washer having seen how much work they save at the end of a wet winter out on the hard. I intend to use it for cleaning the hull, decks as well as blasting the algae off the woodwork. How much power do I need to do the job?

100 bar at the sharp end is enough.

even the cheap ones at £50ish in B&Q. Just make sure you empty them completely at the end of the job, as I know of at least three that were left with water in the cylinder which then froze and split the cylinder. All too likely in the frosts of late April in England!!!!

The more you pay for a washer normally the greater the VOLUME OF WATER it will pump.They all seem to operate at a pressure of 100bar. In practise this means the cheaper on might clean say 5 square millimetres per second whilst one costing say £150 might clean say 25 sq. mm per second. I AM ONLY USEING THOSE FIGURES TO ILLUSTRATE MY POINT and do not know the actual figures involved. Hope this is of some use.

Go to B&Q and get a Kew washer if you pay about £100 you can get a reasonable one which will also spray waxes as well

Be carefull, when you first get one, I hired one from HSS, it was brilliant on the car and Patio, so i thought, lets try it on the boat, without a thought i steamed in, and before i knew it, I had removed a couple of chunks of Gellcoat. It was OK once i had turned the pressure down.

I find mine does a great job on the non slip areas but isn't so effective on smooth surfaces.

Its brings up your teak deks like new - but removes a hell of a lot of wood from the grain. - Given the cost of teak decks, stick to a soft brush - accross the grain.

I have a £99 Karcher job and it does the job well. There are more powerful jobs on the market and the petrol / diesel powered jobs generally greatest power and useful for where no power !

Go for it !

As a surveyor, my first thought is to question the gel-coat and its strength of bond to the hull. You should be able to exert water pressure to a considerable figure before removing gel. An ultrasonic scan should reveal any more voids, which it sounds as though you may have had .....

I was reading somewhere today that using a pressure washer on teak can remove the soft grain in the wood and leave it with ugly ridges.

What a lot of people do not realize is that the top end machines, with a goodly flow, will take off antifoul quite effectively, or particularly, the soft or self-eroding types. Saves scraping and w&d.

Don't use the pressure on woodwork as it raises the grain badly, and will cause plugs to pop out of teak decks, so I am informed.