The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Tool Chest Pressure washer question

I've got a really nice engine driven pressure washer, but it only pumps cold water from a garden hose. Has anyone ever used heated water in one of those units? What I have in mind is a couple of 55 gallon drums with a fire pit underneath, and a small low pressure boost pump to supply the heated water to the pressure washer. I can mix cleaning solutions, detergents, etc. into the pressurized water. Comments, suggestion, horse laughs, Bronx cheers, etc.?
Jerry

As long as the water is not hot enough to damage seals it should work great.

If you have a laundry sink with a spout threaded for a garden hose, just hook up to that and turn on the hot water valve. You could use the drain valve on the water heater, but since that would be on the bottom, you'd get cold water pretty quickly.

Does your pressure washer have a suction tube? Just stick that in a jug of detergent.

Mine doesn't real hot water from the garage slop sink, I had to replace the pump due to the pump plungers deforming. Honda engine, generic pump

You might get away with warm water, but hot water will damage the pump.

A laundry sink connection could regulate the temp from cold to warm to hot.

I've had pretty good performance with cold water and detergent in an electric pressure washer.

Why waste all that LP gas and electricity to heat and pump the water when I've got 100 acres that grow firewood and a big shop roof to catch rainwater runoff? The pressure washer has a detergent injector that can be metered to mix the right amount of cleaning chemicals into the pressure stream. Also, there aren't any tree huggers in the neighborhood to gripe about a little wood smoke, or the waste oil burning Franklin stove full of cast iron that I use to heat the shop!
Jerry

Jerry ... Why? Sounds like a project in search of an issue. I'm with Kevin -- What does the water being hot do for you that would make all that effort worthwhile? High pressure water hitting crud and gunk that's been loosened by some grease cutter seems to have done the job for me in the past. Would the high pressure water being hot provide more than marginal gains in performance?

Just axin the questions needin' ta be axed ...

I think the hotter water will help soften the crusty greasy stuff. I do wonder how hot is too hot for the pump? If its engine driven - a heat exchanger of sorts to use the engines heat to heat the water would be pretty cool. Wind a copper pipe around the exhaust pipe...

I just cleaned up my transmission using Crud Cutter and in some places a wire brush. Started with a putty knife to scrape the big chunks off. No pressure washer right now as it's below zero outside and I don't have a drain in my garage.
I used the Crud Cutter with a pressure washer on my engine back when it was warmer and it worked just fine. Crud Cutter is a pretty awesome product.

I spent a lot of time using a kerosene-fired pressure washer that would either steam clean or power wash with hot water, depending on the thermostat setting the machine got. It did a far better job of cutting crud than the cold water machines do these days. Since the tree huggers started writing all sorts of regulations for cleaning detergents and methods, getting anything really clean has become a problem. I live out in the boondocks in sight of two county lines, so I pretty well do what I please, including using a box of Tide and a couple of cans of lye in a wood fired boiling tank for degreasing. Hot water power washing would just be one more tool in the box.
Jerry

I agree that the hot water would do a great job, when I worked in the meat industry, we use caustic soda flakes. Steam pressurized hot water and air pressure all out of the same silicone hose would cut any grease including the fat cells in your skin. I don't think your pressure washer will survive.

In another life, I used to repair/maintain hot pressure washers for a big rental company.
You won't need auxiliary pump if you if your heating barrel is elevated above the pump. Gravity will do the work. Believe it or not, pressure washers don't consume high volumes of water. One 55 gallon barrel should be enough for most jobs.
As far as the hot water killing your pump, it depends on what style of pump it is. Another consideration is the wand and the hose. Burnt hands and burst lines are no fun.
Nothing cleans a freshly machined block like a hot pressure washer. When you are done the block is dry already. You can watch the flash rust form within seconds.

Kevin, have you used full strength Purple Power degreaser? If so how does Crud Cutter compare?

RonR

We have two pressure washers, a high pressure one for parts/engine cleaning and a lower pressure (2500#) one for paint booth wash down. The road people have our water cut off a lot so we put two large saddle tanks from an over the road semi tractor in the bed of a 10 yard dump truck and filled one with warm soapy water and the other with rinse water. A 45psi air line was run to the top of the tanks and an outlet on the bottom to the pressure washer. Worked well with no pump damage which may be a result of the clean water rinse. The dump truck was for shrapnel protection since we didn't know if the aluminum tanks could take the air pressure. Warm soapy water definitely cleans better.
Jerry, I'd bet the steam/hot water machine was a "Hotsy" There were everywhere with most being done in by freezing weather and coil left undrained.

I have not tried Purple Power. Crud Cutter works well for me. It's spray on/wipe off, but I use a wire brush also on the really heavy buildup. I also use it in a small cup for degreasing fasteners. I may try it when I run out of Crud Cutter.

Back on the pressure washer topic: I've found that I have to throttle back on the water supply quite a bit to be able to suck the detergent into it. Too much pressure (we have 75+psi here at the house. If the hose valve is full open I don't get any detergent.
Evan, you probably only needed 5 psi or so on the air line to those fuel tanks. They aren't rated for very high pressure, so putting them in the dump truck was a good idea with that 45 psi. You're still with us, so they must have held that 45 psi OK.

I like asilverblazer's response. Extend the exhaust, make a high pressure coil around it AFTER the pump.

Unless the exhaust pipe is several feet long, and made of copper, I doubt if there would be enough heat transfer to even get the water warm. Maybe if I could find a copper alloy capable of handling the output pressure of the power washer, and silver solder several wraps of it to the exhaust pipe, I might get enough heat. It would probably be simpler to coil up several feet of 1/2" copper tubing and blow the output of a kerosene or diesel powered turbo heater over it once the water leaves the pressure washer.
Jerry

Encapsulation. You see a lot of that stuff with gold dredgers.