100% electric pressure washing, flow and PSI question

1

So due to the gasoline prices in Europe, i want to work completely electric.
Now, the issue is that there aren’t really ‘decent’ powerful enough electric pressure washers.
Most only reach 3200 psi, and at best 4 GPM.
Now obviously, i want to have 4000 psi, and 8 GPM.

If i understand correctly, I could get 8 GPM by combining (in parallel) two pressure washers of 4 GPM, right? however, that would still leave me with 3200 psi instead of 4000 psi.

This leaves me with a few ideas however I am not really sure about whether i’m right and where i can find the right equipment or how this could work.

I have 2 ideas, in general (apart from the above).

1 - would it work to buy TWO pressure washer pumps that NORMALLY fit on a gasoline powered pressure washer (like a honda), of 4000 psi and 4 GPM, then find a ELECTRIC motor with a shaft that produces enough RPM/Torque to replace the gasoline motor.

I haven’t been able to find a 8GPM 4000 psi gasoline pressure washer either, can anybody point me in the right direction? There aren’t that many products here in Spain, and Amazon only provides me with maximum of like 4 GPM machines (and extremely expensive).

2 - i was thinking of a totally different thing. How is pressure really created in a pressure washer pump? I mean there are home application pumps that people can use to like empty their swimming pools, or use to pump house water to a higher level. These can be of extremely high flow and are really inexpensive. For example there are Gardena ones of like 26 GPM for less than 300 USD.
However, it’s just 5 bars of pressure, so that’s like 80 times too weak.
It might be interesting as a softwashing application, but it does not bring enough pressure.

So, my question really is, are there independent machines/pumps that ONLY pressurize water, and if they do, does that influence flow?

simply put, can I add a device AFTER that water pump, to put PRESSURE to the water?

thanks so much!

ALSO, i’ve seen a ‘Comet TWS 8035S’ (google search ended up a store from monterrey, mexico).
it’s a 8,3 GPM 3500 PSI pump, says 20hp, but i don’t see it with a motor attached. Will have to write them.

i also found a Hidrocomet MB10ET4000-CMT 10HP, it’s a 4000 PSI 5 GPM pump including a motor. again, don’t know pricing, would have to ask, but it’s in mexico so still a thing. would cost a fortune to get it here i think. either way, if i would combine two of those, would i then essentially have a 4000 psi 10 gpm pressure washing setup>?

i also wonder what the prices are for these products and how to calculate kWh and amps used.

2

We could comment ad nauseum but the bottom line, you can find all those answers yourself, or the ones that are even answerable, and come to the conclusion that maybe your location isn’t the right place to start a washing business. You could open a hamburger joint in Mumbai, but it probably wouldn’t do well.

3

what kind of answer is this.
i am in a place that works fantastic for pressure washing, what on earth are you talking about, you don’t even know where i am and how many clients i have, i’m simply stating switching to electric should save thousands of dollars, but electric machinery seems to be low in availability, and the max PSI in machinery i can buy ‘off the shelf’ is 3200 psi, and 4 GPM.

it seems i need to build my own ‘rig’, which is fine, but i simply want to understand the full mechanics.

in the end, it might turn out that the amount of kWh i need in total to power the equipment could render the running cost as the same as gasoline prices.

But even then, i could invest in Solar Panels and batteries to power the electric equipment and save money.

Right now, i’m at about 20-25 USD a day on gasoline use.
calculating about 200 working days, gets me between 4000 and 5000 USD on gasoline.

there are 3 to 4 GPM, 3200 psi electric power washers running about 3kwh, and would be tops 20 kwh a day for a single one, 40 kwh for a dual setup, which would set me back $ 3,60 or $ 7,20 a day, resulting in about 4000 USD of savings.
a $ 6,000 USD solar power & battery installation would mean I’d earn that setup back in about 1 1/2 years, and then it’ll be ‘money for nothing and electricity for free’, but realistically, it be 8k for 20 years of power due to battery life, meaning power supply is ‘just’ 400 USD a year, divided by 200 working days gets me $ 2 USD a day, saving me up to 4600 USD annually.

Hence electric power should be saving me lots of money, AND in a business where you want to try and minimize your costs, that leads up to quite a LOT.

It means I can either EARN more, or lower my prices for the clients.

Not just that, but if the world is going to go full bonkers all-electric in just a couple of years, i want to be ready and established.

So honestly, i don’t get your comment. it makes zero sense and helps or answers nothing.

4

You said you were in Spain

You are trying to wash with electric washers. That won’t work. If you can’t understand my simple answer, you won’t get the concept of washing properly either. My gas bill is about $80k annually but I am not switching to battery power. It isn’t feasible to run equipment with electricity in the field.

5

I just want to know how you plan on powering the electric motors that spin the pump(s)…

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image

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Pure genius. I’m gonna look into powering my home like this.

8

Do you have sufficient enough solar production days in your part of the world? Where you park your rig each day, would the shadows of the homes, buildings, trees, etc block the solar array?

9

I get wanting 8gpm, but why would you need 4,000 psi? Supposedly, my Home Depot pressure washer has 4,000 psi with only a 3.5gpm pump, but I have no need to go anywhere near 3,000 psi for the residential house washes or driveways I perform each week.

10

Supply & demand is a law…if there were demand, it would be available. It’s not available for a reason.

Probably because the increased time and such would more than eat that up…

11

One thing you need to understand, it takes a silly amount of electricity to power even 13hp equivalent that normally works with a 4gpm pump. Sure an 8gpm is nice but how on Earth would a 22hp electric equivalent get powered, you can’t just plug it into a 220 outlet.

You may want to contact a few washing companies in your area to get better answers.

12

it has nothing to do with a concept of washing. and yes i’m in spain, location matters though.
you act like i don’t get a concept of washing properly just because i want to see if i can switch to electric power?
you are pulling stuff out of thin air for nothing.
your gas bill is 80k annually, lol, you spend 300 USD a day on gas just for the pressure washers? give me a break.

you don’t have a simple answer because you didn’t give an actual answer, you were just b*tching and inventing this job would not be for me whilst not even having a clue that i’m already running a business, wtf are you on.

you say ‘you are trying to work with electric washers, that won’t work’.

FYI i have already worked with electric washers on several locations the past week where i needed less pressure and GPM didn’t really bother that much. “it wont’ work” it works like a fing charm.

The issue is simply that i have been working with a 4000 psi 4gpm pressure washer with a honda engine (had a ducati before but that was junk), which serves me pretty fine but i want to go to 8gpm.
if 3200 PSI is sufficient, that’s nice to know.

you see, you gave none of these answers like other members here DID, so your comments are useless.

you seemingly can’t understand a simple question, and instead dance around with unneccesary rude comments.

13

$300 a day is about average, but it’s kinda hard to break down what goes on the trucks versus the machines. I just average it out at 10 gallons per machine. My answers weren’t meant to sound simple. I want trying to answer your questions. That’s a fools errand. But good luck I guess. I am curious about what his engine you used to get 4/4000. It obviously wasn’t a 390. Maybe they have some different models across the pond

14

yes, to reach 8gpm and decent pressure i’ve been seeing that i need quite a bunch of HP.
It seems like i need a whopping 7 kWh to achieve such amount, and yes, that is a lot and would certainly blow fuses from the sockets, and i’d need one hell of an expensive battery pack to achieve such a thing, with the calculations i was making with a self-made rig.

however, i have only been buying systems that are ‘out of the box’, the honda pressure washer i have is on wheels and is factory fitted to the pressure washer pump, obviously.

i haven’t been able to find a similar electric product except for coming across one from mexico, but it lacked specific data.

now i’ve seen pressure pumps to ‘retrofit’ to these honda engines in case of failure. but they are still mostly 4 gpm, and haven’t found 8 gpms, hence wondering the options.

fitting the shaft of an electric motor to the pressure pump is really not that big of a deal at all. obviously the honda shaft is different shaped than that of the shaft of regular electric motors, but that is adaptable.

my biggest question is rather, am i overlooking something or missing some stuff, hoping to see if other professionals could point me in the direction of the material used by you guys.

i’m pretty surprised to see such hostile and rude comments by a bunch here. pretty disturbing.

15

i understand your point about supply and demand, however, there was once a time that there were ZERO rigs available for pressure or softwashers and everybody had to build their own systems from scratch.

if everybody ‘gave up’ or never did something, we wouldn’t be where we are today, or we would all still be driving VW beetles with 6v batteries or T-fords.

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There’s a difference between something new, and something not being utilized. Assuming that using all electric is better and just no one has thought of it yet is a bit self-agrandizing. People have thought of it, no one does it for a reason (probably several reasons). If it works for you, go for it.

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The same way CA plans on charging all those rwq’d EVs, more coal and gas to generate the electricity to recharge/run the electric motors…

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18

Have you noticed that it’s always the ones that won’t introduce themselves, do research on their own and want everything spoon feed that are the quickest to get upset lol

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i’ve been working with a 4000 psi gasoline powered 4 gpm ( 3.9 actually, and it’s like 270 bar ) honda-powered pressure washer i bought second-hand from an agricultor for a decent price, and i have been using it a lot for cleaning both graffiti but a lot of limestone rocks. A lot of residential houses here have big, sturdy limestone rocks that are a big part of the lower parts of the construction and especially the terrain limits have big limestone walls (most even without mortar) and they’re pretty hard to clean with lots of black mold deep in the material.

i’ve been doing it before with a 2800 psi 2.5 GPM pressure washer and it was a struggle, and few chemicals that even remotely do something, especially avoiding to stain or damage them, takes a lot of time to properly do them and leave a satisfied customer.

When I got my hands on a 4000 psi 4 GPM (yes, rounded up slightly) washer it was like night and day. it’s still quite the hassle, but it’s a completely different experience.

hence, i wish to keep as close as possible to that 4000 psi ‘range’ yet doubling my GPM would also further improve the time i spend on jobs like that.

However, if i can manage with 3200 psi and 8GPM, i am equally happy.

21

and either get mad or argue when told they’re wrong by you guys who have done it for decades… :man_shrugging:

I mean, I’ll never argue with you on technical stuff…but I’ll never listen to you on marketing stuff, lol

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