Hi, I’m 18 and in college, and I live in a pretty small sub-Saharan country. I’d been looking for a service to provide, and since deciding on pressure washing, I’ve been eating up all the content I can find on YouTube, Reddit, and here.
However, it’s a really niche service here; there’s absolutely no competition in my country, and even in South Africa, our largest neighbor, there’s only one company I found doing it. Finding equipment was then a major hassle. In the States, it looks like every hardware store stocks industrial machines, but here I have to import them myself. As of right now, I seem to have found a good supplier that has most of the basics I need: a 3500 psi machine with, I believe, a 5.5 gpm flow rate, a 20-inch surface cleaner, 65 feet of pressure hose, a turbo nozzle, and a ball valve. I’m hoping to use this equipment on firstly residential flatwork jobs in the more affluent suburbs; there are at least five large ones in my city, and then hopefully get commercial jobs for hotels, gas stations, and malls on a return contract. I should mention that almost all the paved flat surfaces in these parts are made of paving bricks as opposed to concrete and will require resanding, for which I plan on charging more. I must also ask if it is possible to run a 5 gpm machine at a 4 gpm input, like throttling down the flow rate. We don’t have that flow rate from the taps, and I can’t set up a buffer tank yet. Also, is it possible to softwash painted walls or roofs with this system using the downstreamer on the pressure washer, and if not, what extras do I need? Lastly, for maintenance, as I’ll have to learn to do it myself, what do I need to learn to replace and repair most often, and what spares or extras should I have on hand at all times?
Any marketing tips would also mean a lot to me to find my first customers; I ran a market research survey that showed some interest, nothing too promising but still decent, and this is a really large investment for me.
Thank you so much for your time, much appreciated from Botswana
The question is, if no one is doing it, why? That would dictate your marketing (or whether this is even a good idea). Here I see communities that everything is covered in mildew and moss, and I see an opportunity, but often the reality is that those people just don’t care about their home being cleaned, thus it’s really no opportunity at all. If it were to become one, the answer would be educating that market on the benefits, which may be your tact (we have plenty of other opportunities, so that’s not the route we take). Essentially, you may be choosing between creating a market for your services, rather than trying to earn a place in the existing marketplace.
Jason hit it, might want to do more research and ask potential customers how they feel about having their property cleaned. You could have an untapped opportunity there but would hate to see you spend a bunch of money on something people wouldn’t want.
BTW @JAtkinson …I used to paddle the Rappahannock there in Fredericksburg off route 1 all the time. So much fun.
you will probably need more hose as 65 is pretty short. i would say 100ft at least. but if you’re wheeling your machine around then you can make it work. just gonna have to move it around more often.
For sure, I’ll start off with the 65 for now because of the budget and keep upping it by 65 length until I can leave my machine in one place the whole job.
