sometimes with trailers and little vehicles when you have to stop fast, the trailer is like to push your rear end to the side.
Go with a 4gpm before a 5 GPM without a buffer. Air cooled engines are designed to rain WOT. Don’t idle them down. I would seriously wait until you can get what you need, instead of what you can afford now.
The amount of guys on FB telling everyone to do this to get a richer dilution ratio is insane. I stay out of it because I have better things to do then go back and forth trying to convince them
Didn’t you run your motors at 2500 rpm, though? That’s not idle-speed, but it’s significantly less than WOT.
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You got a memory like an elephant lol Not much of a load running an 18hp moving 4.75 @ 1900
High heat trashes even synthetic oil so my OCI were set at 35-40hr. Also there’s little tweaks you can do to pull more air across the cylinders. For the sake of simplicity it’s not recommended.
Here’s my 4x7 trailer 2 years ago…
Same trailer a couple weeks ago…
…I will say it’s much easier to tow a load than carry it as a payload, hands down. I spotted a trailer at big box store a couple weeks ago & thought it must be at least 9x30, it turned out to be 5x8 haha. I have 28 square ft & a 5x8 is 40. That’s over 40% more space & only weighs an extra 75 pounds but these dudes ain’t joking. If you upgrade a little at a time, you definitely end up throwing money down the drain in the long haul.
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I’m rethinking this whole thing, taking a 2nd look at trailers now more closely, but still with the tow vehicle limitation I have, so I’m looking at aluminum single-axle trailers, actually a 4x6 like this one, as its only a claimed 280 lbs empty, and a payload of 1200 lbs. Little Pricey though.
Aluma 486 aluminum 4x6 foot utility trailer
My thinking now is maybe build a small trailer (like a mini-skid) and use the van’s cargo area for misc storage, like for a Surface cleaner, wands, tarps, spare parts and tools, PPE, ladder, cones, spare hoses, pump sprayers, spare chems, etc…
If I build with smaller, vertical-stye tanks I could maximize my available space on the trailer, like Norewesco, I could build a smaller trailer with say a 35g buffer, 20g SH, and 7g surfactant tank and possibly build a dedicated softwash system on there too, and even with the tanks “full”, I’m still less than half the trailier’s capacity at about 500 lbs in liquid. I have yet to do the remaining math but I would imagine I could build hoses on reels, all the plumbing for the tanks, and a gear-driven pressure washer of my target 5G/3k with the remaining trailer capacity. The additional weight of a dedicated softwash system may be pushing it though.
And on that subject, I just saw this portable softwash system posted on a FB group by someone named Chris DiRubba, claiming they built this custom portable softwash cart for about $1200 dollars. 2x 25 Gallon sprayer tanks for water and SH, battery, pump, plumbing, and a 5 Gal bucket of soap on a Harbor Freight garden cart. But if all those are full, that’s over 500 lbs to push around a yard. So there’s that.
… these dudes ain’t joking. If you upgrade a little at a time, you definitely end up throwing money down the drain in the long haul.
No doubt. Unfortunately that’s the name of the game for me as of now, and if I do this right, I might be able to recoup somewhat if I scale quickly. It’s certainly no different in the film biz, as an equipment owner/operator, I have always taken leaps in upgrades from time to time, I can’t risk the debt it would create to “…wait until you can get what you need, instead of what you can afford now,” nor can I risk having no supplemental income for my family with how volatile the film biz has been since the Pandemic.
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Man. I’m saying this as nicely as possible but what the heck are you thinking 
You’re going to push that huge thing around all over a customers yard and wrestle with uneven ground and landscaping? You think that that’s not going to potentially tear up a yard? Hoo boy. The less transitions you have with heavy equipment the better and I learned that from personal experience.
You don’t want to be dealing with any of that mess. None of it. You want everything on the trailer or truck. Reels/hose take you everywhere you want to go. I cannot stress the importance of how much reels will improve your overall quality of life. You don’t even need a skid. An aluminum ramp to get your 4gpm unit on wheels up into the bed, and leave it there until end of the day.
55 gallon plastic drum can be had for cheap, 12v pump, reel, hose, fittings, etc…boom. soft wash setup for cheap. It will still be a bit of a pain in the butt but doable.
Maybe I’m kicking a dead horse here but with a 6000$ budget it’s perfectly attainable to get a truck capable of holding a 4gpm unit, and softwash setup with 3 reels and hose instead of trying to macguyver this stuff together. You’re saving a ton of space/money with not having to use different tanks and such and with you living down south literally all of this is available locally and so much less of a pain in the butt as it was for me.
I feel like this is the answer for your budget currently. Even with you used to pushing carts and stuff around I wouldn’t recommend it. Up here we have a saying…
There’s the right way,
There’s the wrong way,
There’s the Norwegian way.
I’ll shut up after this but man, that’s the avenue I’d be taking.
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You’re kinda in the same boat as me and not wanting or able to have large equipment permanently mounted. For washing houses, I developed a small cart that boosts water pressure and downstream the cleaner on and rinse all at less than 100 psi. No large machine running the whole time, no tanks, reels, any of that. Just a very lightweight cart, some super light expandable hoses, and my gun with a low pressure injector. It can pull as strong as 5:1 and about 20 other ratios to choose from.
I carry a 4 GPM pressure washer on a trailer hitch cart for when I do have a pressure washing job, but that’s only about 10% of my jobs or less.
Not saying my setup is right for you, buy might give you some ideas. Some think it’s crazy or stupid, others like the idea. For me, I love it and have the next design already planned out. Here is a link to my post about it. I’ve made some minor tweaks and improvements since posting this, but it’s basically the same.
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I run the harbor freight 4x8 trailer because of limited garage space. I would suggest going the 5x8 trailer route with a 3.5k axle. Will last for a decent amount of growth.
If youre going to use a trailer then why not get an 8 gal? The 5 gal is a total waste
Vehicle limitations. Trying to maximize capabilities I have now within a reasonable budget. Single biggest investment in all of this isn’t really the machinery of pressure washing but the vehicle used to haul it to jobs. I can start smaller and if successful, and hopefully quickly, can upgrade when necessary, but for now this is what I’m starting and working.
I don’t love the idea of even attempting to find a used pickup that’s not an absolute beater on it’s last leg, can’t pass emission standards, and is a safety concern, because that’d be all I could likely afford, and can’t even afford that right now. I’m keeping an eye on the full-size V8 vans in used markets, it might be more of an option and still be capable as a vehicle-based or trailer-based platform.
Wow thank you this is the kind of ingenuity I love to see, I may be blowing up your inbox soon, this is a very innovative solution to limited vehicle circumstances such as mine. Thank you!
By next spring there may be a new, updated version for sale. I might be getting talked into it by someone I know who’s been in this industry for a very long time and was very impressed by the whole setup. I’m not 100% convinced since it’s going to be easy to copy and also not the way anyone washes houses
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I like my chances in replicating (at least with a high altitude view of it so far), I’ll be in touch soon.
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As an UPDATE, I had a small motorcycle tumble this summer that has lead to me abandoning this portable cart build idea for now. Instead I picked up a small aluminum trailer that has a the light weight and capacity to match my current tow vehicle’s limitations, it’s a 4.5x8 foot bed Featherlite 1683, and it is remarkably light weight indeed.
I’ll be starting a new thread seeking info for the build out based on my market and budget. Here’s a photo with my young daughters being unable to resist climbing on the empty trailer when I brought it home.
Hope recovery is going well.
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keep in mind, aluminum and SH, not a match made in heaven.
LOL, SH and pretty much anything not a match made in heaven
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