It came to me in an odd way, I met a guy who used to do pressure washing, and after talking to him about my rig he reached out to me and offered me a gig.
It’s for a restaurant patio and sidewalks, and while I do that he will be hitting the walls and the roof. He’s paying me $200.
The reason I’m nervous is because I still haven’t used my washer yet. I will be getting the last bit of accessories today (hoses, gun, ect) and testing my washer tonight. He knows all this and still wants to work with me. I have 2.5 days to get ready.
Any thoughts or concerns? I know I’m jumping into this a bit quick, but I don’t want to pass this opportunity up.
Get some use out of it in your driveway a few seperate times and get use to your machine/setup. I’m assuming not much can go wrong with him watching over you and this is a great opportunity to learn with someone experienced by your side. Step by step, how do you plan on doing the concrete cleaning? What equipment do you have?
4gpm, 11hp Honda washer. I don’t have a good surface cleaner yet, so I’m just gonna buy a cheap 16 inch one from lowes as a temporary use (even though he told me not to worry about it).
I plan on just hitting the pavement with no chemical. As a backup I will have a 2.5 gallon sprayer and I will load up with SH so if I can’t tell the difference I will spray the pavement down, let it soak for a minute then go at it with the surface cleaner.
Restaurants are a big part of my jobs. You will want some degreaser at least. The oil/grease from the kitchen just works it way out every door.
Pre-treat with a strong mix (if you are buying from Home Depot, go with Zep Purple Degreaser and run it straight in a pump up to pre-treat). I also put a bit of dawn in the pump as well. Dawn is great at breaking down oils
Do you have any PW suppliers in your area? Don’t use a box store surface cleaner. The nozzles on it have a good chance of messing up the concrete. At the very least you can get a 14in BE surface cleaner off Amazon Prime for around $100 and it will get the job done. Your definitely gonna want to pretreat with a degreaser or SH and a degreaser. Do a search of restaurant walkways on here and I’m sure you’ll get better advice on it than I can give you.
SH does not seem to do much for oil/grease. I actually use a mix of degreaser, with some extra hydroxide thrown in to amp it up and some dawn. If it is a new account and most likely not been taken care of, I use EBC on the first treatment (I do monthly services on most restaurants and my mix does well as a maintenance mix).
I will say that heat does make a world of difference but it can be done with cold water (I did for quite a while before getting a hot water unit, just takes longer and need stronger chems).
Have a deck brush - stiff. Good to scrub heavily soiled areas like right in front of the door or back pad/dumpster area.
Don’t try to wand clean the sidewalks. It will look like crap and take you all day. I have way too many pictures of places that someone did this and it never looks good when they are done.
Would a cheap surface cleaner work for just a day? Higher up someone mentioned a BE surface cleaner on Amazon, but it looks the same as any other low end surface cleaner and it costs $100.
I know it tough when money is tight. Hard call to make.
Personally, I have always regretted buying cheap to just get by but as many won’t admit on this board, it is a fact of running a business. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Just do so knowing what you are getting is a band-aid and not a real long-term solution.
Just starting out, got a $200 job and looking to spend 1/2 of that to do the job (or at least easier than it would be without it).
Here is the real jem of this post. You are going to work your arse off doing jobs much harder than they have to be until you get the equipment to do it right. What that means is entirely up to your personal financial situation. Bills gotta get paid along the way. A wise man once told me -
“You gotta knock over a few gas stations, while you are planning your perfect bank robbery”.
Washed miles of concrete with this thing my first year. Worked great. Never skipped a beat and I still have it.
On small sidewalks and patios I still use it. Takes 2 seconds to hook it up and get going. Used it on a 4gpm 4000psi machine no problems!
I went through about $600 of cheap surfaces cleaners as they would break after 2-10 jobs until I finally spent $600 on one I’ve been using for countless jobs over the last year. Cheap will certainly get the job done, but as soon as possible get you a whisper wash. It’ll save you money and time.
A cheap surface cleaner from Wal-Mart will work for much longer than one day. That’s what I use and it is surprisingly effective. They are nice little units too. They’re even serviceable. They’re cheap enough that I treat thrm as disposable and price a new one into jobs quite often. It’s $50, and unloke mamy of the ones suggested here, has a centered quick connect fitting which is far easier to maneuver with than an off-center one.
