I appreciate your willingness to help newcomers. I am in California, a pretty rich area, and I don’t see much competition offering their services for washing / roof washing / soft wash. There are some, but I think there is definitely room in the market. Plus in the beginning I only want to do it as a kind of side hustle, with the intention of hiring crew to do the jobs if it picks up traction.
That being said I am 27 years old and have always wanted to own my own business. I am trustworthy, smart, and actually love power washing.
That being said, I found this unit online for 7,500. I would like to do soft washes, power washing, residential and commercial.
If this was perfectly operational and well taken care of- what is it worth?
Is this a great way to get started in the business? Or would there be a better way to get started if I want to do high quality residential and commericial washing (including roofing)
Is it important to have hot water?
are there any obvious shortcomings with this setup that will make it hard for me to be successful?
I think the soft wash of roofs etc., would be most profitable around here, along with offering driveway cleaning etc. A lot of really nice homes around here that have mold, growth growing on them and I think I could drum up a lot of business by having a reputable name, doing one job in a neighborhood and getting neighbors etc.
I think if you explain what exactly you want to do you might get some advice. There are a lot of different directions you can go with pressure washing. It could also be nobody has that exact pressure washer so nobody can comment on it. Most recommend starting off with at least a 5 gpm. Most don’t use heat unless they are cleaning grease or gum.
I’m just now getting started so can’t offer much advice. I can say that if you plan on doing roofs that pressure washer won’t work and there doesn’t seem to be much room on the trailer to add a soft wash system, mix tank, etc. I guess you could move or put it in the toolbox though.
And there are 26 clicks (as of now) on the link you provided. Problem is, when I go to the link there is no additional information about the setup. It says to contact the seller for additional information. I don’t plan to do that - you should do that and provide the additional information for us to give you an educated (and I use that word loosely because we have no idea if the said equipment even works) response.
P.S. - if you do get additional responses, a lot are going to say “read more then 12 minutes (as of right now) on this forum and use the search function.” You need to research more to know the correct questions to ask the seller of this equipment. And, once you do the research, you might not even end up calling the seller
Yeah I am reading and reading, just wanted throw it out there to just see if anyone had any direct experience with a karcher machine like this and its flexibility to be used for different things.
Thanks. Yeah I did talk to him and he got it in an auction. Says everything works. But I am waiting to get more information and photos from him.
Will post back when I know more.
Honestly I am trying to have a solid set up for the least initial start up costs (so I can focus more on marketing / advertising) and be able to do driveways / gum removal / deck resurfacing / clean homes (which I have read soft washing is the best-- and I thought from reading I can adapt this system to be able to run chemicals / soft wash through it).
In my experience theres little money in cleaning driveways. As far as the residential sector goes you want as high of gpm as you can get. You only need hot water for commercial concrete. Youre not really going to be able to clean roofs with any pw. You’ll need a chem pump to do that with a few exceptions. Where are you located in CA? As long as it works that’s a good machine but the gpms are not listed.
You can get a new child water machine for much less if you’re mostly going to do resi.
My question is would this be a good beginner set up for doing residential and commercial house cleaning / roof cleaning / driveway etc. I would like to be able to offer gum removal as well as roof cleaning house cleaning.
I wouldn’t. You still need hoses reels chem tank, 12v system and a wand. But I don’t know anything about that PW. And you can remove fresh gum from driveways with cold water and most people don’t throw gum in their own driveways anyways lol
I’m just now getting into pressure washing so I don’t have experience like the others but, from the research I’ve done for myself, I don’t think I’d spend $7500 on that. If you pieced together a trailer that size yourself you could probably get new and be around the same price especially considering you’re going to have another $1000+ for other equipment you’ll need. As EDM95 mentioned you’re going to need a whole different system if you plan on doing roofs too so that’s going to be another $500-$1000 depending on how you plan on going about it.
If I were you I think I’d get an 8 gpm cold water unit and put together your own trailer. You’d be able to get all brand new equipment for less than what you’d spend buying the used trailer setup and adding the other equipment you’d need. Before I really started looking into pressure washing I though every pro had to use a hot water machine but I was completely wrong. If you feel like you’re losing work because of the lack of hot water you can add that down the road by purchasing a hotbox or adding a hot water pressure washer. If you get serious into pressure washing you’re going to want a backup washer anyways. From what I can tell most here don’t even use hot water very often unless their fleet washing and certain circumstances with commercial concrete.
I have a Karcher heated machine. It’s a gasoline engine though. 5gpm and 3500psi just like that one. I paid 3500$ for my Skid unit, 250’ hose, 3 wands, surface cleaner, 2 water totes and some backup parts. I purchased a small trailer to put it on for 1000$. I only use the heat for fleet work, and rarely does that require heat. Never used the heat on a house or flat work.
yeah I am going to pass on this one. I think me getting a good commercial grade machine that is on wheels / small and portable more or less and just see if I can get jobs. I am in California and a pretty strict area in terms of environmental protection. Just posted another post seeing if anyone else has experience with restrictions in California / if it makes sense to even get into the pressure washing business here.
