I am new at the mobile fleet washing. I am loosing psi on my pressure washer. I have a 300 gal tank that at the bottom I have rigged a hose to hook up to my pressure washer. Ican hook my washer up to the house water hose and it works fine. But when I hook the washer up to my tank I loose psi. What could I do to fix the problem?
Are you losing pressure or are you causing cavitation to your pump. What type of pump /machine are you running? Maybe your pump can’t suck in the water and you need some sort of pump in between. If it is a smaller machine, you might have to have the inlet lower than the output of the tank. Also bigger feed hoses won’t hurt. I have seen detailers with 2700 2.5 gallon machines running off of a tank. They have the machine off the trailer and the tank on the trailer to get a better gravity feed.
Also if your washer doesn’t feel right when you are trying it from the tank stop using it until you can figure it out. If you run the washer when it isn’t getting adequate water you will damage the pump in short order. Some machines/pumps just won’t draw from a tank, without some type of booster. Try bigger feed hose and gravity and if that doesn’t help you might have to buy a little booster pump.
a 300 gal tank is plenty big enough to feed any machine, your problem is either the type of machine you are running in relation to how it draws water or it could be your supply line running to your machine is to small
Is there a height difference between the outlet of the tank and the inlet of the pump? Tank output should be above the pump Inlet so gravity can help feed, otherwise the pump will have to fight gravity if there is too much of a height difference.
not true, if the water level in the tank is above the inlet on the machine the water will be pushed out
Yes, thats correct, but in my setup, my pump and engine are on a skid frame, which raises its height to close to a foot off the truck bed. Which puts the pump inlet about a foot higher than the bottom of the tank where the outlet is. Im just saying that if there is Too much of a difference, depending on the pump, it may not be able to pull water if the level of the water is below the pump inlet.
As long as the water level is above the inlet it should suck good, unless he has axial pump then you might be able to get it to suck by gravity, especially if you can get it primed and have some gravity(weight/pressure) behind it. And I know this is true because I’ve done it. All I remember is it was a chore to get it going. But if he ran it with not enough water the pump is probably toast anyways.
