Hey guys
New guy here, new member and new to pressure washers as a first time home owner. Please go easy on me, I am young and clueless and trying to learn and am desperate for some help. Here is my story:
I have over the course of the past 2 weeks purchased 4 different pressure washers, all electric because I only plan to use it once a month or so to clean the driveway and maybe the garbage cans and the car sometimes. I have purchased a Sun Joe SPX3000, then had it replaced with a new one which also failed. So I then bought a Ryobi which failed and now my fourth is a high performance electric Ryobi. All 4 of these machines have had the exact same problem and I am at a loss. As soon as I unbox them and put them together, I connect everything then bleed the air out of the hose and fire them up and immediately experience what can only be described as the Pressure washer equivalent of having an enlarged prostate or something 
The pressure fluctuates from strong to almost nothing in a pulsating manner about every 10-15 seconds. I was convinced it was the machines because they are inexpensive and not gas powered but after 4 new ones I am not so sure. My only thoughts left are two possibilities, either the garden hose I am using (which is a commercial grade 50 foot hose) or maybe my house simply doesn’t have enough water pressure? Tonight after my fourth failed attempt I just sat there baffled and I ran the hose disconnected from the machine for a good 15 minutes and it doesn’t seem to have loss of pressure at all, it’s not gushing out or anything but seems like it would be adequate. Does anyone have any thoughts or ideas I could try? Should I replace the garden hose? Call my water company? Ditch electric and just go gas? Please guys any help would be very appreciated I am pulling my hair out over this
I just realized I may be on the entirely wrong website here, you guys are the big boys using commercial grade equipment and running businesses, I sincerely apologize if I am wasting anyone’s time here I definitely misunderstood the forum. If anybody has an easy answer or knows where I can go for help, if not I completely understand. God bless folks and thank you
The water pressure doesn’t matter. It’s the flow. Your machine probably only puts out 2-2.5 gals per minute, so that’s all the flow you need from your hose, so surely your hose has that much flow. Just take a bucket and see how much it fills in a minute. Sounds like your machine may have some air in the line. Did you hook hose to it pull the trigger gun and just let the water flow thru, if it will, without running? Try that.
You can get a Honda powered gas machine for under $400 and then you’ve got something you can actually use.
Also be sure to unwind all of your 50 feet of hose if it’s on any kind of reel, hose collapses under heat and stays that way when it’s coiled up.
That’s a great point and makes total sense, I hadn’t even thought of that. The model I have says it puts out 1.2 GPM which definitely isn’t much. I will do the bucket test later today and let you know what I find. I did make sure to pull the trigger and let water and air flow through without turning the machine on for 3 minutes before starting it up. I also did that with the other machines I have tried. I just never would have imagined these things performed so poorly where they can’t even hold a steady pressure for more than 10-15 seconds at a time. Am I maybe just expecting too much from these electric models?
Thank you for the suggestion, I don’t have a reel or anything and I did make sure to unwind the entire garden hose and double checked for kinks. Does it have to be perfectly straight? Maybe I need a shorter hose?
Try connecting to a different spigot and different outlet and see if anything changes.
Well it actually turned out to be the garden hose I was using, I went and picked up a new one today and connected it and all is fixed now. Thanks for all the help and suggestions, much appreciated. Cheers
Good deal.
What was wrong with the hose? All of that, 3-4 returns and you never noticed there was no water coming out your hose?
