Kärcher Pressure Washer

DiscoDave

DiscoDave

DiscoDave

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Has anyone used one of these to wash their cars?

Tempted to get one for other non-car related cleaning tasks, but I hear people have used them for car washing as well.

Common points are to *not* to use the brush handle to agitate heavy dirt because of scratches.

Cheers
 
If using it to clean a car, you shouldn't need a brush at all (as ideally you want to touch a car as little as possible).

The idea being you should use a snow foam lance to soak the car with a pre-wash to loosen tough dirt, then rinse with the pressure washer, before following up with a 2 bucket wash.

If you have a look in the main car cleaning thread: https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/the-car-cleaning-thread.17888389/ you will likely get better advice and recommendations.

It's worth looking at Nilfisk pressure washers as an alternative - they tend to be competitively priced, and feature an all metal pump (Rather than the plastic of cheaper Karcher models and other makes), and so tend to last better.
 
I bought a really cheap small Karcher pressure washer about 10 years ago and, aside from needing to replace a couple of O-rings, it's worked perfectly for both snow-foaming my car and for general patio cleaning etc. It's only little, and so I wonder about the real-term benefits of spending a fortune on these huge wheeled ones!
 
I have a Karcher and I got myself a snow foam lance from eBay. Pretty damn good accessory, roughly £30 with some snow foam too.

I always do a bucket n sponge wash afterwards to get a proper clean.
 
Another K4 user here, i give it a quick jet off first to remove the worst, then swap to the snow foamer then rinse it off, then get the bucket and drying clothes out.

It has also been used to clean of the driveway and path/patio and did an amazing job with the dirtbuster power lance, would let that near your car though unless you want that fresh metal look.
 
Buying a Bosch this weekend funnily enough.
Pump went on my K4 after 3.5 years and had to have a new hose after 1 year.
 
Another small Karcher with snow foam attachment user here, it's fine and I've had it for 8 - 10 years, I've even used it to clean the patio.
 
House said:
Another K4 user here, i give it a quick jet off first to remove the worst, then swap to the snow foamer then rinse it off, then get the bucket and drying clothes out.

It has also been used to clean of the driveway and path/patio and did an amazing job with the dirtbuster power lance, would let that near your car though unless you want that fresh metal look.
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I have the k4 and do exactly this.
 
I've never really understood the point of pressure washing with snowfoam and all that jazz - I've always just used the regular garden hose and then washmitt?
 
[TW]Fox said:
I've never really understood the point of pressure washing with snowfoam and all that jazz - I've always just used the regular garden hose and then washmitt?
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It really all depends on how much care and attention you want to give your paint. When I buy a "new" car, I usually spend a couple days really cleaning and polishing the paintwork, cutting if necessary, just to get it to shine. Then add layers of protection over the top. Then, once that's done, then once a week, a quick snowfoam gets most of the dirt off. Then going round it quickly with a bucket and wash mitt brings it back almost to where I finished with the deep clean / polish. Then once a month or so, I give it another layer of protection. The key, really, to stop swirl marks and the likes that reduce the shine, is to not touch the car as much as possible. Which is where the snowfoam comes into play. If you can do a weekly contact-less wash, with a monthly proper clean, then your paint will fare much better for it.

Not everyone cares that much though. Not everyone NEEDS a gloriously deep shine to their paintwork. My A4 is a prime example. Silver cars just never get the same effect from a good polish / wax / treatment, as they barely look any different to when they just cleaned with a wash mitt. You can feel the difference when touching the paint though. A nice, smooth, glossy finish on the paint is lovely. That's generally what I aim for.
 
[TW]Fox said:
I've never really understood the point of pressure washing with snowfoam and all that jazz - I've always just used the regular garden hose and then washmitt?
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I agree to an extent. I have decent water pressure and a hose head that I can change the spray. When set to single stream, it's powerful enough to remove whatever I have soaking into the dirt/tar/iron. Then when I'm rinsing the sprinkle head is great for creating that water sheeting to get suds/dirt off the car. I can understand if water pressure is weak and the car is properly dirty, otherwise the hose is actually safer and superior.

Foam is good as a pre-soak, useful again only if the car is properly dirty. It's similar to soaking an oven dish in just water or water+soap. Water + soap is a bit better at breaking down the dirt before spraying it off.
 
xs2man said:
It really all depends on how much care and attention you want to give your paint. When I buy a "new" car, I usually spend a couple days really cleaning and polishing the paintwork, cutting if necessary, just to get it to shine. Then add layers of protection over the top. Then, once that's done, then once a week, a quick snowfoam gets most of the dirt off. Then going round it quickly with a bucket and wash mitt brings it back almost to where I finished with the deep clean / polish. Then once a month or so, I give it another layer of protection. The key, really, to stop swirl marks and the likes that reduce the shine, is to not touch the car as much as possible. Which is where the snowfoam comes into play. If you can do a weekly contact-less wash, with a monthly proper clean, then your paint will fare much better for it.

Not everyone cares that much though. Not everyone NEEDS a gloriously deep shine to their paintwork. My A4 is a prime example. Silver cars just never get the same effect from a good polish / wax / treatment, as they barely look any different to when they just cleaned with a wash mitt. You can feel the difference when touching the paint though. A nice, smooth, glossy finish on the paint is lovely. That's generally what I aim for.
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I care a lot - my car is immaculate, regularly cleaned and almost always gleaming. My trusty garden hose does the job, snow foam just seems a bit faddy?
 
had a k2 for a couple of years and it's been fine, not the most powerful in the world but then you don't want that for washing a car anyway.

it really depends on how much you care about your car, on the bm i went full 2 bucket microfibre then polishing and all that jazz whereas on the grand vitara i pretty much only care about getting bugs off the windscreen and that's it.
 
[TW]Fox said:
I care a lot - my car is immaculate, regularly cleaned and almost always gleaming. My trusty garden hose does the job, snow foam just seems a bit faddy?
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If your car was properly dirty, then it would be a good use case for foam. You soak the dirt in a clingy foam that breaks it down and softens it so that when you do spray it with the hose it comes off. If you just spray water onto the car to remove the dirt, it won't be as effective.

For a car that is cleaned regularly, a quick blast of the hose will remove pretty much all the dirt. I use Auto Finesse Citrus Power on any areas that are prone to collect dirt - bumper, arches, etc.
 
snow foam is for pretty filthy cars and only if you use the decent stuff which actually does something a lot of snow foams literally do nothing water couldn't have done.

so if your car is pretty clean and you wash regularly then it's not needed at all.

it's basically for show for a lot of people. it looks good which is easy to market to people. if it looks good then it must be good.
 
[TW]Fox said:
I care a lot - my car is immaculate, regularly cleaned and almost always gleaming. My trusty garden hose does the job, snow foam just seems a bit faddy?
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I'm not saying if you dont use it, then by extension you don't care about your car. But I suspect using a garden hose and wash mitts your paint might well have swirl marks and micro-scratches. Like most cars on the road. Which is a result of washing a car in that manner. That in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. They can be taken out with a good polish usually. So no harm done. But some people get really anal about it, and want a perfect paint finish.

For myself though, I am generally quite lazy. My cars get driven a lot, and so need regular cleaning. I do, however, make time a couple times a year to go to town on my cars (2-3 days worth of cleaning). In doing so, I keep a good base layer of protection on the paint, and can keep them relatively swirl mark free. Then, most of my washing can just be done with a snowfoam lance, decent snowfoam, and a quick rinse. If it's been left for over a week, I'll need to break out the bucket and sponge (not really a sponge). But mostly, all I need to do is rinse, snowfoam, (wait 10-15 mins), rinse, and it all looks good from there.

To me it's not overly "faddy" to break out the pressure washer and snow foam to give the cars a quick hose down once or twice a week. But then the result of that is, I often don't need to break out the wash mitt and bucket. Depending on how bad the contamination is, and how long since I last applied a wax or other protectant.
 
Pressure washer is great for the underbody and wheel arches, with the right bend attachment (my neighbour valets cars never seen them touch the wheel arches)

Don't have a snow foam attachment, but you can damage the paint and for sure tyres if you use it full k7=160bar pressure on the car.
(edit - that is using the jet - would never touch it with the brush attachment)

Usually too much hassle to set it up - unkink the hose and you use a lot of water too

...so mostly the two bucket approach , you can have a bucket off warm water too, which you can't with k7 either.
 
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