It depends if you ask around what is a good PSI for a pressure washer, and people are making you frustrated with different answers each time.
You may need to clean anything from concrete floors to automobiles and whatnot with your pressure washer. The potential amount of cleaning you can achieve is much more than any other cleaning method you previously used. But the problem arises when you need to find out the necessary PSI for your desired cleaning task. Let’s say you want to know what the recommended PSI for home use is?
If you ask around, it can seem extremely complicated. But in reality, it is all about your priority and usage. So, let’s find out how much PSI is required for your pressure washing job.
What Is The Recommended PSI For Home Use?
A decent electric pressure washer with 1500-1800 PSI is enough to get you done with it if you are getting a pressure washer for merely doing some simple household cleaning chores. Most home cleaning tasks do not require that much PSI, so anything from 1500-to 1800 is good enough.
You can clean anything from hardwood to tiles and any other kind of surface with a light-duty pressure washer. But, you might be thinking, shouldn’t I use more power and force to make cleaning faster and better? Well, it sounds good only in theory. If you plan to use a 3000 PSI pressure washer on your hardwood floor, you might destroy it.
What About Cleaning Concrete?
While 1500-1800 PSI is good enough for a pressure washer for home usage, it is certainly not the case for cleaning the concrete. If you clean up the concrete driveway or walkway, you should consider getting a gas pressure washer.
A gas pressure washer is perfectly suitable for handling extreme clean up like cleaning the dirt of concrete ground as they have significantly high PSI. So, what about the required PSI for cleaning concrete? Well, 3000 PSI is the starting point PSI for cleaning concrete.
Why are we recommending so much PSI for cleaning the concrete? That is because cleaning the concrete will require a significantly higher amount of force applied to it. Also, it is not as susceptible to damage as wood.
What Is The Recommended PSI For Cleaning The Deck?
Before I even start with the recommended PSI for cleaning decks, I would like to establish that pressure washing anything made with wood needs extreme care. It applies to everything from wooden floors to wooden decks and so on.
So if you are planning to clean something as delicate as the wooden deck, you need no more than 1000-PSI. That, too, depends on how dirty it is in reality. It is a must to remember you can’t make the mistake of applying a higher PSI for these kinds of cleaning.
You should start with as low as 500-600 PSI and gradually move up to the 1000-1200 threshold. Otherwise, too much pressure will end up harming the deck. If you plan to start with the most powerful pressure washer you can find right away, it might ruin it even before realising it.
How Much Is PSI Required For Cleaning House Siding?
You should not use any more than 1200-1500 PSI to avoid damaging your house. 1200 PSI is quite enough for cleaning house and siding. So stick with a simple electric pressure washer with a PSI from 1000-1800 range because you don’t need that much PSI for house siding, same as the cleaning of the deck.
Though you can go for a slightly higher PSI, like 2000-2500, make sure your sidings need that much pressure to clean the dirt off them. You certainly don’t want to apply 3000 PSI to cleaning something that you can do with only 500 PSI.
How Much PSI Do I Need To Pressure Wash My Car?
Ah, pressure washing the cars is where I hear most people complain. They think just because their vehicle looks so powerful, they can use 3000 PSI or even more clean dirt off their car.
The truth?
You can clean it with anything from 1200 PSI to 1900 PSI. But the actual problem is that when applying too much pressure on the car, you will likely damage and ruin the car’s paint. So for pressure cleaning the vehicle, 1500 PSI might be all you need. If the dirt is stubborn, you can add a bit more, but do not go over 1900.
Final Verdict
1000-1500 PSI is generally good PSI for cleaning the house, deck, or car, and this is honestly all you need to clean them. But if you are cleaning something with a lot of strain, like a concrete floor or driveway, you need to use a commercial pressure washer with a PSI of at least 3000.
So, what is the PSI for a pressure washer at the end of the day?
Well, the answer is, like we said initially, it depends. You can calculate stuff like how hard the surface is and how durable it is, but you will also need to apply some common sense.
Shop Related Products
Last update on 2024-07-18 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API