How Does A Hot Water Pressure Washer Work?

Last Updated on April 2, 2022

How does a hot water pressure washer work?

When it comes to getting cleaning jobs done, there’s not much equipment out there that stands up to a pressure washer.

Simply turn the kit on and in minutes you will be blasting high-pressure water with a huge PSI at stubborn grime and dirt – it doesn’t stand a chance against you!

However, there are several different types of pressure washers to choose from, such as mains-powered, gas-powered, cold water and hot water.

That last one is particularly interesting – how does a hot water pressure washer work, and are there any particular benefits to using one?

This is a great question, and don’t worry – we’ve got the answers. Read on to find out more!

Why choose a hot water pressure washer?

Before we get started in explaining the ins and outs of how hot water pressure washers work, it’s important to first consider why you might want to buy one in the first place.

After all, do you really need hot water to be blasted out of a pressure washer? Surely as long as you purchase a pressure washer with a high enough PSI, any water will do the job?

Let me explain with a quick analogy – have you ever tried to wash the dishes with cold water?

Sure, you can still get some decent bubbles out of the dish soap, and you can still get rid of a lot of the grime and dirt from your plates and cutlery.

However, there’s something that just doesn’t feel right about it. This is particularly true for when you’ve cooked a nice greasy fry up – cold water just doesn’t seem to cut it!

That’s because hot water, when combined with soap, is very good at breaking down grease.

The reason for this is that when water is heated up, the molecules of hydrogen and oxygen that make it up bounce off each other at a faster rate, leaving more space for dissolved solvents to pass through.

So, enough with the science lesson – hot water is better at dissolving detergent, better at breaking down grease, and overall better at doing the job when it comes to pressure washers.

If you want to know more about it, then we suggest that you get your old physics books out of school!

How exactly do hot water pressure washers work?

So, you’ve had the lecture on why hot water works better at cleaning, so what does this mean for your pressure washer?

How exactly does it work, and is there a particular type of hot water pressure washer that you should be looking out for? Those are more excellent questions!

Believe it or not, hot water pressure washers work in a very simple way.

It may sound crazy, but every hot water pressure washer on the market will have a tiny boiler inside it.

It’s very much like the ones that you see in coffee machines, it will allow a constant stream of water to come through, be boiled, and finally blast out of the pressure washer at high PSI!

It really is as simple as that, but there’s one more thing that you will want to consider – whether you should buy an electric or petrol powered pressure washer. Let’s take a look.

Electric vs Petrol Hot Water Pressure Washers

The world of pressure washers can get a little complicated at times – just when you think you’ve figured out that you want a hot water pressure washer, you’re asked whether you want an electric or petrol version.

We can empathize with the frustration here, but it’s worth having a good think about!

Electric powered hot water pressure washers are arguably more popular these days – for starters, they are environmentally friendly as they don’t use fossil fuels.

This also means that there is no smell of petrol coming out of the machine, which can be a bonus. However, perhaps the biggest benefit here is that they can simply be plugged in for infinite pressure washing!

You don’t have to worry about checking the petrol level and filling it up, it will go on forever!

With that being said, there are tons of benefits to petrol-powered hot water pressure washers too.

The nature of hot water pressure washers makes them better for big, industrial-level cleanups, and this means that they often tend to come in petrol-powered form. This is due to one major benefit – convenience.

It doesn’t matter whether you are cleaning a driveway, a fancy patio, or anything else miles away from the nearest plug socket, you will still be able to clean it.

Say goodbye to having to rely on electricity, although you will still need to carry the fuel around with you!

Conclusion

Well, that’s just about everything that there is to know about how hot water pressure washers work.

In a nutshell, they work exactly like how standard pressure washers work – you plug them in, wait a little while for the water heater to get going, and then you started spraying your victim at high PSI!

The way this works is that the water travels through a boiler inside the device, and that works in the same way whether it is an electric or petrol powered model. 

Ultimately, hot water pressure washers are recommended mostly if you have particularly grimey clean-up jobs to do.

Sure, they are probably not going to be necessary for spraying down your garden ornaments or watering the plants.

However, if you’re looking to obliterate hardcore chemical residue on your swimming pool, remove many years worth of grime build up from your patio, or generally tackle some of the heftier cleaning jobs out there, hot water pressure washers are going to be suitable. Good luck!

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