Power Washing concrete driveway, sidewalk, patio and porch

Finding yourself looking forward to spring? After all many of us find the changing of the season a pleasant experience. Let me ask you, who among us does not enjoy the Easter flowers first blooms, the brightly colored songbirds with their lovely songs and showy dances of love?

I for one am inspired, and cannot help but think homeowners such as yourself are as well. In my mind anyway, spring cleaning the exterior of our home is a kin to the showy little songbirds cleaning the leaves and other debris from their nest.

I believe we all want and most importantly need, our home and gardens to be a safe, secure, and beautiful place our family will be proud to call home. If for no other good reason, spring cleaning requires power washing the concrete driveway, walk, and porch.

1. Selecting the best electric power washer for our needs.

Where homeowners as you and I are concerned, power washers fall into too basic categories electric, and gas powered power washers.

Electric pressure washers are smaller, lighter,, easier to move around and store, light duty machines.

Easier to move around residential landscape features. Subsequently the small powered electric pressure washers provide considerably less cleaning power, which I am sorry to say, requires we plan on spending a lot more time power washing the concrete driveway.

The most attractive aspects of using the electric power washers for homeowners, they are considerably less intimidating to use, and a lot less expensive than heavy duty gas pressure washers.

For the most part, we simply hook up our garden hose to the inlet fitting on the power washer, plug the power cord into a 20amp outdoor receptacle, and test the GFCI. With the green light on and water flowing as it, should we simply turn the power switch on and go about our spring cleaning business, what could be simpler.

The biggest draw back to the small electric power washers I see, we will need either to purchase our own or borrow a friend’s or relatives. Rental or hire centers do not fool with these machines.

Electric homeowner model power washers, simply do not last, you can expect somewhere around 30 or 40 hours or so of operation before they reach their homeowners worst nightmare, that damned design obsolescence we way too often read and hear about.

2. The best gas pressure washer for a homeowner

Spring cleaning projects around the house and gardens, I bet you as I, have a tendency to allow spring cleaning projects expand to the amount of time we simply do not have available.

The more we can get done in a short amount of time, the more productive we feel we have been in our efforts. Now I cannot speak for all of us however, I very much like to feel like my time has been spent productively, how about you?

With selecting the best gas pressure washer a homeowner should use to be productive in mind, let us discuss what we homeowners should use to clean our exposed aggregate driveway, concrete walk pavers, and stained concrete porch.

Concrete I grant you, is a rock hard building material that lends itself rather nicely to great looking and extremely long lasting driveways, porches, walkways and patios, however, when left unsealed being extremely porous becomes a dirt magnet.

The most efficient method for cleaning concrete is power washing, using a 3000psi pressure washer that delivers a minimum 3gpm is a great place to start.

A good 3000psi with the minimum 3gpm provides us with 9000 cleaning units of dirt blasting power, as you might imagine earning the before mentioned pressure washers the well earned nick name of water blaster.

Remember this is a place to start, not the end all or be all best pressure washer to clean stubborn stains and dirt off concrete surfaces.

The larger end of the spectrum, for homeowners in my humble opinion anyway, we find the butt kicking entry-level professional sized pressure washers.

Professionals need machines that are extremely easy to set up, take a no nonsense approach to power washing, that get the job done quick, fast, and in a hurry.

The most important thing to remember, when comparing lesser-powered pressure washers to more powerful machines, we need to understand what and how GPM effects the way a pressure washer works.

GPM is simply the measure of how many Gallons of water per minute a pressure washer pumps through the high-pressure nozzle on the end of the cleaning wand.

The more water pumped through the nozzle at a given pressure, the more cleaning power, or cleaning units a power washer will have, and the harder it will be to control.

Imagine for a moment, getting behind the wheel of a small gas sipping compact car. Start the engine, put the car in gear and put the gas pedal to the floor.

What happens, it takes off no excitement, no smoking the tires or any white-knuckle experience.

Conversely, jump behind the wheel of a 600hp Viper, fire that gas guzzling monster up, put her into gear foot to the floor if you dare, and enjoy the thrill .

Now I know there are some of us that will enjoy the experience, still others of us might just soil their under pants.

The most productive heavy duty power washers provide 3,000, 4,000 plus PSI, and 4 plus GPM.

All jokes aside, larger more powerful pressure washers, do clean better, faster, and do a much better job of cleaning stubborn dirt, loose flaking paint or road salts from concrete driveways or any other concrete surface for that matter.

Rent, hire or purchase the power washer and accessories I recommend you buy from amazon in this article, you will soon discover a good power washer is, as useful, and indispensable, as your trusty gas powered lawn mower.

Enjoy all your spring cleaning projects, and a beautiful landscape. Mike

The author of this publication, Mike Teddleton owns the copyright to Power Washing concrete driveway, sidewalk, patio and porch The rights to publish this article in print or online can only be granted by contacting me the author in writing. You may use the intro and link back to the article directing the reader back to my post here at HubPages where they may find the story in its entirety

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