Clean It Up
UK Window Cleaning Forum => Window Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: michael papworth on August 20, 2008, 10:19:43 am
-
I'm more than a bit confused here. Or maybe I'm just being dense. Why do you need a pressure washer to clean gutters?
I've tried it a couple of times now on conservatory gutters, a hose pipe connected to the customer's tap is quite powerful enough to "sweep" muck through the gutters.
What I've done on conservatories is to get most of it out by hand (ugh!) and then use a spray gun to take 99% of the gunge from the insides and sweep out the remaining muck.
I'll admit that it isn't perfect, but it's quite good enough. After all, we're talking about gutters here, not operating theatres.
I can see the point of an extendable lance and all the other kit, but why not simply connect it directly to an outside tap?
BTW #1. - The pressure needed to get water up to 15 foot (the height of the average domestic gutter) is 0,5 bar = 7.5 psi. Mains pressure would usually have plenty of pressure to spare. After all, it lifts water into a tank in the roof.
BTW #2 - I discovered this by accident. I was cleaning a conservatory roof and there were quite a few twigs and leaves stuck up under the base plate of the finial, trapped behind the brush that's supposed to stop it getting up there in the first place!
I spent ages trying to hook the stuff out using a pole - and it just woundn't budge.
The customer had left their hose pipe out, so I tried that in desperation. I set it to a single jet and sprayed up on the roof under the finial base. It worked brilliantly. The water jet just swept the muck away. I noticed that the jet also stripped off a layer of dried up algae in the gutter.
Then I used it to finish off the gutter and it saved loads of time and did a much less messy job than cleaning with microfibres.)
-
I always use tap-water under mains pressure, just hook it up to the pole.