Step-by-step guide to pressure washing your driveway
When pressure washing the driveway of your residential home, it is imperative to follow certain crucial steps for safety so as to produce the intended desired result.
Before you hook up the pressure washer, you may want to move large debris with a push broom or a leaf blower to give better access to the surface that needs to be cleaned with your pressure washer.
To begin the initial steps of cleaning, you must line up the equipment and have the proper knowledge. The first piece of equipment that you will need is access to water and a garden hose. The garden hose will be feeding your pressure washer.
If you are using a pressure washer from a store like Home Depot or Lowe’s, you likely will not need a larger tank to pull water from, such as a buffer tank.
Hooking the spigot directly up to your pressure washer, you will then turn the water access on. After turning on the spigot to the pressure washer, make sure that you have your pressure line hooked up to the pressure washer unit.
Connect the Lance and wand with the correct size tip on the end of your pressure washing line.
Special caution- If you do not use the intended and correct size tips for your pressure washer that you purchased or rented, then you can damage the unloader valve.
The unloader valve can be damaged because the orifice on the end of the pressure line is not the correct size it can confuse the springs and will cause it to open and shut incorrectly and not monitor the flow of pressure coming through the pump.
Now that you have everything cleared off and you have your pressure washer ready, you need to start thinking about safety before you turn it on.
Eye protection is an absolute must. Many people damage their eyes using high-powered water equipment tools such as pressure washers each year. This is easily mitigated by covering your eyes with simple eye protection.
The next piece of safety equipment that is an absolute must is ear protection. Regardless of what type of pressure washer you are using, the decibels most likely will exceed what you should be hearing through your ears for a long duration of time.
Gloves are also a really good idea here at Power washing professionals in Vancouver, Washington. Our local small business enjoys using small, light, thin gardening gloves to protect our employees’ hands from abrasion and the simple duties of work activity along with chemical stains.
After setting all of your safety equipment up properly and having all of your equipment ready, You are ready to start the pressure washer and begin cleaning.
To start the pressure washer, make sure that you pull on the trigger to allow flow so that the pump can spin freely to start the motor.
Once you pull on the motor, start the cable and have the trigger open with the choke open as well, then close slowly after the machine begins running to allow it to get off choke mode.
Now that the machine is running, you are ready to begin cleaning.
When using a small or large rotary style, surface cleaners always start on the outside perimeter and create a box pattern with your approach to the cleaning surface.
After boxing in the entire surface, now create an even line up and down the driveway with your surface cleaner.
If you’re not getting the desired result, make sure you slow down so that the bars on the surface cleaner have time to do their work.
After using the surface cleaner, take off the surface cleaner attachment and switch to a 25° or 15° fan tip. Use your fan tip and pressure line to get in the cracks and rinse the surface clean.
Make sure you rinse all surrounding housing, cars, and all structures to reveal the natural beauty of your new driveway now!
