Hotsy Pressure Washers?

[bran153]

Has anyone used a Hotsy Hot water Pressure washer or heard anything about them I have been told that they work great and was looking for some more opinoins on them.
Thank you !

[2drtahoez71]

if you need it for washing a car, id go with something gentler...youre not trying to blast the paint off your car. I mainly use my pressure washer for underbody/wheels & wheelwell/really dirty cars. It basically just makes rinsing off a car faster, althought thats debatable.

I use a 5.5hp craftsman (one of the smaller ones) and it works just fine.

If your trying to clean driveways, then youd want to go with something bigger, like the Hotsy Hot Water one your talking about

[fireman03]

We use the hotsy around the firehouse. I would not recommend using it for cleaning vehicles. It is much too harsh. As a matter of fact I can recall a buddy of my burning the p*ss out of his foot THROUGH his leather work boots.

[denverdetail]

bran,
Hotsy is just a brand. They make heated and unheated pressure washers. The brand itself is a very good comercial brand of washer. For what they cost new though, you may be better served with a less expensive brand. Here is a little education piece about pressure washers and their cleaning ability.
People always concentrate on getting a high psi unit. Not so important. A washers cleaning ability is called its CU`s cleaning units. This is calculated by multiplying the psi by the gallons per minute. So a 3000 psi unit at 1 gallon per minute will give you a washer with 3000 CU`s. A 1000 psi unit at 3 gallons per minute is also a 3000 CU unit. My opinion is get a lower psi unit with a larger water flow. This will get you a machine that takes less ware and tear on the pump and motor. Hope this was helpfull.

[jimmybuffit]

denverdetail is correct.

I use a 1100 psi Hotsy unit at 3 gallons per minute. Electric, no heat.
I went thru 2 Karchers before I wised up!

A quality product

Jim

[Scooter]

The problem with Hotsy, and Karcher is that everything is proprietary. That means that you have to go to the dealer to get the parts. There are a lot of brands out there that use non-proprietary parts. If you are going to buy a large pressure washer, I would recommend one of those.
As for washing cars with a pressure washer, as with anything it depends on the nut holding the equipement. If you get the larger pressure washer, you can use a larger tip to reduce the pressure. You do not want to adjust the unloader!!! That is like choking off the carburetor to make an engine run slower. It will work, but it is really hard on the equipment. The advantage to getting the larger pressure washer is that you can also do other types of work with it, and quite often it is much more profitable than detailing.

Scooter