Pressure Washer Ratings

Choosing a product that is powerful and durable enough to ft your cleaning needs is key. The heavier the duty level, the longer lasting and more powerful the cleaning machine is and the more time you will save.

There are a lot of nasty spots that you can find hard to get rid of. Motor oil stains in the driveway. Slippery mildew on the deck. Carbonized cookout detritus on the grill. All you see ahead is hours of backbreaking labor using plenty of elbow grease.

You just want the mess gone. A pressure washer can efficiently exile the filth in a fraction of the time it takes using a brush and bucket of water. It transforms your humble garden hose into a dirt-demolishing, deep-cleaning machine.

Before you break out the heavy artillery, remember that all pressure washers should be used with care. These tools deliver a concentrated and powerful high-pressure stream of water, capable of causing serious injury and damaging property. For this reason, further explained below, we limited our recommendations to a subset of the many models that we tested.

How Does a Pressure Washer Work?

Pressure washers use an electric motor or gas engine to power a pump, which forces water at high pressure through a concentrating nozzle to quickly discharge away collected filth on surfaces such as decks, patios, and driveways. You can clean sidings, outdoor chairs and other items that are really hard to clean.

The cleaning ability of a pressure washer is excessive, removing dirt, grime and algae efficiently and effectively. Some may consider this item a luxury purchase, but a pressure washer can significantly increase the ability to uphold and clean your property, giving it greater worth. The goal of this buying guide is to help you understand what a pressure washer does and what you need to look for when deciding to purchase one for yourself.

Before we start talking about buying pressure washers we need to define some basic ratings:

HP (Horse Power): This is how much power the engine can generate. This rating is important because it directly relates to how much pressure the pump can generate.

This is how much power the engine can generate. This rating is important because it directly relates to how much pressure the pump can generate. PSI (Pounds Per Square Inch): This is how much force is being generated and released by the pump.

This is how much force is being generated and released by the pump. GPM (Gallons Per Minute): This is the rating given to express how much water is being spent and released by the machine.

This is the rating given to express how much water is being spent and released by the machine. CPU (Cleaning Power Units): This is one of the least understood, yet most important rating for pressure washers. To regulate the CPU rating of a pressure washer, you multiply the PSI by the GPM. The greater the CPU the greater the ability the machine has for cleaning deeply and efficiently. Often a consumer is so focused on the PSI of the machine that they do not take the time to look at the CPU. For example, a pressure washer may have 2800 PSI and 2 GPM giving it a CPU of 5600. Another pressure washer has only 2400 PSI but has 3 GPM giving it a CPU of 7200. In this example, the lower PSI machine has more than 20% more cleaning power than the higher PSI rated machine. The result is that the 2400 PSI machine will be able to clean an area 20% faster than the 2800 PSI machine. CPU is sometimes called Cleaning Unit (CU) or Cleaning Power(CP). The CPU rating allows the consumer to associate different machines effectively.

Now consider this, a garden hose will be about 6 GPM and 10 PSI giving it 60 CPU. With a standard spray nozzle attached to the garden hose you can get around 5 GPM at about 40 PSI generating 200 CPU. We all have seen the difference of how much more operative a simple spray nozzle is at cleaning dirt off surfaces. Trying to clean your driveway with your garden hose spray nozzle generating 200 CPU is ineffective. However, if we take a midrange pressure washer a 2 GPM and 2500 PSI (5000 CPU) this is a astounding 25 times increases over a spray nozzle. A commercial pressure washer at 4 GPM and 4000 PSI is an unbelievable 16000 CPU.

It is not difficult to imagine the difference in competence.