Drainage

Before you setup your pressure washing equipment and start cleaning you might want to have a look at your customers’ drains. If they are blocked you'll need to unblock them, otherwise all the mud and dirty water you bring up when you start working will have nowhere to go. People very rarely take the time to look after their drains, most likely because reaching your arm down a drain and pulling out all the rotten leaves isn't particularly nice.

Tip: You'll want to have plenty of bin liners with you on every job you do to place the mess you pull up from the drains and mud you get off the driveways inside.

You can turn on your garden hose and push it down the drain a bit to help the unblocking process.

Drainage is an important issue: if you don't have good drainage it can make a job that at first seemed very simple become very difficult.

Filling the Buffer Tank

The next task you'll want to start on is getting your buffer tank filling up. Roll your tank into the position where you plan to start your pressure washer from, connect your garden hose up to your customers tap, put the end of the hose in the buffer tank.

Pressure Washer

Set up pressure washer next to buffer tank. Insert suction hose filter into buffer tank's water, connect other end of suction hose onto pumps water inlet. Connect high pressure hose to outlet of pump. Connect other end of high pressure hose to lance or flat surface cleaner.

Note: If you are running your pressure washer off positive flow then you won’t be messing about with a buffer tank but instead connecting it directly to the customer’s tap.

Kit Up

Place on waterproof over-trousers, wellington boots and safety glasses.

Fire Up Pressure Washer

Turn on pressure washer.

Cleaning Strategy

If you own a flat surface cleaner you'll want to use this on the area you're cleaning before you use your lance.

Use the FSC the same way you would a lawnmower, you need to be systematic with it. You walk it up and down in lines, this way you hopefully won't leave un-cleaned areas. When using the FSC you'll probably want to have your pressure washer running at full power.

After you’ve done the area with the FSC you'll want to switch to the lance so open your water release tap on your pressure washer. This will stop water going to the FSC.

Tip: When you change between your FSC and lance there will still be pressure in the hose. You will need to give the gun trigger a squeeze after you either turned off the pressure washer or opened the water release tap to be able to disconnect the FSC/lance from the high pressure hose.

Disconnect the FSC from the high pressure hose and hook it up to the lance. Close the water release tap and begin going over the same area you've done with the FSC in a systematic fashion, getting any moss or weeds the FSC missed as you go.

You will also need to use the lance for rinsing the dirt that the FSC brought up down a drain. If you can't get all the dirt to go down a drain you'll need to scoop it up with your hands and place it into bin bags to dispose off at home.

Alternatively you could scoop it into a bucket and if there happens to be some big bushes/wooded area nearby, deposit it there. It's only mud and water and won't do the plants any harm. If you've been using chemicals to clean oil off the drive, or some other substance though this will be a bad idea.

Re-Clean Drains

When you pressure wash an area it can bring an amazingly large amount of mud up. Most of this will be sent down a drain, but occasionally there will be that much it will block the drain. You’ll need to unblock the drains after you’ve finished pressure washing.

Re-Sanding

If you’ve been cleaning block-paving you’ll need to re-sand the area once it’s dry.