Independent buying guides
For drivers who clean their own car and want to know when a pressure washer beats a coin-operated bay. One question per guide, a cost-per-wash calculator with its formula shown, and dated sources.
Each one answers a single buying question.
Formula, units and assumptions shown on the page.
Each with the date the link was checked.
Free-licence images, photographer credited.
Each guide answers one buying question and shows the figures behind the answer.
How to choose
A pressure washer pays for itself against a paid wash, not against a hose. The break-even in washes, the surface you may wash on, and the GFCI check.
Photo: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Budget and prices
Equipment spread over its life, soap per wash, water per wash. The full arithmetic that puts a home wash near $0.98 against $12 for an automatic tunnel.
Photo: DeFacto · CC BY-SA 2.5 · Wikimedia Commons
Technique
Wheels first, panels last, dry before it dries itself. The washing sequence that prevents swirl marks, and the 25 minutes an interior actually takes.
Photo: Eric Friedebach · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
The decisions that actually change what you end up with.
1
Photo: Eric Friedebach · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Standards, warnings and the checks worth doing.
0
Photo: Eric Friedebach · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
The method that changes the result.
1
Photo: Eric Friedebach · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
What the total comes to once everything is counted.
1
Photo: Eric Friedebach · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Intervals, parts and what they cost.
0
Photo: Ian Kirk from Broadstone, Dorset, UK · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
The expensive errors that are easy to avoid.
0
Photo: DeFacto · CC BY-SA 2.5 · Wikimedia Commons
Each calculator shows its formula, units and assumptions. Nothing is estimated for you in secret.
What a cross-border order really costs once shipping, duty and tax are added.
landed cost = (item price + shipping) + duty + tax, where duty = item price x duty rate, and tax = (item price + shipping + duty) x tax rate
Turns a price into a cost per use, so a dear item used often can be compared with a cheap one used rarely.
cost per use = (price + consumables over the whole life) / (uses per week x 52 x years)
Compares buying the tool against hiring it, for the number of jobs you actually have.
buy = tool price + consumables per job x jobs - resale value; hire = hire rate per day x days per job x jobs; break-even jobs = (tool price - resale) / (hire cost per job - consumables per job)
Every figure in a guide is taken from a named source, with the date it was checked. Where a number is an assumption or an example, it says so in the same sentence.
We do not run paid product tests, we do not publish reader reviews, and we do not claim to have handled every product mentioned. Where a claim needs a lab or a long-term test we do not have, the guide says that plainly.
Photographs are free-licence images from Wikimedia Commons or Openverse, credited to the photographer with the licence named. Charts are drawn from the figures printed in the same guide.
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