Best soap for a Power Washer??

[MI_Roger]

I bought a new Karcher Power Washer a month or so ago and bought the Karcher soap concentrate to use with it. This weekend I had the occassion to use Simple Green with a garage broom to scrub my pool cover, and use the power washer with Karcher soap to power wash landscape timbers and decking.

The two soaps are very similar in viscosity, color, and smell. The one big difference is cost. Simple Green is $5.99 per jug and Karcher is $15.99 for a jug. $10 more!

Since the soap is added via a siphon feed after the pump I am wondering if the "official" Karcher soap is realy necessary? Has anyone had experience using other brands? Good or Bad.

 

[demarpaint]

In the 30+ years I've been prepping exteriors of houses for paint, the soap used depends on what you plan on cleaning. There is no best soap for a pressure washer. What you clean a house with depends on the type of siding, and/or the surface you want to clean.

I've mixed car soap with a little Clorox to clean mildew off vinyl siding. That mix is better than anything store bought for that application. I'd be willing to bet that would have done a bang up job on your pool cover too. Jomax cleaner would be very good for timbers and wood decking. HTH

 

[chad8]

I have been professionally pressure cleaning things for a dozen years. There are some cleaners that work very well with an injection system. I have been using 99% pure sodium percarbonate , which is basically double strength oxyclean, for a lot of jobs.
Most people , do not know this secret.
You can buy it online very cheap. Mix it with very hot water and either a bit of degreaser , algecide , or soap , depending what u are scrubbing ,and you can clean or deodorize about anything.
It comes in a powder and sometimes is tough to dissolve , but if you want a one stop cleaner , this is as close as you can get.
The best thing about it , it is non-toxic and breaks down to peroxide and soda ash.

 

[bigmike]

Don't mean to hijack, but does anyone know a good soap/cleaner for brick applications? I'd like to use something besides water on 1 side of my house because of mildew seems to always grow there on the brick. I don't want to stain or change the color of the brick though.

Also, are there solutions around that won't hurt the pump?

 

[tom slick]

You shouldn't run anything but water through the pump. If you are using the injector then it injects after the pump and the solution won't hurt the pump.
Borax soap works really well on mildew.