Two machines sit on the shelf: one is a few hundred pounds, and the other is several times that.
Both say they do 150 bar.
The cheap one is not cheap. It asks for less money at the start and more money later.
To see that, stop comparing purchase prices and start comparing cost per working hour.
The sum is simple, takes about five minutes, and changes almost every buying decision we see.
The sum
Total cost divided by total working hours.
Total cost is what you paid, plus every part, service and repair over the machine's life. Then subtract whatever you get back at the end.
Total working hours is how many hours it earns before it stops being worth fixing.
Worked through with realistic numbers, it usually looks like this.
Buy a budget machine for a few hundred pounds and work it hard. It will often give somewhere between two and four hundred working hours before the pump gives up.
There are no spares, so that is the end of it. Divide the purchase price by those hours, and you land at roughly a pound an hour, sometimes more.
A professional machine costs several times as much up front, and it comes apart on the bench. Seals, valves and the unloader are all replaceable, so the pump gets rebuilt rather than replaced.
Machines in daily trade use run for many thousands of hours across a decade or more. Divide across that, and the number lands in pence.
The expensive machine is cheaper per hour by a wide margin, and that gap widens the harder you work it.
What actually ends a machine's life
It is almost never the thing people expect.
Pumps do not usually die of old age, but of a part you cannot buy.
The cheap machine has a sealed pump assembly, or a head made of a material nobody can rework. Or a design where the pump and motor are one unit.
The seal kit that would fix it does not exist as a product. So a thirty-pound failure writes off the whole machine.
That is the real difference between the two boxes on the shelf. Not the bar rating, and not the badge. Whether there is a parts counter behind it.
We keep seal kits, valve kits, unloaders and oil in stock for this reason. It is the least exciting thing about the business and the most important.
The three specifications that drive hours
Want to know how long a machine will last before you buy it? Three numbers tell you most of what you need.
Motor speed. A pump turning at 1,400 rpm does half the strokes of one at 2,800 rpm. Half the strokes means half the wear on valves, plungers and seals.
Slow motors are bigger, heavier and more expensive, which is why cheap machines do not use them.
Duty cycle. How long the machine can run before it needs to rest. A machine rated for continuous running is one product. A machine rated for twenty minutes in the hour is another.
Matching pressure figures does not change that. Match the duty cycle to your longest working day, not your average one.
Pump construction. A brass head with ceramic-coated plungers, bolted together over serviceable seals, rebuilds again and again.
We have gone into the detail of what makes a pump last elsewhere. It comes down to materials and access.
Downtime is the cost nobody puts in the spreadsheet
Here is the number that decides it for anyone earning with the machine.
If your machine stops on a Tuesday, you do not lose the price of the repair. You lose the day. You lose the customer you had to reschedule, and sometimes you lose them for good.
Put a realistic figure on one lost day. For most operators, it is more than the entire annual servicing cost of a good machine.
Two lost days in a year and the budget machine has already cost more than the professional one. That holds regardless of what either costs to buy.
This is why serviceability matters more than warranty, because a warranty gets you a replacement in the end. A parts counter and a workshop get you working again this week.
Servicing is a cost, and it is the cheap part
A good machine still costs money to keep: pump oil, seal kits, an annual service.
Our servicing starts at an £85 express check while you wait. A £169 full workshop service for a cold water machine sits above it. Spread across a year of trade use, that is a very small number per hour.
It is also the thing that produces the long life the sum depends on. A machine serviced annually reaches the hours that make it cheap.
A machine run until it stops does not. Then the owner decides the expensive machine was not worth it, having never given it the thing it needed.
There is one more reason to book it. Kränzle extends the commercial warranty from twelve to twenty-four months. You have to service the machine towards the end of its first year.
The service pays for part of itself in cover, and that is before you count the failures it stops.
How to tell which kind of machine you are looking at
Four questions, and you can ask them of any machine in any shop.
- Can I buy a seal kit for this pump? If the answer is no, or nobody knows, you have your answer.
- What speed does the motor turn at? If the specification does not say, assume the faster one.
- What is the duty cycle? If the specification does not say, assume it is short.
- Who services it, and where? A machine with no service route is a disposable machine with a long warranty.
Are all four answers good? Work out the cost per hour, and you will usually find the expensive machine is the cheap one.
Frequently asked questions
Are expensive pressure washers actually worth it?
For anyone using one to earn, almost always. Purchase price is a small part of lifetime cost once you include repairs, downtime and replacement.
A rebuildable machine running at a lower motor speed delivers thousands of working hours. That brings the cost per hour well below a budget machine replaced every year or two.
How long should a commercial pressure washer last?
Specify it well, service it annually and feed it a proper water supply. It should give a decade or more of trade use.
The limits are usually maintenance and water quality, not the machine itself. You replace the wearing parts as they go.
What is duty cycle on a pressure washer?
It is how long the machine can run before it needs to stop and cool. Domestic machines often carry a rating for short bursts within an hour, while professional machines are rated for continuous running.
Push past the duty cycle, and you overheat the motor and pump, which shortens the life of both.
Is it cheaper to repair or replace a pressure washer?
With a serviceable machine, repair is almost always cheaper. Seals, valves and unloaders come as separate parts, and the expensive castings survive.
With a sealed budget pump, there is usually no repair route at all. That is what makes the initial saving misleading.
Does servicing a pressure washer really extend its life?
Substantially. Most premature pump failures come from degraded seals, contaminated oil and worn valves. All of those are routine service items, caught early.
An annual service costs a fraction of a pump rebuild. On Kränzle machines, it can extend the commercial warranty from twelve to twenty-four months.
The bottom line
Stop comparing the number on the label, and work out what each machine costs you per working hour.
Put a real figure on a lost day. Then check whether anyone can sell you a seal kit for it in five years.
Do that, and the decision usually makes itself.
Kränzle UK sells machines built for rebuilding and stocks the parts to do it. We also run the workshop that does the work.
Tell us the hours you work, and we will tell you which machine gives the lowest cost per hour.