Pressure washing - good/bad idea or better marketing req'd
- Thread starter Mojjo
- Start date
S
S-Marketing
I'm not trying to belittle anyone, if anything, as I said in my last post, its the opposite.
Comments such as 'lowering yourself to my level' are a bit like the ones about calling me a 'so called expert'. You have no idea who I am or what I have achieved, so they are a little silly.
I know these are your first few posts, but we are all supposed to be providing useful info to the OP. People on here have differing opinions, thats what makes it valuable. I think the OP should be careful about shooting anything that needs cleaning with a pressure washer, thats all.
Lets just agree to disagree. How's that?
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S
S-Marketing
I dont think you need to worry about me being angry after a disagreement with a wally over 2 years ago.
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I wouldn't describe myself as a 'wally' for claiming that block paving CAN be cleaned without damaging the sand substrate underneath.
You claim that pressure washing block paving damages it because the water removes the sand underneath???
Thats just wrong.
If it was the case, why does block paving not wash away with heavy rain?
Sure, you do remove the sand between the gaps, but this does not matter as it is replaces with new dried sand afterwards.
Anyway, this is a two year old topic now so I won't get into it again, but I resent being called a 'wally' by someone who talks such rubbish!
You claim that pressure washing block paving damages it because the water removes the sand underneath???
Thats just wrong.
If it was the case, why does block paving not wash away with heavy rain?
Sure, you do remove the sand between the gaps, but this does not matter as it is replaces with new dried sand afterwards.
Anyway, this is a two year old topic now so I won't get into it again, but I resent being called a 'wally' by someone who talks such rubbish!
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J
Jetbusters
I stumbled across this thread whilst looking for something else, but thought I'd offer some advice based on personal experience, which other may find useful.
Firstly, as Alex mentioned, get yourself a decent pressure-washing unit.
It's easy to be tempted to save money when starting out, and opt for one of the high-end "domestic" pressure washers, but unless you want to limit yourself to fairly simple cleaning tasks, you are far better off investing in a higher-powered "commercial" grade pressure washer.
There are no hard values, in terms of minimum specification for a pressure washer, however I'd personally recommend investing in one that is higher than the following:
- Minimum 190 bar/2760 psi pressure
- 12 litres per minute flow-rate.
When we started out, we invested in a Brian Nixon "Site-master" hot water pressure washer. In terms of spec, it outputs 3500 PSI from Vanguard 16 HP petrol engine, at 15 litres per minute, and also heats water up to 140C. It was pretty expensive, but we wanted to be able to cover almost any job, and it has the added benefit of being completely self-contained (no electricity needed as it runs off petrol and started with a car battery, and you can connect two trigger gun lances to it, which meant we could work in pairs to get jobs done quicker.
We rigged out a Fiat Ducato LWB van with the Nixon pressure washer and a 1000 litre baffled water tank, so that the unit was fully portable, but to get yourself started you don't really need any of that.
Having had a quick search on eBay, there are lots of pressure washers out there that would be ideal for an individual to get started. I cant comment on every manufacturer, but the SIP, Sealey, Kiam, Draper units are all pretty good, and can be purchased for under £1000. I cant comment on the top-end Karcher pressure-washers as I dont have any experience with the commercial-grade ones, but as I said before, I would steer clear of the domestic grade units as they simply wont provide you with the power you would need.
In terms of water supply, if your budget will stretch, then you should ideally provide your own water so that you are not limited to locations and customers where a water-feed is provided, however some of the portable devices can be feed directly from a water tap feed, so providing you speak with the customer it shouldnt be an issue. You should also ensure you have the right set of connectors for your hoses, so you can cover all bases when connecting up to different feeds. One option is to provide a discount to customers who are willing to provide a water feed. I should also state that some insurance providers of van insurance may want to know if you are carrying a water-tank, which may affect your premium.
In terms of accessories and other equipment, get yourself some water-proof clothing. I personally recommend gore-tex clothing as it is waterproof but breathable. It is more expensive than basic clothing, but if you are wearing it day-in, day-out, its worth investing in. Also get yourself some decent gloves, boots and a face-guard. I would also recommend getting some caution slippery surface A-boards to put up when working.
In terms of marketing, I still feel there is a good market for leaflet distribution. If you can do the distribution yourself, thats even better, as you can look out for driveways that already look grubby in your local area, and pop a leaflet through the door. Get yourself a decent company logo drawn up and some vehicle livery with your contact details. As a tip, Id also recommend investing in a website. If you have little experience of website design, then I would suggest the following.
1. Visit somewhere like 1and1 and buy a domain name with hosting. This should cost you no more than £70 per year.
2. Once purchased, get a web designer to make you a website. I recommend a website called Freelancer.com where various web-designers will bid on your project. You can look at their feedback and decide if previous web designs theyve made are to your taste. This should cost less than £150 for something decent. You also have the added benefit of working with the web designer (usually by email or Skype they keep the costs down by outsourcing from India & Asia, but dont worry, your web design point of contact will always speak English) to ensure you get exactly what you want, and you only pay once completely satisfied.
3. Get yourself some business cards made up and give them out to as many people as possible.
4. Get friends and relatives to post a little advertisement on their Facebook pages and twitter accounts to further spread the service you offer.
Again, there is a temptation to save money and cut corners with this, but I personally think it looks pretty amateurish when a company has a really bad web-site and worse still, when they have a personal Hotmail or gmail email address It gives the impression that they've invested about 5 minutes of their time in their business.
In terms of actually providing the surface, do your homework before pulling out the pressure-washing lance and spraying! Its important to remember that the surface you are cleaning, dictates the pressure requirements from the washer. For example, concrete will withstand far higher flow rates than wooden decking! Im not going to type up every variation of flow rate and sealant and treatment as Ill be typing all afternoon, but Id highly recommend taking a look at the SmartSeal website, which provides a wide range of sealers and treatments for various surface types.
You could also invest in a pressure-washing training course, which will provide information on things like law regulation (e.g. control of noise at work regulation 2005), Risk Assessments, Health and Safety, Hazards when using pressure washing equipment, first aid, etc.
Other things to note remember that you will need public liability insurance.
Thats all I can think of at the moment, but if feel free to PM me if you have any questions on anything I havent covered.
Best of luck to anyone thinking of getting into the business!
Firstly, as Alex mentioned, get yourself a decent pressure-washing unit.
It's easy to be tempted to save money when starting out, and opt for one of the high-end "domestic" pressure washers, but unless you want to limit yourself to fairly simple cleaning tasks, you are far better off investing in a higher-powered "commercial" grade pressure washer.
There are no hard values, in terms of minimum specification for a pressure washer, however I'd personally recommend investing in one that is higher than the following:
- Minimum 190 bar/2760 psi pressure
- 12 litres per minute flow-rate.
When we started out, we invested in a Brian Nixon "Site-master" hot water pressure washer. In terms of spec, it outputs 3500 PSI from Vanguard 16 HP petrol engine, at 15 litres per minute, and also heats water up to 140C. It was pretty expensive, but we wanted to be able to cover almost any job, and it has the added benefit of being completely self-contained (no electricity needed as it runs off petrol and started with a car battery, and you can connect two trigger gun lances to it, which meant we could work in pairs to get jobs done quicker.
We rigged out a Fiat Ducato LWB van with the Nixon pressure washer and a 1000 litre baffled water tank, so that the unit was fully portable, but to get yourself started you don't really need any of that.
Having had a quick search on eBay, there are lots of pressure washers out there that would be ideal for an individual to get started. I cant comment on every manufacturer, but the SIP, Sealey, Kiam, Draper units are all pretty good, and can be purchased for under £1000. I cant comment on the top-end Karcher pressure-washers as I dont have any experience with the commercial-grade ones, but as I said before, I would steer clear of the domestic grade units as they simply wont provide you with the power you would need.
In terms of water supply, if your budget will stretch, then you should ideally provide your own water so that you are not limited to locations and customers where a water-feed is provided, however some of the portable devices can be feed directly from a water tap feed, so providing you speak with the customer it shouldnt be an issue. You should also ensure you have the right set of connectors for your hoses, so you can cover all bases when connecting up to different feeds. One option is to provide a discount to customers who are willing to provide a water feed. I should also state that some insurance providers of van insurance may want to know if you are carrying a water-tank, which may affect your premium.
In terms of accessories and other equipment, get yourself some water-proof clothing. I personally recommend gore-tex clothing as it is waterproof but breathable. It is more expensive than basic clothing, but if you are wearing it day-in, day-out, its worth investing in. Also get yourself some decent gloves, boots and a face-guard. I would also recommend getting some caution slippery surface A-boards to put up when working.
In terms of marketing, I still feel there is a good market for leaflet distribution. If you can do the distribution yourself, thats even better, as you can look out for driveways that already look grubby in your local area, and pop a leaflet through the door. Get yourself a decent company logo drawn up and some vehicle livery with your contact details. As a tip, Id also recommend investing in a website. If you have little experience of website design, then I would suggest the following.
1. Visit somewhere like 1and1 and buy a domain name with hosting. This should cost you no more than £70 per year.
2. Once purchased, get a web designer to make you a website. I recommend a website called Freelancer.com where various web-designers will bid on your project. You can look at their feedback and decide if previous web designs theyve made are to your taste. This should cost less than £150 for something decent. You also have the added benefit of working with the web designer (usually by email or Skype they keep the costs down by outsourcing from India & Asia, but dont worry, your web design point of contact will always speak English) to ensure you get exactly what you want, and you only pay once completely satisfied.
3. Get yourself some business cards made up and give them out to as many people as possible.
4. Get friends and relatives to post a little advertisement on their Facebook pages and twitter accounts to further spread the service you offer.
Again, there is a temptation to save money and cut corners with this, but I personally think it looks pretty amateurish when a company has a really bad web-site and worse still, when they have a personal Hotmail or gmail email address It gives the impression that they've invested about 5 minutes of their time in their business.
In terms of actually providing the surface, do your homework before pulling out the pressure-washing lance and spraying! Its important to remember that the surface you are cleaning, dictates the pressure requirements from the washer. For example, concrete will withstand far higher flow rates than wooden decking! Im not going to type up every variation of flow rate and sealant and treatment as Ill be typing all afternoon, but Id highly recommend taking a look at the SmartSeal website, which provides a wide range of sealers and treatments for various surface types.
You could also invest in a pressure-washing training course, which will provide information on things like law regulation (e.g. control of noise at work regulation 2005), Risk Assessments, Health and Safety, Hazards when using pressure washing equipment, first aid, etc.
Other things to note remember that you will need public liability insurance.
Thats all I can think of at the moment, but if feel free to PM me if you have any questions on anything I havent covered.
Best of luck to anyone thinking of getting into the business!
Upvote
0
I know this is an old thread but just incase some one new is thinking about the same business stumbles across this I am going to add to it.
With regards to the argument earlier in the thread both are right and wrong. If a driveway is laid correctly and sand is compressed etc and drive is vibration plated to set the blocks you won't have a problem pressure washing it. If you see it has not been looked after and blocks are damaged and crumbling etc then use your common sense. With regards to it being unpopular in the summer is total rubish. I clean as many drives in summer as I do in winter if not more. Winter is good as paths, drives etc get slippery so people want them cleaned but in summer people want it to look pleasing to the eye. Weeds like most plants thrive more in our summer. Not as much moss and algae but definately other weeds. If you pressure wash a drive that has sanded joints then ALWAYS re sand these joints with a kiln dried sand as these joints being full give the drive its structural integrity. Pour the bag on drive and sweep it over joints. Gravity will do most of the work and as kiln dried is so fine it will find its way into any crevices it can providing it doesn't get wet and clumpy. Many will vibration plate again here but again if drive is looking a bit damaged be carefull as a vibration plate can cause problems. Spring is probably going to be your best time of year as the winters muck and slime is there and the weather is starting to change so you have the best of both worlds. I also seal coat drives and paths etc but there are many dealers out there different types and for different surfaces but that's a different topic. As this thread was originally about advertising I will go on to this now.
Leaflets are good and bad. You need to advertise to really make money but you also need money to advertise so if you have a smaller budget start with flyers. You can get 5000 a5 double sided flyers in colour for less than £100 if you shop about and do artwork yourself. When you start you will have a lot of free time so go out dropping flyers. Use your head again as you can quite often see if someone takes pride in their home or can afford this survice. 1 job will pay for those flyers. The % of flyers delivered and jobs from them isn't great as most people now hate them and don't even look at them these days but a lot still do if one catches their eye. Ask local shops, hair dressers, surgery's etc if you can leave some with them. After a while you will have had a few jobs. If you want to continue with leaflets then great but eventually you may not have time to leaflet drop so consider Google adwords. You can set your daily budget to suit you and you only pay when someone clicks through to your website. Yell.com is good as its roughly £20 a month and many older people who always used yellow pages and are getting in to the Internet will use yell.com because it's familiar to them. Also social media. Facebook is so easy to earn work. You may not get the big jobs on there but it gets people talking about you. Post regularly (but not pointless crap). I post before and after pictures of nearly every job especially the ones that show a drastic difference after your work. Also add a something else such as window cleaning, carpet cleaning etc. you need to have a good or really specialist business to be a one trick pony this day and age.
Last of all DO YOUR RESEARCH!!! I've studied all of my services a lot before I start to offer them to the public. There is a lot of wrong info out there so don't read one forum or watch one video and take their word for it. If you watch or read 10 videos/articles and 7 give the same advice and 3 are varied the odds are that the 7 are correct. Not always but most of the time. As well as comments from people who have run a number of different business'. Always makes me think why have they had so many if they are doing their work correctly and running a successful business
Sorry for the long long post but I feel previous comments where contradicting each other to prove their own point rather than looking at pros and cons so you can make your own decisions based on true and accurate info.
With regards to the argument earlier in the thread both are right and wrong. If a driveway is laid correctly and sand is compressed etc and drive is vibration plated to set the blocks you won't have a problem pressure washing it. If you see it has not been looked after and blocks are damaged and crumbling etc then use your common sense. With regards to it being unpopular in the summer is total rubish. I clean as many drives in summer as I do in winter if not more. Winter is good as paths, drives etc get slippery so people want them cleaned but in summer people want it to look pleasing to the eye. Weeds like most plants thrive more in our summer. Not as much moss and algae but definately other weeds. If you pressure wash a drive that has sanded joints then ALWAYS re sand these joints with a kiln dried sand as these joints being full give the drive its structural integrity. Pour the bag on drive and sweep it over joints. Gravity will do most of the work and as kiln dried is so fine it will find its way into any crevices it can providing it doesn't get wet and clumpy. Many will vibration plate again here but again if drive is looking a bit damaged be carefull as a vibration plate can cause problems. Spring is probably going to be your best time of year as the winters muck and slime is there and the weather is starting to change so you have the best of both worlds. I also seal coat drives and paths etc but there are many dealers out there different types and for different surfaces but that's a different topic. As this thread was originally about advertising I will go on to this now.
Leaflets are good and bad. You need to advertise to really make money but you also need money to advertise so if you have a smaller budget start with flyers. You can get 5000 a5 double sided flyers in colour for less than £100 if you shop about and do artwork yourself. When you start you will have a lot of free time so go out dropping flyers. Use your head again as you can quite often see if someone takes pride in their home or can afford this survice. 1 job will pay for those flyers. The % of flyers delivered and jobs from them isn't great as most people now hate them and don't even look at them these days but a lot still do if one catches their eye. Ask local shops, hair dressers, surgery's etc if you can leave some with them. After a while you will have had a few jobs. If you want to continue with leaflets then great but eventually you may not have time to leaflet drop so consider Google adwords. You can set your daily budget to suit you and you only pay when someone clicks through to your website. Yell.com is good as its roughly £20 a month and many older people who always used yellow pages and are getting in to the Internet will use yell.com because it's familiar to them. Also social media. Facebook is so easy to earn work. You may not get the big jobs on there but it gets people talking about you. Post regularly (but not pointless crap). I post before and after pictures of nearly every job especially the ones that show a drastic difference after your work. Also add a something else such as window cleaning, carpet cleaning etc. you need to have a good or really specialist business to be a one trick pony this day and age.
Last of all DO YOUR RESEARCH!!! I've studied all of my services a lot before I start to offer them to the public. There is a lot of wrong info out there so don't read one forum or watch one video and take their word for it. If you watch or read 10 videos/articles and 7 give the same advice and 3 are varied the odds are that the 7 are correct. Not always but most of the time. As well as comments from people who have run a number of different business'. Always makes me think why have they had so many if they are doing their work correctly and running a successful business
Sorry for the long long post but I feel previous comments where contradicting each other to prove their own point rather than looking at pros and cons so you can make your own decisions based on true and accurate info.
Upvote
0
L
Lucie@MightyOak
Hi Ben,
I haven't read all the responses so forgive me if I am covering something someone else has mentioned.
A lot of my clients are builders/photographers/beauty therapists/small businesses and every one of them have said that advertising in the local paper/magazines has resulted in zero business for them.
Social media would be a good bet for you - it is cheap, you can target geographical areas with ads and post boosts that again would be targeted to certain criteria.
Have a look at what your competitors are actually doing; are they on facebook, do they advertise, who are their clients, how busy are they?
I would get a marketing strategy drawn up which you can follow and budget for but before that do some research into what competitors you have, what they charge etc etc.
I think if you price correctly and have a good friendly approach and an excellent work ethic you will do fine.
If you need any help with anything give me a shout.
Best of luck
Lucie
Mighty Oak Marketing
I haven't read all the responses so forgive me if I am covering something someone else has mentioned.
A lot of my clients are builders/photographers/beauty therapists/small businesses and every one of them have said that advertising in the local paper/magazines has resulted in zero business for them.
Social media would be a good bet for you - it is cheap, you can target geographical areas with ads and post boosts that again would be targeted to certain criteria.
Have a look at what your competitors are actually doing; are they on facebook, do they advertise, who are their clients, how busy are they?
I would get a marketing strategy drawn up which you can follow and budget for but before that do some research into what competitors you have, what they charge etc etc.
I think if you price correctly and have a good friendly approach and an excellent work ethic you will do fine.
If you need any help with anything give me a shout.
Best of luck
Lucie
Mighty Oak Marketing
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0
It's not the medium, it's the message.
My first attempt at a local newspaper ad, the original ad, that had been run for many years, go no responses during the test period. My ad got over 80 responses in the same period.
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