Karcher from water butt?

[weirdfish]

Anyone use their karcher, ( or other make ), pressure washer fed from a rain water butt, if so, does it handle the lack of mains pressure ok.
Reason for asking is not to do with any water restrictions, ( we are not in a drought area ), but more to do with the water hardness in our area, and being fed up of trying to get rid of the water marks every time I wash the car.

[X5Sport]

I've got one of the newer generation Karchers (X-series K6.800) and it copes fine. It can either suck the water in (as long as not 'lifting' the water more than 1.5m) or use a direct connection. As long as the flow rate is close to what your machine needs (2 gals/min for mine). I bought a water butt with a Hozelock type connector specifically for this. We are under the hosepipe ban here in the East..

If you need to move water from further away, then Karcher also do pumps that can sort that out too. One of these moves the water between out two water butts in the back garden to the car one in the front.

You just need to watch for 'crud' getting into the supply....but if you keep the pump off the bottom of the water butt on a bowl, flower pot or similar then that's fine..

pvr uses some canister filter system to control water marks. More details in this thread

[pvr]

Yes, I use the DI Vessel (page 3 of that thread I think).

I rinse all the cars off at the end of the wash cycle and let it dry, not a single stain

The great thing as well is that you can see what you missed during the washing when it is dry, so it proves that when using a drying towel, you would have most likely marked the paint if you had touched an unwashed bit.

[fenj66]

my Karcher (not sure of model but about 5 years old) will not work from water butt direct. it needs a stronger pressure to set it off.
however i do use a submersible electric pump sat in the butt to feed my karcher, which works fine.

[X5Sport]

If you are just trying to avoid water marks and don't have to use a pressure washer for the final rinse, then one of the options here might do the trick for you?

No idea of whether they are actually any good, but it does recommend they not be used with a PW - I'm assuming the flow rate would be too low?

[weirdfish]

I actually bought one of those "flash" gun jobbies that were advertised years ago, it contains soap and a filter, but obviously I don't use the soap, just use the filter side of it for rinsing, but they only last a few washes depending how hard your water is, they do actually work.
I just thought that the rain water butt is there, so I might as well use it instead of buying filters. I'll connect it all up and give it a try.

[pvr]

The DI vessel seems to be the best value out there, the sand is replaceable and should last a year per filling for about £25.

[X5Sport]

Being the eternal cynic, the rainwater is probably even worse given what's floating about pollution wise, but it won't be 'hard' at least......

[weirdfish]

All connected, just waiting for rain now, can't believe I am wanting it to rain.
I did test run it by filling up with tap water, and the flow was good enough for the karcher to produce sufficient pressure, I've tried to make the delivery from the water butt as de-restricted as possible, even removing one of the valves from the hoze-lock connector.
I have looked at those vessels before, so if this doesn't work out the way I want it then I will probably go that route.

[X5Sport]

[quote=""weirdfish""]All connected, just waiting for rain now, can't believe I am wanting it to rain.[/quote]

Hasn't bl@@dy stopped here since they announced the hosepipe ban!!! and we've now got frosts at night. What is going on?

It's rained so much that it's even managed to penetrate the cavity walls on one end and mark a ceiling. Will need to get some water seal brick paint according to the surveyor, although as he said this was a '100 year event' - as long as he meant once in a 100 years of course..

[weirdfish]

We had lightning and hailstones here yesterday, but the bloody butt was still in the back of the X5.
The good thing about living somewhere high where you have a view of the river Severn is that you can watch the storms follow the river and miss you completely, well, sometimes.

[Raj]

[quote=""pvr""]The DI vessel seems to be the best value out there, the sand is replaceable and should last a year per filling for about £25.[/quote]

I'm currently using THESE but I have to admit the flow rate is massively reduced. It is good though but I'm interested in the DI vessel.

What's the flow rate like when this inline? How do you go about getting it refilled?

[weirdfish]

It's the trouble with any filter, in order for it to do it's job you are going to suffer from delivery issues, unless you grossly over spec for what you want it for, then the financial implications start stacking up.
I too would be interested to know about the vessels delivery spec. from a real world perspective, and not sales jargon.

[pvr]

Ok, I paid about £100 for it delivered and filled with resin (11 litres). I also bought an TDS meter to take the measures. The sand costs about £30 for a refill and a fill should last a year or more as per others tests. You just remove the top (screws off) and throw the sand away before refilling it again.

I use it straight at the end of the hose and I get a very, very powerful run of water out of it. If I put the gun on it, the pressure makes it spray way too hard for any use so when I turn the tap off, I use the water that still runs out of the vessel to fill 5 litre containers which is used for the steam mob as the water is basically distilled and leaves no water stains when cleaning floors.

My water hardness is about 150 ppm here, and after the vessel it is 2 ppm. I think it will start staining when it reaches 15 - 20 or so. At the moment, I wash the cars and hose it down with the water from the vessel, and leave it to dry. If I was in a rush, I would use my car dryer on it (basically a car adjusted leaf blower but marketed for car use).

Makes the washing process so much easier as I don't dry the cars anymore. And if there is any sun, the car just steams and dries completely clean without stains.

[pvr]

I bought a couple of the waterspots as well and it only lasted about 5 washes, so for the £25 I found it prohibitively expensive.