DeWalt cordless power washer
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My wrist has been giving me some issues that makes scrubbing with a normal wire brush quite painful, so I've been toying with the idea of grabbing a cordless power washer to help clean certain walls with easy access to water. I was wondering if anyone had any experience using the DeWalt 20v cordless power washer, and how well it works cutting through west coast moss, or if there are any alternatives out there people are using. I know it's got a fairly low PSI, so I'm a little hesitant to drop the money on it, only to find out that it doesn't have enough oomph to actually clean the walls. Thanks! |
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Water supply? Maybe on a water-side cliff, but anywhere else, where are you going to get the water to pump through the washer? |
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There's a creek near the bottom of the cliff, so water shouldn't really be a problem. I was thinking of gravity feeding from a tank (20 gal garbage can) at the top and hauling water up in 5 gal buckets. At 1 GPM flow, that's like 20 minutes of continuous use, which is a bit of a pain but still workable. |
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I know someone who uses a ryobi and swears by it. He brings up several 2L bottles that screw into it, refill from a stream fed bucket. |
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It's a decent tool in your arsenal for getting mud out of cracks but you'd need something much beefier to clean faces of moss. It won't replace your wire brush. 20 minutes of use will clean about a 10sqft patch of rock at most. |
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Water loses about 45psi in 100ft of height. A stationary pressure washer pump on the ground would likely give significantly more final pressure than the smaller pump in the hand. It should also weigh less in your hand, though I'm not sure how much the high pressure hose fights back. The big benefit is that the water reservoir can stay on the ground. I have not actually tried this your results may vary. |
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Is a wire wheel/cup attachment for a drill bad style? If it doesn't bother your wrist it might be a decent alternative. |
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We did this with a gas-powered pressure washer once; we built a water collection system uphill of the crag (tarps spread on the ground to collect rainwater draining into a reservoir we built), lots of garden hose to connect to the washer itself. It was about 100' uphill of the crag we were washing. The washer itself was at the top of the crag so we didn't lose PSI. When the reservoir was full, we'd get about 4 hours of pressure washing. We did it during the PNW winter, so whenever we ran the reservoir dry it would be full again within a few days. It worked best in blasting dirt and mud out of cracks. It did ok for scrubbing the face, but a wire brush actually worked a bit better. The main benefit was the overall amount of rock that could be quickly cleaned, and it could be done in the rain (wire brushing in the rain basically just moved the mud around). I sure wouldn't bother for a single route, but if you've got a whole crag it might be worth it. It was a ton of work to haul that stuff to the top of the crag and build it. Type 2 fun for sure. |
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This is far more universal and helpful. This is overkill but works like a dream. It's just super loud. |
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Perhaps not relevant for cleaning moss, but I've had a lot of success cleaning rockies limestone choss with a portable air blower like the one linked above, or the Milwaukee M12 spot blower. A quick brush and the blower dramatically cuts down the time and effort of cleaning dirt and dust off new routes, especially in crevices. |
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Ys Brand wrote: Yeah leafblowers are a game changer for the later stages of developing here once the majority of the vegetation has been scraped and brushed off, but the moss layer still needs something to scrub it off first. I've tried the nylon brush on an angle grinder route, but the high speed of the grinder made it pretty hard to control, and it just chewed through batteries. A drill might work a lot better to be honest. Thanks everyone for all the suggestions. |
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As a limestone choss aficionado I second the blower! I have the smaller dewalt 18v and it makes cleaning much easier. It can even blow smaller flakes off. I’ve been. Thinking about trying a pressure washer out for one band of junk that guards some great gray stone. There is so much dirt in the cracks and flakes of rock it would be nice to just spray it all off. Fortunately the band is only the first 10-15 ft and I should be able to do this with a ladder. Glad I’m not that crazy for considering this, or at least in good company |
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I also know someone who has used a Ryobi at Index (maybe the same guy as Big Red?), and he says it works well for dirt in cracks, but not for moss. Have you tried mounting a wire brush on a pole such that you can hold it with both hands? I've found that to be much easier. Several "brush stations" at Lookout Point at Index have them available to anyone. |
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For moss, it's sometimes nice to use a rotary wheel on a plain old standard power drill. That also works extremely well for ricey granite. |
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Jon Nelson wrote: Yeah, the wire brush on the pole definitely helps a ton. I was actually inspired by you to make one after we met a few years ago when you were cleaning the stuff to the right of senior citizens. |
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Yep Jon, same guy. Y'all should run a cleaning clinic at Index, I doubt anyone else has cleaned as much dirt and moss over the years. |
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Big Red wrote: I'd attend. |
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Great to hear that the pole extension to the brush helps (even though it might not completely solve the issue). If a sufficiently lightweight washer was available that had enough power for NW moss, it would be incredible. Good idea about the clinics. I once suggested having one at the Index Climbers' Festival, but it seems they are set up there to run all clinics through Mountain Bureau. In the meantime, or perhaps even better, just head on over to Zappa Wall, find a new line to clean and claim as your own, and get started. Before he passed on, Michal was planning to develop Zappa this winter. Ben Hubbard is trying to get others to help out, partly to keep Michal's vision alive. Fantastic lines over there, even better than Halloween. Contact Ben and he'd probably be happy to meet up. |
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I believe I'm the guy Jon and Big Red are referring to. James if you want to test it out you're welcome to borrow it - or come to Zappa and I can show you! Just DM me or whatever. I had left a couple Home Depot buckets out last winter to collect rain water and used a stream nearby to refill my 2L.bottles. It's not good for moss sadly, but is incredibly useful for some dirt and as Jon mentioned, dirty cracks you can't get with other tools. |
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The wrist issues with moss are real. I've found that I put a lot more stress on them with a typical left/right motion, because you're essentially putting a bending moment on a big lever (your arm/wrist). However, if you brush up and down the force is more directly in line with the structure of your bones and reduces the bending moment and therefore stress on your wrist. Sorry if that description doesn't make sense. I was a mechanical engineer previously so my brain thinks in free body diagrams. TLDR try brushing up and down in line with your arm instead of left to right. |
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As a fellow route developer living in the same temperate rain forest (Van Isle) I feel your pain, literally. Unfortunately the cordless power washers will have zero effect on the very tenacious moss that we have here. Folks on here saying that they work well on moss clearly do not live in the PNW. Locally we have developed the dark art of pressure washing crags with a gas unit. We use a 1” transfer/fire pump to move water from a nearby source (even a large puddle will do as long as it is getting replenished) into a 50 gallon drum, then use that as the feed tank for a 3000 psi gas pressure washer. We have several hundred feet of both fire transfer hose and high pressure hose so we can operate almost anywhere. For the guy who scoffed at water being available near a crag, again, you clearly don’t live near here as water is very readily available virtually everywhere from November to April in this region. It rains a great deal in the winter. If you decide to go this way I can DM you with the best equipment and the tricks of the trade based on years of developing new areas and maintaining existing crags. |