What You Need
To Know

Don’t be confused with the jargon.

PRESSURE and FLOW?

In relation to washing ability, quoted Pressures mean nothing on their own.  It’s important to ascertain the Pressure AND Flow.

Pressure can only be measured inside the pump, so a pump could be pressurised to 10,000psi and have no water coming from it at all! (no flow)

The secret of efficient washing is to have the optimum amount of water (flow) combined with the optimum amount pressure.  There is no magic to this mix, you can only ever get a certain combination from any particular horsepower motor.

Many hobby machines use small electric motors, claiming a high pressure and have very little water coming out of the jet (low flow), but on paper it looks impressive. But unless you have a good volume of water (high flow) hitting the object to be cleaned, very little is achieved.

Take a small pebble and throw it at a window, it will probably bounce off (low flow).

Now throw a house brick at the window, and it goes right through (high flow).

Power washers follow the same principle as above; but use water on dirt (not brick on glass!)

Understand the weight of water you are throwing at a dirty object. The heavier weight of water (high flow) blasts through the dirt whereas the small amount of water (low flow) has little impact.

For each Mistral Power Washer our Technical Specification Table shows both Pressure *(bar) AND Flow *(lpm)

* (bar) = Barometric Pressure

**(lpm) = Litres per Minute

Do l need hot water?

For normal cleaning jobs, a cold-water washer combined with a degreaser works well. For bigger jobs where there is a lot of grease, hot water will move it faster.

However, no amount of pressure or flow will remove road films or oily residues whether you use hot or cold water UNLESS you use a degreaser to emulsify the film.

Mistral can supply you with the correct Degreaser Additive for your usage.

Turbo Nozzles are usually fitted on smaller flow machines to make them look more efficient; but Turbo Nozzles are normally NOT required for higher flow machines.

Turbo Nozzles work by concentrating the jet of water into a solid stream then rotating that stream of water, so that it forms a circle.

This is quite impressive on thick mud, or barnacles on boats. However on flat surfaces, walls, vehicles etc. it will give you will an irregular circular pattern.

So a Fan Jet should be used instead. A Fan Jet will evenly clean a band of the surface, particularly on vehicle paintwork and walls.