The objective of cleaning is not just to clean, but to feel happiness living within that environment – Marie Kondo
John Wesley was absolutely right when he said that cleanliness is next to Godliness. While our Sunday morning outings to church are about as close to the latter as we get, we have devoted a rather large chunk of our daily lives to the former.
Staying on top of all the household cleaning means having the right tools to do the right job, and while it sounds fairly obvious now that we’ve said it, that was something that we struggled with for a decade.
We literally spent years trying to find the perfect pressure washer that would let us tackle every driveway, garden furniture, decking, and patio cleaning problem and hose down the car at the same time.
Most of the pressure washers that we tried were either too powerful, big, bulky, and difficult to use or weren’t powerful enough and were too small to do the things that we needed them to do.
At times it felt like we were caught in the middle of a Sisyphean drama that would never end and had no solution. But then a kindly soul suggested that we turn our pressure washing obsessed gaze toward a company called Karcher, and from that moment on, we’ve never looked back.
Who Is Karcher?
Karcher won our favor with their simple, but effective mission statement – they want to win the hearts and minds of their customers by providing the cleaning solutions that they need to confront their everyday problems.
They want to make life simpler, easier, and more convenient by making cleaning more efficient, so you have more time to spend enjoying the things that you want to do, rather than the tasks that you feel obligated to do.
While we enjoy cleaning, what Karcher said made us start thinking that it might be fun to try something different, and if the K2 could help us to find the time to do that, then maybe it was the pressure washer that we’d been looking for.
It seemed like a win-win situation to us; we’d get to try out a new pressure washer, one that could potentially solve our cleaning woes once and for all, and if it did, it would free up the time that we needed to find a new hobby. As we said, it seemed like a perfect arrangement.
Karcher K2
Luckily for us, that old adage that warns everyone about things that seem to be too good to be true rarely living up to their initial promise isn’t actually true. How do we know this?
We know this because we spent an afternoon putting the K2 through its paces and not only did it live up to our wildest expectations, it sailed past them with a high-pressure powered flourish.
Actually, when we say high pressure, what we really meant was medium pressure, but we’ll get to that later.
The Real Pressure Washing Deal
The first, and arguably, most crucial aspect of any pressure washer is the set and how easy it is to use the various wands and cleaning attachments that it’s supplied with.
The instructions for the K2 were clear and concise, and even though they didn’t include any written directions, the simple-to-follow pictorial guide allowed us to breeze our way through test fitting all of the attachments that were, and are, part of the K2’s comprehensive cleaning arsenal.
And in case you’re wondering, that aforementioned collection includes two wands, a devastatingly effective surface cleaner, a brush, and a detergent tank so that you can get into, and clean all of the nooks and crannies that other pressure washers just can’t reach.
How Much Is Enough – The Pressure Rating
Granted, as it makes just sixteen hundred psi (pounds per square inch) of pressure, it isn’t the most powerful pressure washer out there, but that’s more than enough to fulfill all of the cleaning parameters that the K2 was designed, and built to handle.
And that lower amount of pressure that it makes? It does it incredibly efficiently as the K2 only uses one and a quarter gallons of water every minute.
That’s an incredibly potent and effective combination for dealing with all of the lighter household cleanings that it was made to take care of.
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Pressure, Wands, and Patios… Oh My
Even though the slightly lower pressure setting that the K2 uses shouldn’t be enough to tackle the moss, algae, and more stubborn dirt that seems to find its way between, and breed inside, the seams and crevices of concrete of your backyard patio, this little washer has a trick up its sleeve that makes it capable of rising up to, and meeting that challenge.
And that little trick? It’s called the Dirtblaster Spray wand.
As soon as it’s attached, with a simple twist of the Dirtbuster’s nozzle, it increases the pressure that the K2 makes by fifty percent, which effectively takes it up to around the two thousand four hundred psi benchmark.
That’s more than enough pressure to let the K2 take care of all of the awkward, obstinate, and hard-to-reach detritus and debris that plagues your backyard and your patio. We turned it up, turned it on and it took us half the time that it usually would to clean our yard.
One of the little tricks that we discovered while using the K2 was that while Karcher claims that the Surface Cleaner can handle all of the dirt that frequently gathers on our driveway, in reality, that’s not the case.
It cleaned our decking and removed the surface filth that litters our yard without a problem, but no matter how hard we pushed it, it just wouldn’t get our driveway clean.
But the Dirtbuster wand did, and while it took a little longer, it was so incredibly satisfying that we didn’t care and just reveled in the fact that it actually exceeded Karcher’s, and our, expectations.
At the Carwash
The good news just doesn’t stop, as the K2 isn’t just able to sweep your backyard and patio, and furniture and decking as long you adjust the pressure settings and attachments, it can, and will also clean your car.
The other wand that’s supplied with the K2, the Vario Spray, has both a low and a high-pressure setting and when it’s locked in low mode it can be used to spray the biodegradable detergent that Karcher also includes with the K2 (we know, it’s the pressure washer equivalent of the gift that just keeps on giving) on to your car.
Then all you have to do is turn the pressure up and hose your car down with the K2, and to help you to take care of those infuriating and seemingly impossible to clean areas of your car, which in the case of our car are the wheel rims which have always been dirt magnets.
As soon as you face those areas head-on with the brush, what was seemingly impossible becomes all too possible. With the K2, by your side, your car will always be clean.
Getting Around
Things kept on getting better and better with the K2, as it wasn’t just monstrously good at cleaning everything that we needed, and wanted, it too, it was also light and portable enough to be moved to wherever we wanted to use it, whenever we wanted to use it.
It weighs just sixteen pounds and it’s mounted on two wheels, so you can just tilt it toward you, and using the handle, easily pull it to, and position it in, any place that needs to be cleaned,
And when you’re finished? There’s a place for everything on the K2. Just slot all of the wands in the right slots and the K2 is ready to be put away and stored until you need to use it again.
It Isn’t All Good News
We didn’t encounter any problems with the K2, but just because we didn’t, it doesn’t mean that others haven’t.
The wands, can according to some of Karcher’s less than happy customers, lock in place and become incredibly difficult to either remove or use to alter the pressure settings. As we said, even though we didn’t encounter this particular issue ourselves, we thought it was one that was worth raising and highlighting.
The other slightly worrying thing about the K2 doesn’t involve the pressure washer itself, it has to do with its manufacturer. The poor souls who found themselves having to face pressure washer and wand problems were then forced to deal with Karcher’s customer service department, which, if the reports and reviews left by the people who found themselves in that position through no fault of their own, are to be believed was an experience that they have no desire to repeat.
It would appear that Karcher’s customer service department could benefit from some additional training and learning some new, incredibly well need and invaluable people skills.
And Lastly… The Pressure Washer Verdict
As you’ve probably already surmised, we were incredibly impressed by the little pressure washer that could.
Having spent years trying to find an in-between pressure washer that was efficient enough to tackle all of the everyday issues that we found ourselves constantly confronted by, the answer to all of them finally presented itself as a sixteen hundred psi machine that was happy to deal with everything that we asked it to, and was, and is easy to use, and store.
And thanks to the K2, we now have all the time in the world to devote to finding a new and interesting way to fill all of our suddenly available hours. What more could anyone want, or ask, from a pressure washer?
