Knowledge and Experience: Getting Started and Succeeding in the
Pressure Washing Business
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BY DRUE ANN
HARGIS-RAMIREZ
Good business is ultimately about people and knowledge, and
every business opportunity should be looked upon as a learning
experience.
The early years of business for Larry Hinckley, V.P. and senior
technical advisor for pressure washer manufacturer Delco
Cleaning Systems, included reading anything he could get his
hands on related to business, from motivational books to guides
on purchasing and negotiating, to others on quality control.
It’s comparable to his passion for col glass. A friend got him
hooked on the hobby, but it was time and experience that taught
him the difference between counterfeits and the real thing.
“I think the first and most important is how to start a
business. Without this, you can’t succeed regardless of your
knowledge of the field. You have to know about the industry in
order to be successful, and you need to know what equipment you
should purchase. So many people just go out and buy equipment,
then try to figure out how to put it to use.” This is a mistake,
says Hinckley, because in the end you spend too much on capital
and don’t reserve enough for hard times.
Choosing Your Sector
Equally as important is to know what sector of the industry you
are going to enter. “It takes different equipment for each
sector.” For example, are you going into fleet washing, or
residential work, or flat work? Maybe you’re interested in
kitchen exhaust cleaning.
“The NFPA 96,” Hinckley notes, “recommends that anyone cleaning
this type of equipment be certified by a nationally recognized
organization.” NFPA 96 is the National Fire Protection
Association’s Standard for Ventilation Control and Fire
Protection of Commercial Cooking Operations, and the
International Kitchen Exhaust Cleaning Association (www.ikeca.org)
offers certified training programs.
Knowing in advance which sector you’re going into allows you to
tailor your training accordingly, thus saving time, as well as
helping you buy the right equipment from the onset, thus saving
money too.
One way to determine which sector to choose might be to take a
course such as Delco’s Five Day Mobile Power Wash School.
Hinckley teaches pressure washer maintenance within this course,
which includes managing an emerging mobile wash business,
environmental compliance procedures, and many sectors of the
industry.
Keep Learning to Grow
“Anyone who intends to be successful in this industry has to
keep learning,” he says. “In business you never stand still.
There’s no treading water.”
It’s like cultivating plants. As an amateur horticulturist, he
loves spending hours in his garden. “You gain from cultivating
plants because as you cultivate them they get stronger. You can
do this too with people, with employees and coworkers, by
working with them and nourishing their minds.” The same goes for
your business and your employees. The more you cultivate your
business, the more it will thrive.
Bidding
One part of Hinckley’s job is to field calls from Delco
customers. In fact, for several years he wrote a column for the
industry called “Power Pipeline” in which he addressed the
issues that seem to repeatedly arise. It ran for about five
years in The Water Works, the periodical published by the Power
Washers of North America (www.pwna.org). Today he’s still
fielding calls and notices there continues to be a trend as to
the nature of the calls.
Recently he was asked over the phone to help a customer figure
out how to bid a job to pressure wash a building. He recommended
linear bidding over square footage bidding. “Square footage
bidding is much more difficult.” He ex-contract with the United
States Postal plained linear bidding this way. Linear Service to
clean postal vehicles. (in other words, lengthwise) is simply
The bid opens nationwide, but bidders adding up the four numbers
for each side merely bid on units in the area of their of the
building to come up with the lin-company, or whatever area they
think ear feet. “You can actually pace it off they can cover.
Larry cautions contractors around the building. Then, if it’s a
single about such big jobs in that it can be a story building,
at 300 linear feet, charge time-consuming bidding process and
not $1 per foot to wash it.” very profitable.
Delco also posts bidding opportunities “They have certain forms
that you on its bulletin board. A recent bid for have to go
through to even qualify for a fleet washing was posted for a
national bid. The number [of vehicles] is large but the
potential for loss is large, too.
You have to make sure you’re making a profit, not something that
just keeps you busy. This kind of contract could bankrupt you if
entered ill-ad-vised. You have to bid at a fair price, but at a
price you can live with.”
Maintenance for Your Pressure Washer
“There are two areas where there are so many misconceptions,”
Hinckley
says. “One of them is dealing with the burner [water-heating]
section of the pressure washer.” He explains that a pressure
washer has three sections: 1) the engine or motor; 2) the pump
and unloader section; and 3) the water heater. All three work
together simulta¬neously. “If any one section doesn’t work
properly, it creates problems for the other two.”
When troubleshooting, he cautions cleaners not to forget the
simple things. He remembers one field call from a re¬tired
aircraft mechanic who had entered the pressure washing industry.
“I talked with him for hours tracing every circuit, then he
called me the next day and said ‘next time, Larry, be sure and
ask them if they are out of fuel.’” Despite his years as a
mechanic, the guy hadn’t thought to simply unscrew the fuel cap
and look at his fuel level.
The second area is lack of mainte¬nance. “People don’t check or
change air filters.” Air filters need to be changed more often
if operating in areas with lots of construction, dust or air
pollution. “Check it every day. It is a visual check.”
He also says they don’t check or change the oil in their engines
enough. “When you first purchase a pressure washer, you
shouldn’t have to change anything in it, just monitor the oil
level in the engine and pump.” For a new pressure washer, he
recommends you change the oil in the engine after 25 hours of
operation; for the pump, after 50 hours. Thereafter, for the
pump, change it every 500 hours. Monitoring oil levels, however,
is constantly ongoing.
“Check oil levels at minimum every eight hours of operation. If
you are go¬ing to turn on that piece of equipment five times per
day, you’d better check the oil level three times per day.”
Keeping Maintenance Records
“Maintenance records are extremely important in any area where
you have pieces of equipment.” Hinckley believes good
maintenance records will help you troubleshoot later. For
example, a mechanic may have been repairing the pump, but they
may not have replaced the unloader, which is a mechanical
bypass valve. These are positive displacement pumps. In other
words, whenever the pump strokes, the water must go somewhere.
“For safety purposes you must have trigger guns, which interrupt
the flow of water when the trigger is released. If you drop the
gun, it would continue flowing and could cut someone to ribbons,
but the trigger shuts it down.”
An unloader valve diverts the water someplace else when the
trigger shuts off. Hinckley recommends checking the unloader
valve first before repairing the pump.
If you kept good records, you’d know whether the mechanic
replaced the unloader when he repaired the pump and you’d save
a step. His maintenance class includes instruction on how to
change the unloader valve.
If you’re experiencing a loss in pressure, Hinckley recommends
first checking if the spray tip is worn out, then check the
unloader valve, and finally check the pump. “Taken care of
properly, a pump is very reliable.”
Choosing the right accessories to compliment your pressure
washer and to aid in the performance of your jobs can be a
difficult task.
Whether you are new to the industry or have been a mobile power
wash contractor for years there are so many choices to be made
that it is often difficult to decide what is needed and what
isn’t.
In your quest for knowledge, you can visit some of the mobile
power wash “Bulletin Boards” such as at www.dcs1.com and ask for
help from other contractors. They will most generally welcome
the opportunity to help you. If you prefer you can contact the
United Association of Mobile Contract Cleaners, www.uamcc.org,
and ask them to refer you to someone who might answer your
questions.
“Whichever choice you make it is important to the success of
your company that you have the proper tools for the job. In
searching for a good way to describe this situation I keep
returning to the comparison between a new mechanic and a
mechanic who has years of experience. If you will compare the
size of their toolboxes you will notice that the more
experienced mechanic will have a larger toolbox with a wider
variety of tools available for him to use in his repair
efforts.”
As you gain more experience in your chosen field you will learn
that certain tools make your job easier, thus you will purchase
these tools and have them ready for use when a certain situation
arises. If one tool would do the job there would only be one
drawer in a toolbox. As we all know this just wouldn’t work.
“In our efforts to be successful contractors we learn more
about what we need to achieve this on each successive job.” ❑
If you have maintenance or pricing questions, Larry’s only a
phone call away. He can be reached at 1-800-211-0287. As he
says, “We can all learn from each other.” |
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