With great power comes great washability

Hi ... my name is Kevin ... and I ... am ... a power-washer renter.

There's something about a power washer. There's something about hooking your regular garden hose up to a wheeled contraption, pulling the crank on that noisy little motor, aiming the nozzle at something dirty, and blasting the grime away with a 1,500 PSI stream of water.

Washing is not normally an exciting activity. Soap, scrub, rinse, repeat. Nothing thrilling in that. Washing, generally speaking, is a chore.

But power washing ... that is a different story. The words are in that order for a purpose. The washing comes second; the power comes first.

When you pull that trigger you feel the force of the water pushing back at you. Loose objects get tossed aside like Brussels sprouts on a five-year-old's dinner plate. Power wash a dirty surface you feel like you're spray painting the clean on it. The before-after picture is right in front of you and the differences are stark.

There are six types of jobs that get done when you get a power washer, and they come in a natural progression. It starts with the job for which you got the power washer.

We rented a power washer yesterday to clean up the siding on the north side of our house. Dampness plus nature minus sunshine equals yuck, and it was showing. We knew it was starting to look bad, but it wasn't until that jet of water flushed away all the much that we realized how bad it was. Yet a lot of problems can be resolved at 1,500 PSI and we quickly cleaned up the siding.

After you've finished your original chore, you realize that you're not ready to give up the power. Fortunately, you've inevitably hit something else with the spray which left a bright streak of clean on that something. This is the second type of power washer job - the collateral benefit, if you will. In our case, we had some streaks on the driveway that had to be cleaned up. Again, though, that ended too soon.

The third type of power-washing job is the one you weren't planning on doing, but you decide to do anyways because a) you've got the washer and b) you're not ready to put it away just yet. We cleaned our deck, our sidewalks, the already clean sides of the house ... everything in need of cleaning.

When nothing else needs to be cleaned, you encounter the fourth type of power-washing job ... the creative application. By this point you've already seen what the power washer does to loose debris - leaves, twigs, and the like - and it has been ruminating in your brain for a little while. Now you actively look for nuisances to blast away. Those irritating squirrels? Gone. Weeding is much more amusing at 1,500 PSI. And what lawn is complete without your autograph etched into it, right?

At this point, you discover the fifth use of the power washer ... re-washing the stuff you washed previously but then muddied up again by trying something stupid like weeding with a power washer. And it is during this series of tasks that the thrill of the power wash begins to subside. Now that you're cleaning up what you have to clean up, it starts to become a chore again. This is a good thing, because if you're like most people you rented the washer and it needs to go back. Besides, in your zeal for washing, you've set yourself up for the sixth and final type of job that comes from using a power washer: repairing the stuff you damaged.

Next week, after it has had time to dry, we are repainting our deck. For some reason the paint is missing in little strips.