So this video came about as a bit of a coincidence, and it’s not often that we cover outdoor tech on the channel. Now, I had an issue with the alleyway area down the side of my house and over the winter months, I noticed it got very slippery, and I don’t really know why. Well, it was green so whatever that green stuff is is probably the reason so it needed to be cleaned. And, this is where Karcher came in, because coincidentally, they got in touch and asked if I wanted to check out one of their K5 pressure washers and of course, I said yes. Why not? Kill two birds with one stone. Clean my garden, and get some content for the channel. Whether my usual audience likes to watch pressure washer time-lapse paving slab cleaning videos, I don’t know. But for me, it’s a win-win, so let’s talk about it.
Just to be clear, I’ve been using the Karcher K5 Comfort Premium pressure washer, though there are different models of the K5 available with different features and attachments if you need a particular option. Unboxing the K5, although heavy, was quite simple, and setting everything up was a case of snapping everything into the main body. All the attachments came with clips. The lance holder and hose basket snapped into the front. The foam bottle clipped into the side and so on. I did have a bit of trouble at first with the instructions as they were a bit unclear, but I did get my head around them eventually. I did luckily have a spare hose clip, which didn’t come in the box, so do be aware of that. After getting the weeds out, I proceeded with washing as I thought it would probably be best to clear as much of the area first before proceeding with the power washing.
Now the funny thing is that no one tells you how messy power washing can be and by the end of this exercise, I was absolutely soaked, and my legs and trainers (luckily my outdoor trainers) were absolutely covered in grime. They make it look so easy on those powerwashing time-lapse videos on Instagram. The path I was doing and the balcony area hadn’t been done for some time so that’s where all the mess came from. The lance has several firing modes on there, including a rotary nozzle, a high-pressure flat jet and a reduced-pressure flat jet, which fan out from the end of the lance, and a detergent jet and for the majority of this job, I used the rotary nozzle as well as the detergent just to agitate the grime left on the path. Now this thing does have a decent amount of power in it and admittedly, and after a couple of hours of use, I did notice my arms begin to feel a bit of fatigue, and also in my hands, where I was squeezing the trigger. Whether this was mine here, but the trigger felt quite heavy and stiff to pull.
The whole system worked so well, and my path does look noticeably cleaner, even though I think I missed a few bits, as there was a lot of water left on the path, and when things looked wet, I couldn’t quite tell what dirt and what was just dark path. One thing I did get a bit frustrated with though, was the amount of cords coming from the unit. And yes, I can hear myself when I say this, but having a plug for power, the hose pipe for water and then the gun cable all going into the unit at different points, made it really annoying when twisting and turning and moving the unit around the space. Why they couldn’t all come out of the same area I have no idea but this might have been a better option. By the way, as this thing is such a lump, there is a pull handle on top which extends out, and also wheels on the back. The lance pipe is stored in a spindle on the back, and you can twist the plug cable around two points simply enough for neat storage.
As there was a lot of what I can only describe as moss around the back of the house, I decided to stop here as the Karcher was kicking up lots of dirt, and I didn’t fancy decimating the side of my neighbour’s house and garden. So I got myself one of those T5 disk attachments from Wickes as they offered the best price, and B&Q didn’t price match them, which bugged me enough to mention it here. But I used one of those for the rest of the garden, well, tried to anyway which included the path that runs down to the shed and also the steps, and it worked well, though I will say you need an even surface for this to work effectively. I found that the garden path is so uneven, it couldn’t really clean the slabs effectively. Yet on the steps where there are big stone slabs, it worked really well. So the T5 I would definitely recommend for things like patios or decking or similar. I should’ve really started with one of these for the side of the house before getting caked in all that grime but I guess we live and learn I did feel on the garden path though, at least that it wasn’t anywhere near as powerful as using the rotary head to clear the mess, especially when it came to busting out weeds and unwanted growth coming through the cracks. And while it did clean the top layer of the stones, the cracks and weeds remained mostly untouched. It is overall though so much neater to use with that dome blocking all that spray though.
For me, the Karcher K5 has been a fantastic introduction to the world of pressure washers, and admittedly, I’m not an expert, the K5 did a really great job for what I needed it for. Unfortunately, I haven’t quite got round to zapping the car with foam yet, so that might be a quick short video down the line to show off the Karcher’s abilities, but for now, I think if you need to clean slabs or pathways in your garden, then you can’t go wrong with the K5 from Karcher. Find out more information here.
