Top Reasons Your Pressure Washer Pump Is Destroyed & Has No Pressure!

Hey guys, welcome back to my small engine repair channel. Today, I wanna show you some very important tips, so that you don’t destroy the pump on your pressure washer. So, if you guys are like me, you probably don’t read the owner’s manual when you buy a piece of equipment. Now, recently I did some research on pressure washers and pumps and why they fail, and because I actually run a small engine repair shop, I get a lot of pressure washers that come in and over the years, I’ve, kind of, narrowed down exactly why people will actually destroy their water pump prematurely under pressure washer.

So, today I’m gonna show you how to avoid that.

All right, so I’m gonna get right into the video here, and the number one reason why I see machines come in with a defective water pump is because they never put it away properly with antifreeze inside the pump. So, it’s really critical that you put antifreeze when you put away your machine in the fall or winter, because if there’s water left in it and it’s out in the cold, it’s going to freeze up so badly that it will crack your pump. Now, most of these pumps are not serviceable. So, if it gets cracked you pretty well have to replace the pump.

Now, the best way to do this is to get a can of this stuff over here, it’s called Pump Saver, and what you do with this stuff is you screw it where your garden hose normally goes in and it’s recommended to remove your wand, right here.

That’s the spray gun connection, right here. You remove that. You pop the cover here, spray a few squirts right in your pump. Now, if you don’t have access to this product over here, you can just use regular antifreeze, plumbing antifreeze, and just pour it down the hole, here, of your pump, where the intake is, and then what you do with the switch off is you just pull it over a bit like this to get that antifreeze all over inside the pump.

So, I do have an in-depth video on how to do this, and the link is right below the video.

Also check in the comment section because I pinned it there as well. Go watch that video because I go in step by step details on how to properly do this. Now, if you store your pressure washer in a heated building all winter long, you don’t need to do this. However, if you store it in a shed outside, it will still get cold and your pump can still crack.

Now, the main subject today is mostly about preserving your pump.

However, when you go to put it away in the fall, if you have a gas pressure washer, you might wanna drain all the fuel from it or add some stabilizer and run it a bit, so the stabilizer gets into your carburetor, so that your machine will start up the next spring. Now, the next reason why I see a lot of machines come in my shop here with a damaged pump is usually because some dirt got into the pump, and the reason I’m mentioning this is because a lot of the time, this is totally preventable, and that’s usually caused because the small screen that goes on the intake of the pump, where you screw in your garden hose, is missing, or it’s damaged like this one over here.

Now, this is easily preventable. You can buy these small screens at Home Depot in a pack like this. They’re very cheap.

You just pop one out and insert it in there. Now, since the old screen was bad, I’m just going to put a new one on this pump here. Now, it doesn’t really matter if the screen is not totally rounded. And also, if you’re missing this screen, you might find that you will have a water leak here, where your hose screws in because the screen acts as a washer as well. Now, if you’re using water from a lake, a small screen filter like this may not do the trick for you.

You may have to use an inline filter like this. So, what you would do is screw in the inline filter on your pump. Then you’d screw in your hose that is coming from the lake or whatever source of water you’re using because it doesn’t take much dirt to get in your pump and totally destroy it.

Top Reasons Your Pressure Washer Pump Is Destroyed & Has No Pressure!

Some pressure washers will come in the shop and the pump will be burned out because people never added oil to the pump. Now, a lot of these pumps are sealed units, so you don’t have to worry about and I’m gonna show you the difference right now, so that you’re not wondering if you should be adding oil to your pump right now.

So, for example, most pumps will be like this. It’s a sealed unit. There are no caps to add oil. There’s no plastic eye window to see the level of the oil. And if I look all around, as I mentioned, I cannot see a place to add oil in this pump.

So, it basically comes from the factory sealed with oil, but on some pumps, you might see a plastic eye here, where you can see the level of the oil. I usually keep it at about halfway filled and they’ll usually be a cap on top of the pump here, that you can unscrew and add your oil or dump it out, and this is the oil that I recommend for pumps.

It’s a non detergent SAE 30 oil. Now, if your pump is equipped with oil, it’s a good practice to replace it once a year, and also make sure you do not overfill the pump with oil because it’s going to build a lot of pressure and the oil will be coming out of the cap. Now, I’ve saved the last reason, which I think is the most common reason why machines come in my shop with a burned out pump.

And that is people will start the machine. They’ll use it for a bit. They’ll leave it running, put the wand down, and go do something else while the machine is running there without water constantly being sprayed through the wand. So, if you read your owner’s manual, a lot of the manuals will say don’t leave the machine running for more than 30 seconds without water spraying through the wand.

So, you want a constant flow of water going through the pump, out the wand, so that the pump does not overheat.

And the reason I came to that conclusion is a lot of people that come in my shop have no idea about this. And I’ve had a lot of machines come in where people did everything, right. They had the screen here. They were using town water, which is usually pretty good. There’s no dirt in it.

They had put the machine properly away for the winter. Like everything was done correctly, except they told me, yes, I did leave my pressure washer running without spraying water through the wand for more than like five minutes, some people have told me. So, if you go like five minutes or more, while you’re scrubbing your siding or doing something else, that pump will get really hot.

And apparently all the parts inside here can get damaged, and then what’s going to happen is your pressure will be really, really low. So, basically your pump will just become like a garden hose.

The pressure will not be any better than that. So, this sums up the video. And again, these are all the most common reasons I’ve seen over the years here, in my small engine repair shop. And again, my video today applies to gas and electric pressure washers. It makes no difference when it comes to the pump.

And again, guys, make sure to read your owner’s manual. I know we don’t do it, but for an expensive piece of equipment like this, it’s well worth doing.