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Can You Use Dish Soap in a Pressure Washer? – Let’s Find The Answer!

Just like a baseball cannot be used to play football, you cannot use dish soap in a pressure washer. More appropriately, it’s not a wise decision to do so as you will not get effective cleaning. In some cases, its chemical might end up harming your machine. There are multiple reasons for you should not use your dish soap in your pressure washing machine. We’ll try to discuss the matter in detail.

Can You Use Dish Soap in a Pressure Washer

5 Reason Why You Might Not Want to Use Dish Soap in Your Pressure Washer

Reason #1: Dish Soap is Less Strong

If we consider your dish soap’s strength, it’s quite weak compared to a pressure washer detergent. The chemical used to clean your car, fence, patio, and other outdoor things should be strong enough to weaken the dirt at one go. On the other hand, oil, mold, mud, grease will not come off easily with your dish soap if not rubbed properly. If your soap doesn’t clean your surfaces properly, what’s the point in using it.

Reason #2: It can Get Sudsy

It feels comfortable when our dishwashing soap creates a lot of foam. On one side, it cleans our dish perfectly, and on the other, it feels pretty soft on our hands. In terms of a pressure washing machine, this doesn’t work fine. Too much foam might obscure our views, and we might end up missing some parts to clean. Simultaneously, cleaning the foam flies around our cleaning space, making the area even dirtier.

Reason #3: Dish Soap will not be Cost-effective

When it comes to money, we try to be as cost-effective as possible since we are psychologically, socially, and religiously bound not to waste things. A pressure washer cleaner is much cheaper than a dishwashing soap, and you need just a little amount of the former one to clean a large area. You will need an increased amount of dish soap if you want to clean a large area. In all the ways, a pressure washing cleaner is pretty cost-effective.

Reason #4: It May Leave Residue or Film

In many cases, it has been found that dish soap leaves residue or film on some surfaces. It doesn’t mean that it’ll never go away; you have to clean it with plenty of water, which can be annoying in times. You might also have to rub the surface properly to get rid of this problem. In the case of pressure washer cleaner, you don’t have to face this problem. It’s biodegradable and doesn’t leave any substance on the surface.

Reason #5: Dish Soap Might be Good for Your Machine

Pressure washer cleaners are specially designed for using in your machine, and they don’t harm them. The chemicals used in those cleaners are biodegradable and machine friendly. Your dish soap might not suit your device and end up harming it.

How to Use Dish Soap in a Pressure Washer

Sometime, the situation might become when you have no other option than using dish soap, what should you do. It would help if you diluted the soap perfectly with plenty of water before using it in your machine. It’s always advisable to keep pressure washer cleaner at home.

Dish soap is meant to clean your kitchen utensils, and pressure washer cleaner is meant to be used in your machine. Based on the above discussion, we can say that dish soap is not good for outdoor cleaning. If you have a car to clean, try to avoid dish soap because you might get scratches while rubbing. Vehicles have delicate surfaces that can be easily harmed.


About Daniel Wood

Daniel has completed his graduation mechanical engineering from a reputed university in US. He worked as a technical engineer in a pressure washer manufacturing plant for four years. He has a great passion for mechanical devices and has opened a workshop where he does research on various machines in his leisure time. His high interest in technology made him an expert in commercial and residential pressure washers.

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