A marine or aviation cleaning enquiry almost never arrives as a specification. It arrives as a sentence: "we need to clean ferry interiors", "we want to wash general-aviation aircraft without a hose run", "our marina workshop needs the same machine for two boats and a trailer". That sentence is not enough to quote a machine, because the machine is chosen by what surrounds it - the water and power actually available at the berth or the apron, what the run-off is allowed to do, how long the vessel or airframe is held out of service, and which parts of it a hot jet must never touch. The list below is what we ask a buyer to gather before a specification discussion, and it is the list that turns a catalogue enquiry into an engineering one.
1. The asset: type, size, materials and surfaces
Start with a written description of what is being cleaned. For a vessel, that means overall length, beam, the height of the working area, and whether the work happens afloat, on a hard standing, in a shed or on a slipway. For an aircraft, it means the type, the number held in the fleet, and whether cleaning is done at the stand, in a hangar, or on a dedicated wash pad. Then list the surfaces in the order they will be worked: hull and topsides, deck and non-slip coating, superstructure, deck hardware, windows and glazing, bilges or underfloor spaces; or fuselage, wings and control surfaces, landing gear and wheel wells, cabin interior, cargo hold and galleys.
Materials decide the safe method as much as the deposit does. Gelcoat, antifouling coatings, bare aluminium, anodised parts, composites, painted fairings, bonded window seals, rubber gaskets, teak and synthetic deck fillers, upholstery and marine vinyl - each behaves differently under heat and pressure. A specification that names materials can be matched to a mode and a working distance. A specification that says "boat exterior" cannot.
2. The deposit, and how it arrives
Describe what is on the surface and where it came from, because that determines whether heat, dwell, pressure or a chemical pre-treatment does the work. Marine deposits arrive on a schedule: salt crystal in a deck joint, algae and biofilm on a waterline and a transom, streaks of rust from a stainless fitting, oil and diesel film around a seacock or an engine bed, tar and road bitumen on a trailer hull after a launch. Aviation deposits are different again: kerosene film and exhaust staining around the APU and the exhaust area, rubber smears and hydraulic fluid in a wheel well, insect residue on the leading edge, grease at a hinge line, and food and drink residue in a cabin.
This is the section where high-temperature steam grease removal becomes a decision rather than a preference. Heat softens oil, tar and grease so that pressure only has to move them, which is why an oily bilge, a wheel well or a trailer waterline behaves so differently from a salt-stained deck. Where the deposit is mineral - dried salt, rust staining, scale - heat alone will not release it, and the specification needs a pre-treatment step instead. Write the deposit list honestly, worst first; it is the single most useful input to the machine selection.
3. Utilities at the point of work
Marinas and aviation aprons are the two settings where utilities most often decide the equipment. Ask three questions and write down the answers with measurements. Is there a three-phase or single-phase supply at the berth or stand, and what is the available current? Is there a potable or non-potable tap within hose reach, and what fitting does it use? Is there drainage, and does it lead to an oil-water separator or to open water? A fixed steam cleaning machine such as the PowerDe HW02 is a 220 V unit with a 6 kW heater, an 80 L tank, a tap-water inlet and published steam figures of 160 degrees at 0.8 MPa, which suits a fixed wash area where the supply and the drainage already exist - a marina workshop, a boatyard hard standing with services, or an airline base wash bay.
Where those services are absent, the answer changes to a battery-powered mobile machine. A fuel berth on a pontoon, a seasonal slipway, a general-aviation ramp with no fixed wash pad, and a remote offshore base all share the same constraint, and the driving-style and hand-pushed units in the Cleaning Equipment Series are built for the narrow, service-poor layouts those sites have. The trade-off to state honestly in the enquiry is runtime and refill cycles, not raw cleaning power.
4. Run-off, drainage and environmental permission
Ask what the site is permitted to discharge, and get it in writing. Hull cleaning produces antifouling residue; deck cleaning produces oil and grit; wheel-well cleaning produces hydraulic fluid and brake dust; cabin and galley cleaning produces food and grease. On afloat cleaning, run-off falls directly into the water, so the question is not how to wash but whether the wash is allowed at all, and if a contained or recovery method is required instead. On a hard standing, the question is whether an interceptor exists, who services it, and what its limits are.
This constraint pushes a specification toward low-water methods. High-temperature steam puts far less volume on a surface than a hose wash, which means less run-off to capture and a smaller recovery duty. If your site's environmental officer has already ruled out free discharge, say so in the first message; it usually changes the machine class rather than just the accessories.
5. The window out of service
State how long the asset can be held out of use, and how often. A ferry cleaned between sailings has a different window from a yacht in a winter shed; a commercial aircraft at a gate has minutes, one in a base hangar has hours. Window length drives everything downstream: the number of passes you can afford, whether a dwell on a heavy deposit is possible, how many operators you put on the job, and whether a single machine serves the whole task or the work is split between a fixed wash point and a mobile unit.
Give the supplier the real number. A method that does not fit the berth's or the hangar's actual idle minutes is abandoned in the second week, and a machine sized for a window that does not exist is a purchase nobody uses.
6. Restricted areas and the operator's own rules
Produce a written list of what must not be sprayed, and confirm it against the asset manufacturer's maintenance documentation rather than assuming. On a vessel, that list normally includes through-hull fittings and seacocks, shaft and rudder seals, deck hardware with packed bearings, electronics and antenna housings, solar panels, and any bonded or cored deck edge. On an aircraft it includes pitot and static ports, static wicks, door and window seals, control-surface hinge lines, landing-gear oleos and their protective covers, avionics bays, and any composite repair area or decal. Also confirm the manufacturer's stated limits on temperature and pressure near those items; where a maker prohibits pressure washing, that answer decides the method before a trial begins.
Aircraft operations add access and permit rules that a marine site does not have: airside escort, foreign-object debris control, engine and pitot covers, fuel-refuelling exclusion, and who signs the aircraft back to service. A specification that ignores them will not survive the operator's safety review.
7. Site access, geometry and moving the machine
Measure the route the machine travels, not just the surface it cleans. Note the width of gangways and pontoon fingers, the height of a hangar door, the presence of steps, ramps, cable trays and bollards, and how far the machine must be pushed between wash positions. Include the machine footprint you are being offered - the HW02 above occupies roughly 1,200 x 800 x 1,200 mm including handles - and check it against the narrowest point on that route. On a multi-hull vessel, a pontoon or a hangar with fixed racking, the machine that cleans best on paper is often the one that cannot be reached.
Where the work moves between sites - a mobile detailing service for boats and aircraft, a fleet that works several berths, a maintenance contractor covering multiple ramps - say so at the start. That requirement points to a battery-powered unit and a defined refill and charging routine, rather than a fixed machine at one location.
8. Duty cycle, crew and the standard you will sign off
State how many assets you clean per week or per month, how many operators will run the machine, and what shift pattern that work falls in. Duty cycle decides the tank, heater and duty rating you need, and it is the number most often left out of an enquiry. Then write the acceptance standard in observable terms before the first wash: no salt or biofilm on the waterline and transom, no oil film in the bilge or the wheel well, no streaking on the topsides or the fuselage, no residue in deck channels or on step treads, and the surface dry enough to return to service. Name who inspects and how a failed area is put right without a second visit.
9. Prove it on the worst asset first
Ask for a trial on the two dirtiest assets at the site with the best services, using the deposit list, the restricted-area list and the acceptance check agreed in advance, and time it in front of whoever owns the budget. Record the time per zone, the water consumed, the number of passes the worst deposit needed, and photographs taken from the same spot as the before shots. Those figures are worth more than any specification sheet, and they are what a supplier uses to correct a recommendation.
If the trial shows that a berth and an apron need different configurations, customized steam cleaning equipment can be specified against those two environments rather than chosen from a catalogue. Shenzhen PowerDe Automation Precision Equipment publishes parameter sheets for the machines in the Cleaning Equipment Series, and the contact page takes the asset description, deposit list, utilities and window out of service as the starting point for a quotation.
