A wet-steam demonstration goes wrong in two ways. Either the machine is run on a surface so clean that nothing impressive happens, or it is run on the dirtiest bay in the yard, where the crew becomes careful, the operator slows down and the result looks worse than the hand wash the buyer already does. The purpose of the demonstration is to let a purchasing decision be made on evidence: does this mode release the deposit your crews actually meet, at a speed your operation can accept, with the water and power you have.
The checklist below is written for facilities managers, fleet wash supervisors and cleaning contractors in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and the Gulf. Every item can be settled in a single phone call before the machine arrives, and each one decides whether the demonstration produces a number you can act on or a pleasant memory.
1. Decide who is in the room, and what they are there to settle
Put three people in front of the machine: the supervisor who owns the wash schedule, one operator who will actually run the wand, and whoever signs the purchase. A demonstration watched only by procurement tends to settle on price; a demonstration watched only by operators settles on comfort. Neither decision gets made.
Agree the question each person is answering. For the supervisor it is usually whether the wet-steam cycle shortens the wash window. For the operator it is whether the tool is lighter and less tiring than what they hold today. For the buyer it is whether the whole package — machine, water handling, storage, training — fits the site. Write those three questions on the demonstration sheet and score them separately.
2. Fix the pass/fail criteria before the machine is switched on
Write four lines on paper and hand a copy to each person watching. Each line states one condition that must be true for the demonstration to count as a pass. A usable set looks like this: the deposit is removed without a second pass; the surface is dry enough to return to service within the stated window; no protected part on the equipment needs masking beyond what is already in the work instruction; and the water used stays inside the site's normal drainage route.
Decide who marks each line, and mark it in front of the group. A criterion that is agreed afterwards will be argued about, because the person who paid for the demonstration is also the person judging it.
3. Choose two real deposits, not a staged one
Pick the two worst surfaces your crews deal with and leave them untouched for the demonstration. Road film on a chassis rail, brake dust behind a wheel, grease on a forklift axle, sugar film on a delivery body, soap residue on a tank interior — those behave differently from each other, and a machine that handles one may not handle the other. A demonstration on a panel you cleaned last week proves nothing; a demonstration on a panel your crews complain about every month is worth the whole visit.
Photograph both surfaces before the wand touches them, with something in the frame for scale. Photograph them again after, from the same angle and distance. Those two images settle internal arguments faster than any written report, and they are the artefact the buyer will forward to the people who were not in the yard.
4. Separate wet steam from dry steam in the test design
Wet steam carries more free water; it delivers sustained heat into a deposit and it also acts as a rinse. Dry steam puts energy in with less moisture, so the surface stays drier and the run-off is smaller. If a demonstration runs both modes on the same panel with the same deposit, you cannot tell which variable did the work.
Split the test. Run one half of a surface in the wetter mode and the other half in the drier mode, with the same nozzle, the same distance and the same number of passes, then compare. Mobile units in the Cleaning Equipment Series — the driving-style PowerDe PWD02 steam cleaner and its battery version — give hot water, dry steam and wet steam from one platform, which is why the split-half method is easy to run on them and why it is worth asking for all three modes at the demo rather than only the one you were told to look at.
5. Time the whole cycle, including the boring parts
Start the stopwatch when the operator picks up the machine, not when the nozzle reaches the panel. Log heat-up time, fill time, the wand time on the surface, dwell time on the deposit, the number of passes, and the time spent moving the unit between bays. A machine that wins on wand time and loses on refills may still be the wrong purchase.
Tank capacity is the number that decides how often the cycle breaks. On the PWD02 platform the clean-water tank is 60 L and it takes tap water through a standard inlet; on the fixed PowerDe HW02 steam cleaner the tank is 80 L of SUS304. Ask the demonstrator to run the machine until the tank is empty on your own surface, then count how much work was actually done on one fill. That figure is what your schedule needs.
6. Set the safety perimeter for steam, and test the protections on purpose
Wet steam at the nozzle is a scalding hazard, and the risk window is the first few seconds after the trigger, when the operator cannot see through the vapour. Before the demonstration, mark a keep-clear radius, agree who holds the wand and who is allowed within that radius, and confirm that anyone watching from the front row is wearing eye protection and closed footwear.
Then ask the demonstrator to show the machine's own protections behaving, not merely listed. Our units are built with leakage, short-circuit, high-temperature, high-voltage, water-shortage and high-voltage explosion protection. Ask what the operator sees when the water runs out mid-job, how long the machine takes to recover, and whether a protection trip can be reset by the shift supervisor or needs an engineer. A protection nobody has watched working is a line in a brochure; a protection watched working changes how the crew treats the machine afterwards.
7. Map the power, water and run-off route in advance
Send your site a short set of questions a week before the visit: where the machine will be plugged in, the supply voltage and the circuit rating at that point, the distance from that point to the farthest bay, where the water inlet will be, and where the run-off will drain. A demonstration cancelled at the gate because there is no outlet within reach is the most common wasted visit, and it is entirely avoidable.
Power choice is a real decision, not an accessory. The PWD02 is offered in a without-battery version for sites that have an outlet at the wash point, and in a version that runs on a 455 V mobile battery for sites that do not; the hand-pushed HMW3 and the HMW2 run on a 48 V mobile battery. If your operation moves between bays with no fixed services, say so before the demonstration and have the battery version brought. If your site has power where it is needed, the without-battery machine is the simpler thing to own.
8. Decide what stays dry, and write it on the demonstration sheet
Every buyer knows the wet-steam question is not whether it cleans, but what the water does to everything nearby. Name the parts in your own equipment that must not be sprayed directly: electrical enclosures, bearing housings that are not sealed, brake components where the manufacturer forbids water, sensors and connectors, insulation, and any surface with a coating that has already begun to lift.
Put those exclusions on the sheet before the wand is picked up and let the demonstrator show how the mode and the nozzle choice keep moisture off them. A unit with an integrated vacuum — flat nozzle and a separate sewage tank on the PWD02 platform — changes this conversation, because the released deposit and the water film are lifted as they are made rather than left to run to the floor. Ask for that to be demonstrated on the same panel, so you can see the difference in run-off.
9. Run a second pass with your operator, not theirs
The first pass is always run by the person who knows the machine best, and that number is not the number you will get on a Tuesday night. Hand the wand to one of your own operators, give them the ten minutes of instruction you would realistically give a new starter, and run the same test on the same kind of surface. Compare the two results openly.
This is also the moment to judge ergonomics: machine weight and footprint against the routes it has to travel, hose length against the bay layout, how the unit is pushed through a doorway or over a drainage channel, and how the operator handles it after eight hours rather than after eight minutes. A mobile steam cleaning machine that works well in a wide yard can fail on a site where every metre of route is a turn.
10. Agree storage, upkeep and who owns the descaling
Ask where the machine will live between shifts and check that space. A wet-steam unit needs somewhere dry, a place to leave the hose, and a route to the power or charging point that is not blocked by a parked vehicle. Many demonstrations succeed and implementations stall on exactly this.
Then ask for the upkeep list in writing before you leave: the service interval, the seals, nozzles and hoses to hold on site, the descaling routine for your water hardness, and the name and direct number of the person to call when the machine stops heating. Scale is the ordinary cause of a steam machine that still runs and no longer performs. Decide who owns that task at the demonstration stage, because after delivery nobody claims it.
11. What the buyer should hand over afterwards
Ask for a written pack within a day of the visit: the exact model and configuration demonstrated, its published parameters, the accessories quoted, the consumable and spare-part list, the warranty term and what voids it, and the lead time. Attach to that pack your own scoring sheet, the before-and-after photographs, and the timings from the second pass.
A configuration request written from your own photographs and timings will come back matched to your site. If your demonstration is planned around an unusual bay layout, a shared wash crew, or a duty that no catalogue model fits, send the deposit photographs and your measured cycle times with the enquiry and ask for a configuration proposal rather than a product page.
12. A short checklist to send before the visit
- Three named attendees, and one written question for each of them
- Four pass/fail criteria, signed before the machine is switched on
- Two untouched deposits, photographed before and after from the same angle
- Wet-steam and dry-steam tested on halves of the same panel, same nozzle, same passes
- Heat-up, fill, wand, dwell and travel times logged from pickup to put-away
- One full tank run to failure, counted in work completed rather than litres
- Keep-clear radius, eye protection, and a protection trip demonstrated on purpose
- Outlet location, supply rating, cable distance, inlet point and drain route confirmed in writing
- Exclusion list for parts that must not be sprayed, agreed before the first pass
- Second pass run by your own operator with new-starter instruction only
- Storage space checked, service interval, spares list and descaling owner named
- Written pack with configuration, parameters, warranty and lead time within one day
If you want the demonstration to be run on your surfaces rather than on a showroom panel, send us the two deposit photographs, your supply details and the bay dimensions, and we will propose the machine, the mode sequence and the accessories for that job. Shenzhen PowerDe Automation Precision Equipment publishes full parameters for every model in the Cleaning Equipment Series, and customised configurations are agreed at design stage. Reach us by telephone or email from the contact page and we will set the date.
