A new cleaning job usually starts with a question that has nothing to do with the machine: where does the water come from? On a parking forecourt the answer may be a garden tap. In an underground garage it may be a hose reel forty metres away. On a mobile detailing round it may be a drum in the back of a van. Before the first quote goes out, we walk through the same checklist we use with our own engineers, so that the water supply stops being a surprise on the first day of operation.
1. What the site can actually deliver, measured
Steam generation is a duty-cycle problem, not a marketing one. A fixed unit such as our PowerDe HW02 steam cleaner carries an 80 L SUS304 tank and a 6 kW heater, and it takes tap water through a 4-point internal-tooth joint with a 1/2 inch thread. That is a normal domestic or maintenance supply, but two details matter: the inlet thread has to match the hose fitting on site, and the tank has to be refilled while the operator keeps working. Ask the client how far the nearest reliable tap is from the working position, and time how long a full drum takes to carry that distance. If the answer is "more than a couple of minutes", the tank size becomes part of the productivity conversation rather than a line in a datasheet.
Mobile units shift the question entirely. The driving-style machines in our cleaning equipment series run in dry steam, wet steam and hot-water modes, and the battery versions are chosen for exactly the places where no water or power point is available. For those jobs the water is carried, so the practical limits are tank capacity, vehicle payload and how often the round returns to a fill point.
2. Water quality is a maintenance decision
Hard water is the most common reason a steam machine loses performance in its second year. Scale collects on the heating element, heat transfer drops, and the operator notices longer heat-up times before the engineer is ever called. Tap water is what the product pages assume, so the honest question to ask a buyer is what their water looks like. Ask for a hardness figure from the local supplier or a simple test strip, and decide at quotation stage whether softened or filtered water will be supplied at the point of use. This is far cheaper than a heater replacement, and it is the kind of small specification that keeps a machine in service instead of out of it.
3. Power and supply belong in the same conversation
The HW02 works on a 220 V supply with 6 kW of heating power. That is not a large load, but it is large enough that an extension lead shared with other equipment will cause voltage drop and nuisance tripping. Before an order, confirm three things in writing: the available supply voltage at the position where cleaning will actually happen, the rating of the circuit protecting that outlet, and the length of cable between the outlet and the machine. Where a site has no suitable point, the choice is between installing one and moving to a battery-fed mobile machine. That is a facility decision, and it is much easier to make before installation day than during it.
4. Drainage and run-off are part of the supply question
Steam cleaning uses far less water than a hose, which is one reason buyers choose it. Less water does not mean no water, though. Engine bay and degreasing work produces run-off that carries oil and detergent residue, and in many locations that run-off cannot simply flow into a surface-water drain. Where the site is a public forecourt, a leasing agreement may set out how wash water must be contained and disposed of. Confirming the drainage route and any interceptor requirement at the design stage prevents an installation that cannot legally be used.
5. Confirm the operating pattern before choosing the model
Fixed machines suit a fixed location with a dependable supply: a station bay, a depot wash area, a facility where the same team works every shift. Mobile machines suit a rotating set of locations with no known supply. The protection features on our machines — leakage, short-circuit, high-temperature, high-voltage, water-shortage and high-voltage-explosion protection — support unattended-safe operation, but they do not replace a proper supply on the buyer's side. If the site cannot commit to a supply, a machine that carries its own water and power is the safer recommendation, even when it costs more per unit, because the alternative is a machine that sits idle.
A short pre-sale checklist
- Distance and travel time from the nearest dependable water point to the cleaning position
- Inlet thread and fitting compatibility with on-site hose connections
- Water hardness figure, plus a decision on softening or filtration
- Supply voltage, circuit rating and cable length at the actual working position
- Run-off containment, drainage route and any interceptor obligation
- Whether the site is fixed or rotating, which decides between a fixed and a mobile machine
None of these items are difficult to answer, but all of them come from the buyer's site rather than from our factory. Send us the site conditions — layout, available supply, water hardness and the cleaning pattern your team plans to run — and our engineering team will match the machine to those conditions instead of the other way round. If the supply cannot support a fixed unit, we will say so and propose a mobile configuration.
