Start with the numbers the product page already gives you
Two numbers carry almost all of the information a buyer needs at this stage, and PowerDe publishes both. The Driving Style Steam Cleaning Machine PowerDe PWD02 (including battery) is listed at L1275 × W570 × H1185 mm with a 60 L clean-water tank, a 4.5 kW PTC semiconductor heater, three modes — hot water, dry steam and wet steam — and a working supply given as 220 V with a mobile battery noted as replaceable. The same model without battery carries the identical footprint and tank figures, so for a layout comparison the two variants behave the same way.
Against that, PowerDe PWD01 (including battery) is listed at L2500 × W900 × H1050 mm with an 80 L clean-water tank and the same 4.5 kW semiconductor heating. Read together, the pair forms a clean two-step ladder rather than a random model range, and that is exactly what makes them worth comparing line by line instead of by price.
Read the footprint as a set of clearances, not as three dimensions
A footprint only becomes usable once it is measured against the routes the machine has to take. Take a 570 mm width: a single-leaf door, an aisle between parked cars, a service lift opening, or a step up into a basement garage each decides whether that figure helps you. Add the machine's listed autonomous-driving mode and the question sharpens — a unit that can be driven and stopped where it stands needs room to be positioned, not merely room to park it afterwards.
Three dimensions are not a clearance. Write down the narrowest pinch point on the route from the storage corner to the working position, then subtract a margin for the operator walking alongside. Do the same for the turning space at the bay. That is the only way to tell whether a machine that fits through the door actually fits the job.
- The narrowest door, gate or lift opening on the route, measured leaf to leaf, not frame to frame.
- Whether the route includes a ramp, a threshold, or a cable trunking the wheels must cross.
- Whether the machine has to pass a customer walkway or a working aisle at any point.
- The space left for a hose, wand and vacuum line to be pulled behind the unit without snagging.
The Cleaning Equipment Series pages state the intended setting for this type of machine as indoor garages and narrow outdoor parking spaces, and the two PWD02 variants are listed in that group. That wording is doing useful work: it says the width was chosen for tight layouts. Your job is to check that those tight layouts match yours, and to confirm it against your own measured pinch point before the machine arrives.
Treat capacity as the length of the gap between refills
A tank figure is not a rating; it is a countdown. A 60 L clean-water tank decides how much work fits between visits to a water point, and how far that walk is. On the PWD02 pages the inlet is listed as tap water through a 4-point internal-tooth joint, and a vacuum function with a flat nozzle is listed separately, tied to a sewage tank. That matters for capacity planning in a practical way: the water on board is split between what the cleaning modes consume and what the rinse and vacuum side has to hold, so the tank figure never translates into a fixed number of vehicles.
The honest way to compare 60 L against 80 L is to test it on your own working pattern rather than on a spec sheet. Mark the tank at the start of a shift, and record three things: the jobs completed, the moment the tank first forced a stop, and the time spent walking to a tap and back. Run that for two shifts with the same operator mix. If refilling never interrupts a shift, the larger tank buys nothing except weight and length. If it interrupts twice, you have just found the true cost of the smaller tank — and it is measured in lost bay time, not in litres.
Two cautions belong in the same paragraph, because they decide more shifts than tank size does. The PWD02 pages list 220 V working voltage with the mobile battery shown as replaceable, while PWD01 lists a 48 V mobile battery with the batteries noted as customer provided. Which power route you can rely on is therefore part of the capacity question, not a footnote to it — a machine that has to stop and charge behaves like a smaller machine, however large its tank.
What the published page does not tell you
Neither PWD02 page publishes battery capacity or run time, the charger output, machine weight, steam temperature or steam pressure, hose and wand lengths, the accessory list, or water consumption per hour. Do not fill those gaps from another model, and do not accept them from a brochure line. Put them into the request for quotation as named questions and require the answer for the exact variant and configuration you are being priced: the battery on board, the charger supplied, the runtime measured in your type of duty cycle, and the accessory set fitted for engine and interior work with replacement prices.
Both variants also list the same protective functions in the same words — leakage, short-circuit, high-temperature, high-voltage and water-shortage protection, together with high-voltage explosion protection — with a PTC semiconductor heater named as the heating element. Since those features are shared, they should not be used as the reason to prefer one variant over the other; the difference you are comparing is the power route and the way refilling and charging interrupt your shift.
Run both against the same site, in the same order
A fair comparison is one where the layout test and the capacity test are run against the same working day, and where the operator doing it does not change between runs. Ask for a trial against your own pinch point, at your own water and power positions, with your own vehicles, and time the same task on both units.
| What you decide | Evidence to collect before you decide |
|---|---|
| Footprint fits or does not | Measured narrowest opening, turning space at the bay, and one walk of the full route with the unit in hand |
| Tank size worth paying for | Two timed shifts: jobs completed, first forced refill, minutes spent walking to the water point |
| Battery variant or mains variant | Where 220 V is actually available on your site, what else shares that circuit, and how long a charge has to fit into the shift |
| One unit or two | Count of bays or positions per shift, how they are spaced, and the travel distance between them |
If your layout, drainage or power conditions fall outside what the catalogue describes, put them in front of an engineer instead of guessing a configuration. The customized steam cleaning equipment route exists for that situation, and the inputs it needs are the same measurements this comparison asks you to take: photographs of the pinch point, the utility positions, the working window, and the list of surfaces that must come back clean.
By the end of that exercise the decision stops being an argument about litres and millimetres. You will know which unit your doors accept, how often each one has to be refilled on your own shift, and which power route your site can actually support — and you will have asked both suppliers the same questions, which is the only condition under which their answers can be set side by side.
