Ask any plant engineer where the cleaning budget goes first and the answer is rarely the floor. It goes to whatever the production schedule cannot stop for. Water supply is the item that decides whether a steam programme can reach those surfaces at all, because the machine is only as continuous as the pipe, tank or hose standing behind it.
Footprint and capacity answer two different questions. Capacity asks whether one fill covers the surfaces you intend to clean. Footprint asks whether the machine, its inlet and its run-off can be placed where those surfaces actually are. Comparing the two against the same drawing, before the quotation arrives, is cheaper than moving a delivered machine.
Start from the water inlet, not the machine body
A fixed unit intended for continuous work is normally fed from a mains supply rather than refilled by hand. On the Fixed Steam Cleaning Machine PowerDe HW02, the page records a tap-water inlet with a 4-point internal tooth joint, 1/2 inch. That single line tells a buyer two things worth walking the site to confirm: the thread form your plumbers must match, and the fact that a plumbed water line has to be routed to the machine position.
Ask for the connection size on every candidate machine in writing and put the answer on your layout next to the existing cold-water point. Where the distance is more than a short hose run, the cost sits in pipework, trenching and downtime, not in the equipment. If the supply cannot be plumbed, an on-board clean-water tank becomes the deciding specification and capacity moves to the front of the comparison.
Read capacity as a working window, not a number
Tank volume on its own says nothing about a shift. The useful question is how many minutes of continuous lance time one fill buys, and that figure is not published on every product page. For the HW02 the page states an 80 L SUS304 tank, with a heating power of 6 KW and a steam temperature of 160° at a vapor pressure of 0.8 Mpa, on 220 V, with both dry steam and wet steam modes. Those are machine outputs, and they are a starting point for a conversation with the supplier, not a consumption rate you can copy onto your own duty cycle.
What you can do locally is measure your own window. Fill the machine, run the mode your team will actually use, and time how long the supply lasts before the operator stops to refill or re-heat. Multiply that against the surface list from the last cleaning round and you know whether one tank covers a hood clean, a stovetop clean, or neither.
Footprint is the envelope, not the cabinet
The HW02 detail page lists L1200 mm × W800 mm × H1200 mm including handles, which is a useful reminder to read the stated figure carefully. Handles, a hose reel, a wand parked on the frame and a door that swings open all live outside the cabinet panel, and it is the extended dimension that has to clear a doorway, a service aisle or a wall recess.
Measure the route rather than the parking spot: the narrowest doorway between the water point and the cleaning area, the turning radius in the aisle, and the height clearance at any duct, pipe rack or conveyor overhead. Then check what the machine must sit on. A kitchen floor with a fall to a drain and a production floor that must stay dry are different installation problems, and both change where the unit can stand.
Compare against your own surface list
Write down the five surfaces your team cleans most often and the five that get skipped, and put each against a mode. Dry steam suits surfaces where a wet floor afterwards is a hazard; wet steam and hot water carry more energy into soaked deposits. A machine offering both modes lets one unit serve both jobs instead of buying twice.
Where those surfaces are away from a fixed point, a fixed unit on a plumbed inlet and a mobile unit are not competing options; they cover different halves of the same site. Note which jobs genuinely need a machine that travels and which ones happen in one place every week.
Put both numbers on the same drawing
| Compare the inlet connection size and thread form with the water point you can actually reach. | If the answer is no, capacity becomes a tank question instead of a pipe question. |
| Time the working window from a full supply on your chosen mode. | One fill per task, or an interruption mid-task, decides how many units the site needs. |
| Measure the extended envelope including handles, plus the route to the position. | A machine that fits the room but not the doorway is a returned machine. |
| Check the power supply against what is available at that position. | The stated working voltage has to match the socket or panel you can use. |
| Ask what happens to run-off where the machine will stand. | Drainage and containment are site work that belongs in the same budget line. |
When the site does not fit the catalogue
Sites where the water point, the doorway and the surfaces never agree on one position are common enough that PowerDe lists customized steam cleaning equipment alongside the standard models. The practical value of that route is not a bigger machine; it is a different arrangement of inlet, tank and frame so the unit sits where your plumbing and your aisle allow.
Before that conversation, send three things: the measured route with its narrowest clearance, the water point with its connection type, and your surface list with the mode you expect for each. Suppliers answer those three quickly and vaguely for everything else.
The comparison is finished when you can say, for each machine on the list, how many minutes of cleaning one supply buys and where the unit physically stands. Get both numbers from your own site rather than from a datasheet, and the shortlist usually decides itself. If the layout is the obstacle, the cleaning equipment range and the customisation route are worth reviewing together.
