Two figures answer this question directly, and both deserve a careful reading before anyone plans a wash bay around them. The page for the Fixed Steam Cleaning Machine PowerDe HW02 states a heating power of 6 kW and an 80 L tank made of SUS304 stainless steel, refilled from a tap-water inlet. Alongside them it states a working voltage of 220 V, a steam temperature of 160°C, a vapour pressure of 0.8 MPa, switching between dry and wet steam, a vacuum cleaner, and a footprint of 1,200 × 800 × 1,200 mm including handles.
Those are the numbers, and they are the right ones to ask about. What they are not is a schedule. Between a heater rating and a tank volume on one side, and a day of vehicles on the other, sit four quantities that no product page of this kind publishes: how long a cold start takes, how much steam the boiler can produce per hour, whether the machine is meant to run continuously, and how much current it draws from the wall. A buyer who treats 6 kW and 80 L as planning figures will get a bay that works on paper and stalls on the second vehicle. A buyer who treats them as the two ends of a calculation, and asks for what sits between them, gets a bay that holds its shift.
What each published figure actually is
Before the arithmetic, it is worth being precise about what the specification sheet is describing, because two of these lines are routinely read as something they are not.
- 6 kW heating power is the output of the heater that turns water into steam. It is not the machine's total electrical draw, and it is not a measure of cleaning force.
- 80 L tank, SUS304 is the water the machine carries, in a stainless vessel. It is a buffer between the machine and the tap, not a limit on how long the machine can run.
- 220 V working voltage is the supply the machine expects. It tells you what your electrician has to confirm, not what your existing socket can give.
- 160°C and 0.8 MPa describe one working condition of the boiler, not two separate benefits. Temperature and pressure in a steam vessel are the same state read two ways, so they are not two figures to compare across machines independently.
- Tap-water inlet, 4-point internal-tooth joint, 1/2 inch is the reason the tank is a buffer. A machine that can be refilled where it stands is not sized by its tank the way a machine that must be wheeled back to a tap is.
- 1,200 × 800 × 1,200 mm including handles is the box that has to arrive through your door and stand somewhere with water, drain and power beside it.
The page also lists protection functions: leakage, short-circuit, high-temperature, high-voltage, water-shortage and high-voltage-explosion protection. Read those as what they are. They are the machine looking after itself. They do not look after your circuit, your floor gradient or the drainage that has to take the wash water away, and none of them change what 6 kW can recover between vehicles.
What 6 kW of heating power really decides
A heater rating is a recovery figure. Its job is to put energy into water quickly enough that the boiler returns to its working state while cold feed water is entering it. That moment, cold water arriving in a hot vessel while the trigger is pulled, is the only moment in a working day where 6 kW is the number that matters. Everything else about the machine is plumbing and hose length.
So the useful question is not whether 6 kW is a lot. It is what happens in your bay when the demand outruns it. Does the pressure fall and the temperature fall with it, since the two are one state? Does the machine pause and tell the operator, or does it simply go on spraying something that has stopped behaving like steam? How long does it take to come back, with the inlet connected, from the state the last vehicle left it in? Ask for that recovery time in writing, for your ambient temperature and your incoming water temperature, because a machine tested in a warm room in summer and operated in an unheated bay in January is not the same machine.
Then ask for the current. A 220V steam cleaning machine with a 6 kW heater is the kind of equipment where the electrical installation fails first, long before anything about the boiler does. Ask for the full-load current at 220 V, the recommended protective device and conductor size, and whether the manufacturer requires a dedicated circuit. Do not infer any of those from the heater rating. A heater output figure and a current at the wall are different quantities, and the second one is what your electrician has to sign.
What the 80 L tank is for, and what it is not
Tank capacity is the most misread line on any steam machine specification, because it looks like a working-time figure and is not one. On this machine the tank sits behind a tap-water inlet, which means it can be topped up from a fixed supply without moving the machine. A vessel that can be refilled beside a water connection does not set the length of the job in the way a vessel that has to be carried back to a tap does.
What the 80 L does decide is narrower, and it changes how the day is planned. It decides the cold start: the first vessel of cold water has to be heated before anyone pulls a trigger, and that time belongs to the tank, not to the schedule. It decides how far from a water connection the machine can work, which is the difference between a fixed bay and a machine that has to be moved to a tap every few vehicles. And it decides what the water-shortage protection is protecting: a vessel that runs dry mid-shift is a stoppage, and a vessel that runs dry because nobody noticed the inlet kink is a stoppage you caused.
What it does not decide is how many vehicles the machine will finish. Do not divide 80 L by an assumed consumption and present the result as a capacity. The page publishes no steam output per hour and no minutes per tank, so any figure produced that way is arithmetic performed on a guess. Ask instead for the steam generation rate, the expected water use per vehicle for the work the page actually describes, and whether the machine is intended to run with the inlet connected continuously or to be filled between jobs.
The four numbers that sit between the specification and your shift
If you take one page away from this exercise, take this list. Each item below is a quantity a fixed steam machine has, that a buyer needs, and that a specification sheet of this kind does not carry. Ask for each in writing, in the units named, and keep the answers with the order.
- Time from cold start to usable steam at the nozzle. Ask for it as minutes from a cold machine with a full tank, at a stated incoming water temperature. This is the first task of every shift and it is invisible on the sheet.
- Steam output per hour, in kilograms. This is the figure that describes throughput. A heater rating tells you the energy going in; output per hour tells you what the machine can actually deliver at 160°C and 0.8 MPa without drifting.
- Duty, continuous or intermittent. Ask whether the machine is designed to be sprayed continuously for a full shift, or whether it expects pauses between vehicles, and what the manufacturer recommends for back-to-back work.
- Full-load current and installation requirements. Current at the wall, recommended breaker and conductor, whether a dedicated circuit is required, and what the machine's own protection functions do and do not cover.
One more line belongs on that page if your bay is indoors or if winter reaches it: what the machine expects from its environment. Frost, ventilation for the steam and heat the boiler gives off, drainage for the water that comes off the vehicle, and the distance from the fixed point to the far corner of the largest vehicle you wash. A fixed machine is a fixed machine; the hose does not negotiate with the layout.
How to test both figures on your own vehicles
Neither published figure can be argued about usefully from a desk. Both can be measured in a morning on vehicles you actually wash, and the measurement is worth more than any brochure. Run it as a test with a stopwatch and one sheet of paper, on the surfaces the product page describes: vehicle exteriors, engine compartments, and interiors with the vacuum.
Start the machine cold with a full tank and time until steam behaves as you expect at the nozzle. Write that number down; it is your shift-start cost and it will be paid every day of the machine's life. Then wash three representative vehicles in the order they arrive, timing each one, and note every refill and where the inlet was connected. Watch the second and third vehicles closely. If they take longer than the first, that difference is recovery, and recovery is the figure your schedule should be built on, not the 6 kW on the sheet. If they take the same time, ask what the machine was doing between them and whether it was holding temperature the whole time.
Record the conditions alongside the results, because without them the numbers mean nothing: the incoming water temperature, the air temperature in the bay, the vehicle types and how soiled they were, and the water meter reading before and after if there is one within reach. Send that one page to the supplier with your questions. A supplier who can explain a slow third vehicle has engineered the machine and knows where its limits are. A supplier who answers that the machine is very powerful is reading the same specification you are.
Where these two figures stop being the deciding factor
The product page places this machine at vehicle exterior cleaning in gas stations and parking areas, interior vacuuming and disinfection, and engine-compartment cleaning. If your work is that work, power and tank capacity are the right two figures to interrogate, and the questions above are the right questions.
If your work is on another surface or in another industry, the two figures are not the obstacle and should not be treated as the answer. Ask in writing whether the machine is offered for that use, and what the manufacturer's own experience with it is, before you build a plan on a specification written for vehicles. The same caution applies in reverse: a machine that is genuinely adequate on paper can still fail a site over drainage, over a door too narrow for the box, or over a fixed point placed on the wrong side of the bay. Those are the failures that end projects, and none of them appear in a power or capacity figure.
So put the two published numbers where they belong: as the starting point of an enquiry, not the end of one. Vehicles per day and the real window you have for them, bay dimensions and door widths, where the water, drain and power actually are, indoor or outdoor and the coldest week of the year, the surfaces in scope and the ones explicitly out, and the four unpublished figures requested by name. That page, sent through the contact page, will get you a usable answer from an equipment supplier faster than any specification table will. And when the answers come back, compare them against the PowerDe cleaning equipment listings rather than against assumptions: a supplier who has published the figures they have will usually publish the ones you still need, once you ask.
