A yacht service provider does not buy a cleaning machine. The provider buys the ability to finish a job on a boat that is on the clock, afloat on a visitor mooring or ashore on a hard standing, with a crane booking, a tide, a yard gate and an owner's expectations all fixed before anyone reads a catalogue. That is why the questions worth putting to a steam equipment supplier are not the questions that settle a vehicle wash purchase. On a hull, the surface is large, curved and coated by somebody else years ago. The power and water are not at hand. The run-off falls into a marina basin. And the distance from the one point that has both utilities to the far side of the hull is a physical problem no brochure solves.
PowerDe publishes real specifications for its steam machines, and those pages answer part of what a marine buyer needs. The rest is silence, and silence is only a problem if it gets filled with an assumption instead of a question. One point belongs at the front of the enquiry: the published cleaning pages describe vehicle exterior work at fuelling and parking sites, interior vacuuming and disinfection, engine compartments, and on one listing the cleaning and disinfection of hospital beds and medical machinery. Marine work is not among the named uses. So the first written question to any supplier is whether your job sits inside the manufacturer's intended use, and the second is what the answer means for the specific coatings on your hull.
Write the job down before you read a specification
A specification cannot be judged against a job that has not been written. Before any enquiry goes out, list the surfaces your business actually works on, one line each, and say what limits each of them. Topsides gelcoat, and whether it is original, repaired or polished so often that its thickness is a matter of opinion. Non-skid deck, where the pattern holds water and dirt in places a flat surface does not have. The waterline band, which carries a different deposit from anywhere else on the boat. Transom, running gear and the area around through-hull fittings. Canvas, spray hoods and cushions. Deck hardware, anodes and terminals that must not be blasted or left wet. Interior sole, lockers and the engine bay, which is the one part of the job closest to the vehicle work the published pages do describe. And the underwater hull at haul-out, with its antifouling.
For each line record what the coating is, how old it is, who would have to sign off damage, and how the surface is cleaned today. A gelcoat that has been machine polished every spring for years is not the surface the yard painted when the boat was new, even though the invoice for the boat still describes it that way. That history is what a supplier needs in order to answer anything useful, and it is also the document you will hand to the crew on the day. A row that says "hull" cannot be checked, protected or argued about afterwards. A row that says "port topsides, original gelcoat, last polished two seasons ago, surveyor signs off blistering" can be all three.
Ask where a published number was measured
The listing for the Fixed Steam Cleaning Machine PowerDe HW02 gives a steam temperature of 160 degrees Celsius and a vapour pressure of 0.8 MPa, alongside 6 kW of heating power, an 80 L SUS304 tank, a tap-water inlet and 220 V. That is a useful table and it is worth knowing what it is a table of. Temperature and pressure inside a vessel where water and steam coexist are two readings of one saturated condition, not two separate capabilities, so a supplier who lists both is describing one state twice. More important for a hull: a figure measured at the machine, on a short hose, is not the figure that arrives at the end of a long hose dragged around a large hull. The value that does the work is the one at the nozzle.
So the question is not what the temperature is. It is four questions, and they are worth sending to every supplier so that the answers can be read side by side. What are the temperature and pressure at the nozzle with the hose length you are actually quoting? How were they measured, with what instrument, at what flow, and after how many minutes of continuous running? Is the figure a steady state or the peak at the first trigger of the gun? And what does it fall to late in a long job, after repeated refills and restarts? A supplier who has run a machine on a job will answer those with figures and a method. A supplier who has not will repeat the number from the table.
Ask about the supply at the point, not in the brochure
The published working voltage is one number, and the shore connection on your pontoon is another matter. Ask which supply the quoted machine is built for, then have your own electrician confirm the circuit at the point where you will actually work, including the earth and the residual current arrangement, before delivery rather than during commissioning. Then measure the practical part: how far that socket is from the longest hull you service, and what cable you would have to run across a pontoon with people walking on it. A machine that cannot be plugged in where the boat is has not been specified wrongly. It has been specified for a different site.
Battery-powered machines raise a sharper question, because the machine and its most likely failure are sold separately. The listing for the hand-pushed steam cleaning machine gives a 48 V battery as the working power supply, and the model is published in two variants, one listed with a battery and one listed without. Whoever supplies the battery owns the part that ages first. Ask, in writing, which variant the quotation covers and what is in the crate; the battery's make, type and capacity and the machine's required voltage and connector; run time per charge measured on a real job rather than in a lab, and the charge time and charger output; whether opportunity charging between jobs is supported and whether your crew can change a battery themselves; who warrants the battery, for how long, and what a replacement costs and takes to deliver; and where the machine will be charged and stored, and what your marina has to allow for that. A supplier who answers with a part number and a charge curve has used the machine on a shift. A supplier who answers "all day" has not.
Ask how long a tank lasts, not how large it is
Tank capacity is the number a buyer reads and the wrong one to plan with. The fixed machine's listing gives an 80 L tank; the hand-pushed listing gives a 50 L clean-water tank with a tap-water inlet on a 4-point internal-tooth fitting. Neither page publishes a consumption rate, so neither page tells you how many minutes of steam a tank supports, how long a refill takes, or how quickly the machine recovers afterwards. Until you have those figures in writing, any schedule built around a tank is a guess. Ask for litres per hour in each mode, since the modes differ in the water they carry, and ask the same question of any machine you are comparing so the answers are on the same basis.
Then look at the water side of the job on your own site. Where is the nearest tap to the working position, and can it run continuously there? Does the inlet fitting match what your site can provide, and who supplies an adapter if it does not? What does the manufacturer say about water quality and treatment, since the inlet is a mains tap and a marina supply is often hard? And once the tank runs out mid-job, treat the stop as a scheduled line in the plan rather than a fault. A machine that stops because it is empty is telling you something about your water points, not about itself.
Ask about reach around a hull, not about being compact
The published dimensions are the box you have to move, and they only mean something next to your own tape. The fixed machine is listed at 1,200 x 800 x 1,200 mm including handles, with a fixed installation implied by the tap-water inlet and the mains supply. The hand-pushed machine is listed at L1150 x W520 x H1030 mm with hand push as its mode of movement. Put both against the route they would take: the clear width of your yard gate and any side gate on a pontoon, the clear height under a canopy or a beam, the slope and the wet behaviour of a gangway rather than its dry one, the gap between cleats and stanchions, and the turning space at the working end rather than only at the entrance. Words such as compact and easy to move cannot be compared. A clear width you measured yourself can be.
Then ask the reach question directly, because it decides whether one machine can finish a hull. What hose and lance lengths are supplied, and what extensions exist? The pages do not publish those lengths, so they belong on the written list. How far can the operator work from where the machine stands, and how many times would the machine have to be moved to go around your largest boat? Who moves it, up what, and where does it stand between jobs? A fixed machine is a decision about a wash point, and it suits a yard that has one hard standing with power, water and drainage. A mobile machine is a decision about reach, and it suits a provider who works alongside, on a visitor mooring, or on several points around a marina. Those are different purchases, and a specification sheet that looks adequate for either one is usually being read too generously.
Ask what the machine will not do on a hull
Ask for the boundary in writing, because the honest answer protects your reputation with the owner. Steam works with heat and time, and where those are short, force is substituted. That is why a high pressure figure is often a compensation for a missing temperature rather than an addition to it, and why the number at the nozzle matters more than the number on the table. It is also why an antifouling hull with ten months of growth, or a gelcoat with a bonded deposit, is not a steam job on its own. Where mechanical action is required, steam is a follow-up step, not a replacement. Ask the supplier to say plainly which of your listed surfaces their machine is expected to clean, which need a preceding mechanical step, and which they would leave alone.
Ask the same question about materials, because two documents that have never seen each other are both in force on your job: the machine's data and the coating or fitting manufacturer's cleaning limits. The result is what happens where they meet, and reconciling them is the buyer's work. Request a written answer for the surfaces you named: gelcoat and any repair or polish history, non-skid pattern and the deposits held inside it, painted or powder-coated panels, printed labels and the adhesive under them, anodised or bare metal trim, canvas and its coatings, timber and varnish, and any fitting whose instructions give a maximum temperature. Ask what working distance, how many passes and how long a dwell they mean for each, and what happens at half that dwell and at twice it. The hand-pushed listing also names a high-pressure water gun with a nozzle as part of the machine, and its pressure is not published, so if you intend to use that function, ask for the nozzle and the pressure in the same message and keep it away from any area where drying time is the constraint.
Ask where the water goes once it leaves the boat
On a hard standing this is a drainage question. Alongside, it is a basin question, and the answer is not given by the equipment supplier. Whatever leaves a hull carries whatever was on it: oil and grease, silt, antifouling fines, and any detergent you chose to add. Ask your marina, harbour authority or yard for the rules before the first job, and ask where wash-water may be discharged, whether a mat, a vacuum recovery or a bunded bay is expected, and whether the rules differ between alongside and ashore. A method that uses less water is genuinely useful here, because there is less to manage and less standing on a deck you then have to walk on, but a low volume that still runs over the side is still a discharge.
Drying belongs in the same conversation. Ask for drying times by named item rather than a general statement, including hollow fittings, seams, the underside of a hatch surround and anything with a drill hole that can hold water. Ask how trapped water is handled at fittings and deck hardware, what should be wiped and with what, and what happens to water that reaches a seam or a core edge overnight. A job that looks finished at six in the evening and shows a streak at the mast base the next morning was not finished, and the owner will notice the second moment rather than the first.
Ask for a trial on your own hull, with the pass wording written first
Every question above narrows a shortlist; none of them closes it. Close it on your own boat, on the worst panel you have rather than the easiest, in one real working window. Write the acceptance wording before anything is wetted, in observable terms: no film under low-angle light, no residue on an agreed cloth, no water driven into a named seam, no change in gloss at a chosen reference panel. Tape off a control strip and leave it untouched. Run the job as it would actually be run, and time every part of it, including refills, moves around the hull and drying. Photograph from marked positions, and look again the next morning for water at seams, for lifted edges and for anything that has appeared somewhere the nozzle never went.
Send the record, not a summary, to whoever quoted. The protections a listing names by type, such as leakage, short-circuit, high-temperature, high-voltage, water-shortage and high-voltage-explosion protection, act on the machine. They do not assess your shore connection, they do not see a wet pontoon under a crew member's feet, and they do not decide what your discharge rules allow. Ask about them by name so that they can be questioned, and then write the site items separately: who is allowed to run the machine, what personal protective equipment the person holding the wand wears and who may stand in the spray area, how a battery-driven machine is moved where people and vehicles already cross, and what ventilation and drying arrangements apply to any covered or enclosed space you clean.
Questions that come up between quotes
Is a fixed machine or a mobile one the right purchase for a service provider?
It depends on where your work actually happens, which is why the surface list and the utility map come first. A fixed machine with a mains supply and a tap-water inlet suits a yard that washes on one hard standing where power, water and drainage already exist, and it suits engine bay and interior work at that point. A mobile or hand-pushed machine suits a provider who works alongside, at several points around a marina, or on boats that cannot be moved. Some providers need both, in which case the honest question is which one removes the most hours from the job you lose money on, and that is a question your own timing records answer better than any supplier can.
Does steam remove antifouling and heavy growth from an underwater hull?
Do not accept a yes or a no. Ask what the supplier means by removal, on which coating, at what age and hardness of deposit, at what working distance and dwell, and what mechanical step comes before. Heat and time do something to organic growth; bonded silt and a hard antifouling surface are a different problem, and a machine that performs well on a fresh film can fail on a ten-month hull without either result being useful on its own. If the answer you get is a general one, treat the hull as unproven and price the mechanical step separately until a trial on your own boat says otherwise.
What should be sent to a supplier with an enquiry?
Your written surface list, the sizes and number of boats you service, the real working windows you have, the power, water and drainage conditions at each point you work, and your discharge constraints. Ask for a demonstration on your own surfaces against your own written acceptance wording, and for a written statement of the machine's rated range. Suppliers answer records and describe products, and the difference between those two replies is where a marine cleaning programme either starts working or does not. Where the published pages leave a gap, put the question to the manufacturer through the contact PowerDe page with your surface list attached, and for yacht hull and exterior cleaning equipment treat the written answers as part of the specification rather than as correspondence.
