Keep Above
Buy or hire the pressure washer
A pressure washer gets used a few times a year at most houses, which is exactly the shape this calculator counts: buying one — price, upkeep, eventual sale — against hiring one each time, over the same years and uses. Each way lands on a cost per year and per use, the break-even uses a year is stated as a fact, and no winner is declared.
Not counted while this is $0
After 5 years
Delivery, membership, deposits — not counted while $0
Put in what buying one would cost, and what one hire would cost. Nothing here is read from your budgets, and nothing is saved.
| Owning | Hiring | |
|---|---|---|
| Paid up front | — | — |
| Value lost | — | — |
| Hire fees | — | — |
| Other costs | — | — |
| Total over 5 years | — | — |
| Cost a year | — | — |
| Cost a use | — | — |
Where does a pressure washer's running cost actually land?
A pressure washer is small enough to store, but it draws water and power every time it runs and detergent is bought separately from the machine. None of that has a field of its own here, so where it is worth counting it belongs in the upkeep box with everything else a year of owning one would take.
What ages an owned one is mostly time rather than hours: pump seals dry out across a long gap, a petrol engine wants fuel that has not been standing all winter, and frost reaches anything stored outside. The uses-a-year field tends to be a burst as well — a drive, a fence and a deck across one weekend, then a season of nothing — so a low number there can still sit on top of a full year of upkeep.
This is one of the tools built into Keep Above
Keep Above is a budgeting app where you enter your bills and income and it works out the balance you need to keep — so you can see what's safe to spend. No bank connection, no ads on your data.
Owning and hiring separate over years rather than weeks, so the useful question is what a balance would look like that far out — which budgeting apps forecast your balance, and how far ahead.
About this calculator
What counts as upkeep for a pressure washer?
Whatever a year of owning one would take — the occasional seal or lance, a service if it's petrol-driven, and storage space if that has a cost. One yearly figure; $0 means it isn't counted.
What would one hire include here?
The day rate plus anything the depot adds per hire — detergent, fittings, a delivery charge if it's delivered. A refundable bond isn't a cost and stays out; anything yearly rather than per-hire belongs in the extras box.
What is the crossing point?
The number of washes a year at which the two totals would land on the same figure, across the years you set. It is a position in the arithmetic rather than a threshold anyone is meant to hit. When owning nets to nothing after the sale, or the hiring side's yearly extras already exceed owning's total on their own, there is nothing to cross and the page states that instead.
Do water and electricity count as running costs here?
There is no separate field for them, so where they are worth counting they go in the upkeep box with the rest of what a year of owning one takes. A hire's day rate often has the supplier's own consumables built into it while your water and power stay yours, so the two sides can describe the same job differently — and the gap between them reads more honestly once both boxes account for that.