Karcher covers all bases with its car and home pressure washer

Karcher K4 Premium Power Control Car & Home pressure washer

Pros: Good all-round pressure washer and dirt-remover, plenty of handy accessories included

Cons: Takes around 20 minutes to assemble

I’m not usually in the business of gardening. But once in a while I get co-opted into helping fix the yard up a bit.

Instead of paying someone €200 for about two hours’ work, I decided instead to see if my garden paving stones and wooden benches, as well as my car, could be serviced adequately with a domestic pressure washer.

These have become a lot more accessible, and a lot more useful, in recent years.

The unit I tested was Karcher’s K4 Premium Power Control Car & Home pressure washer, a fairly robust, powerful piece of outdoor tech that can fairly blast through most of your domestic grounds-keeper grime.

For what you’re getting, it’s not especially expensive – €379 right now with free delivery. That includes quite a few useful accessories, such as a rotating washing brush for cars, foam jet and car shampoo, as well as multiple separate spraying guns and lances for different types of cleaning.

It did take about 20 minutes’ assembly, which was simple but a little pesky. It feels like some of the assembling could have been done by Karcher without altering the delivery efficiency or packaging.

However, once I got it going, it was generally superb. It comes with a cabled plug and an attachment for your own garden hose.

Mine, being a little long and twisty, sometimes tempered the maximum water pressure available, which clocks in at 130 bar. Even still, I started off thinking I could play it by ear a little. I pretty quickly learned what is and isn’t appropriate pressure for surfaces when I took some of the paint off our wooden bench, in the hope of simply removing some mildew. A quick readjustment down from the maximum “3” to the “1” setting got less destructive results.

Next I tried the paving stones. Here, I was able to let loose a little. It was perfect for attacking stains and general grime, though I had to be a little careful with some of the grouting substances connecting the stones.

At the time of writing, I haven’t had a chance to try it on the external walls of a friend’s rural seaside cottage – which is discoloured from sea spray and general airborne dirt – but it seems this might be perfect for it.

Karcher has designed this so that it can be used with almost anything you typically have hanging around the outside of your home, including stuff like wheelie bins and garden furniture.

There are also accessories available for stuff like gutter or pipe cleaning and extension poles for areas that are usually out of reach.

But the other main task it’s pitched at is cars. This version of the K4 comes with a “car kit” comprised of a foam nozzle, wash brush and car shampoo, as well as the other spray guns for more direct grime removal.

You can choose a detergent mode on the device and foam wash your car.

I’m not sure I’ll be a regular home car washer, but it looked pretty good after about 30 minutes’ foaming, washing and spraying. I did supplement the effort with some sponging, however.

It has two wheels – part of the kit you have to manually assemble – making its general transportation and storage fairly easy. It has a handle too, although you won’t want to rely too much on that as it’s pretty heavy.

Karcher has thought its storage through, though, with nice, neat compartments and holsters for various spray guns and hoses.

If you’re looking for something fairly easy to use and fairly effective, it’s hard to go wrong with this unit.