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Best Pressure Washer Surface Cleaners 2021 – Reviews & Buyer’s Guide

Last Updated on December 17, 2021 by Mark Johnson

When it comes to cleaning flat surfaces, sometimes a pressure cleaner that uses a traditional wand won’t do. Sometimes you want something that will put the cleaning jets right above what you need to clean up. Sometimes you even want multiple jets focused on the same places for a period of time, to say, prevent streaking or an uneven look to your cleaning. That’s where the surface cleaner comes in.

We took a look at some of the most talked-about in the marketplace and wrote reviews of them to help you make the right purchase decision. If you get through them and decide you want a little more, we’ve included a buyers’ guide at the end to give you an idea of how we arrived at our decision so that you can think through which model you might want to pick up. We hope you find value in this.

Our Favorite Models of 2021

5 Best Pressure Washer Surface Cleaners – Reviews:

1. PowerFit PF31023B – Top Pick

The PowerFit PF31023B is our Top Pick for pretty unsurprising reasons. It had overall great performance, and it doesn’t require that you break the bank to get it. It’s a pretty basic construction for 15-inch surface washers with a rotating two-prong arm surrounded by a cleaning brush. It can crank up to 1,500 rpm.

There were things we especially liked about it, like its quick connection to your power washer’s wand and the nice, consistent cleaning it delivers across the breadth of the 15-inch round cleaner. Compared to using your wand alone, this can cut the time it takes to clean your driveway or patio by as much as three quarters. It does this at a price that compared to most power washers themselves is very reasonable. That makes this a really good value.
Our only source of hesitancy here is that you’ll want to pair the length of the wand well with your body. It won’t affect the quality of cleaning so much as it will whether you finish the job comfortably or with a raging backache. While in general, it’s a good idea to pair a tool like this with your body shape, in this case where it involves you pushing a brush with a rotating cleaning arm around a filthy surface it becomes even more important.

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2. Generac 6132- The Runner-Up

Another 15-inch surface cleaner that connects easily to the wand of your power washer, the Generac 6132 can handle power washers that put out up to 3,100 psi, which is enough to do any job that you can imagine. The brush bristles are extra stiff to make for a powerful one-two cleaning punch. It also gives a great consistent cleaning and can remove just about anything from patios, pool decks or sidewalks. We also like its durable brass quick connection that prevents loss of water through leakage. It’s built to last.

So, why not give this one the top pick ranking? It’s expensive. It’s also more expensive than it probably needs to be. We’re not saying that it’s built too good. We’re saying that you can get a cleaning that is almost as good from our Top Pick for less money. So, it’s not quite the value without delivering so much more to warrant giving upranking it to the top spot.

For the money, though, let’s be clear. It’ll clean, it’ll clean very well, and it’ll stay put together. It’s a great surface cleaner, just not a particularly great value.

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3. Briggs & Stratton 6328 – Best for the Money

Best for the money, the Briggs & Stratton 6328 is another very capable cleaning deck that attaches easily to the wand of your power washer and at best can cut the amount of time you spend cleaning outside surfaces way down. Of the surface cleaner attachments for power washers we looked at, it offers the best for-money value.

Usually, our best for the money choices trade in some performance for a lower price. The 6328 has only a lower price, but can actually handle slightly higher pressure than can our runner-up pick, at 3,200 psi rather than 3,100. That means it can apply even more pressure over its cleaning area.

That cleaning area is an inch smaller than our top two choices. That means more powerful cleaning over a smaller area, which translates to really concentrated firepower. We just don’t think it’s really necessary and consider the smaller cleaning deck a drawback because frankly, it means that it’ll take longer to clean.

We also don’t like that it requires a minimum of 2,200 psi for proper operation. If your power washer goes lower, this won’t work, which diminishes it severely in terms of value. Also, it might need a wand extension, not for proper operation but to make sure that when you get done you don’t have such bad backache that you need a chiropractor.

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4. EZ Clean AEZ31023

When you get the EZ Clean AEZ31023 up and rolling, it is flat-out one of the most powerful cleaners on the market. It does a great job powering off dirt, grime, and algae off wood and rock and concrete. It can handle a lot of water pressure, which when concentrated into its cleaning nozzles means a powerful fast clean. Using this means you can potentially clean surfaces in as little as one-fifth the amount of time that it would take with the wand alone.

There are ways it gets this done, and both represent drawbacks to the cleaner in general. The first is that it’s pretty expensive compared. You can get a better job cleaning done for less money. That makes this a pretty poor value. The other is that this has a minimum water pressure required for proper operation. You can get it running on an electric pressure cleaner, but the muscle just isn’t there to do a really thorough cleaning.

It does a good job, but at a cost in terms of price and water pressure requirements that reduce its value to tool owners. It’s got great potential, but because of those things we dropped it to the number four ranking.

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5. Simpson Cleaning 80166 Universal

This is another surface washer with a lot of potential but with serious drawbacks. We ranked it at the bottom because of those drawbacks, despite the things there are to like about it.

The two primary things to like about it are the power and cost. In fact, these are basic things to like in general about surface cleaning attachments for pressure washers. If you’re in need of a lot of power at a pretty low cost, this is a great model to consider.

But, that’s only to consider. Once you start peeling back the layers of this onion, you’ll find that it has some pretty narrowing criteria that explain why we dropped it to the bottom of our rankings.

The first is that it’s designed for use with cold water only. Truth be told, most cleaning you do will be with cold water, but it’s also a pretty serious limitation because hot water just cleans better than cold. In addition, this works best with the sort of pressure that a gas-powered pressure washer has to offer. An electric power washer just can’t build up the kind of pressure to make the most out of this unit. That’s limiting, and despite the overall affordability of this model makes it a poor value.

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Buyer’s Guide

Pressure washer surface cleaners are a pretty specialized piece of cleaning equipment, so it’s understandable that people wouldn’t feel comfortable winging right out to their local big box store and buy one off the shelf. They come in a range of prices and features and finding the right one is a trade-off in figuring out what you need while fitting it into your budget.

The power of power washing

The first criteria for choosing a surface washer is obviously matching the tool for the job. There are three basic grades of power surface washers: consumer, semi-professional and professional. The different categories have specific ranges of water pressure and usage, but what’s really important is that you understand where your need rests. The rest is pretty intuitive.

Consumer models are for the lightest work. If you’re just doing some spring cleaning around the house and need to maybe clean off the sidewalk melter in spring, this is the one for you. If you require frequent use to remove tough stains like dried paint or even algae, you’ll want to get a professional model. If you only need to occasionally crank up a pressure washer to do tough work, look to a semi-professional model in between.

Durability

There is nothing more frustrating than needing a surface washer to clean — scour children’s’ chalk off a sidewalk — only to flip the switch to silence. While these machines, in general, aren’t the priciest cleaning tools on the market, you’re still sinking good money into them and will want a build strong enough to keep delivering results.

User comfort

Fortunately, the power washer is going to do most of the work and your primary task will be to keep it where it needs to be. Depending on the size of the job, however, you might be at it for a couple of hours. Make sure that whatever model you buy is going to minimize the impact on your back and arms and especially wrists. There is nothing worse than using a power tool to do a job and feeling fatigued at the end of it, anyway.

Price

This is actually the kind of tool where you could throw a bunch of money at it and get the most powerful one on the market.  But, that’s only if you have an unlimited supply of money and aren’t careful about how it gets spent. This is where matching the right tool for your actual job continues to inform your purchase choice. If you need to clean off surfaces is pretty limited and only occasional, you can save a few bucks by getting a consumer-grade model. If you own a handful of rental properties with decks and patios exposed to weather, you’ll want to get something that can deliver more power. That’ll mean preparing yourself to pay a little extra.

Conclusion

We liked the PowerFit PF31023B and the Generac 6132 because they just did a great job of cleaning surfaces quickly and with a lot of power. The PowerFit got our top pick because it was a bit more affordable, which makes it a better value. The Briggs & Stratton 6328 got our best budget model not because it chopped the price down to size, but because it delivered a lot for what you’ll pay. We also liked the EZ Clean AEZ31023 and the Simpson Cleaning 80166 but found them to be limiting in ways that made their advantages difficult to realize unless you could fit a narrow set of parameters.

We hope you found our reviews helpful, and at least could take value from our buyers’ guide. We wish you the best of luck in finding a good surface cleaning attachment for your pressure washer and hope it leads to spic-and-span sidewalks.