Power Craft 7944

Purchased from Aldi. A very powerful machine for the money which was approximately half the price of the equivalent Karcher model. I was told that Karcher make this Powercraft model raft and it does look and feel the same. That said there are some reservations:

Some of the parts, in particular, the hose inlet and outlet connections are very cheap and not up to the job. Where the actual gun hose connects to the water outlet on the machine it is a screw connector. This is made of plastic and it gave a lot of trouble. Even after screwing and tightening it fully, under pressure it just 'blows off' and then water spurts out of the machine. After almost giving up on it I managed to track a specialist repair shop in Manchester. He managed to supply a new hose for £29 which had a brass connector. This sorted the problem out but a machine this powerful under pressure should have been fitted with metal connectors in the first place.

I also had problems with the electric side of it. It kept cutting out on me and again the specialist told me that you have to unravel the electric extension lead completely as it has restricted power when on the role and this causes it to overheat. Again, this managed to sort out the cutting out problem but there is no mention of any of this in the instructions or in the 'problem solving' section.

On the plus side when it is actually working it is very good. I use a hose with a rotary end which I purchased as an extra. This increases the power by about an extra 30 bars. When using it with this device it is capable of cleaning my blocked drive and crazy paving without the need for any detergent. One final tip is that I am told that because the machine has also cheap plastic parts inside, when storing for winter you need to make sure that it is completely drained of water or the frost will burst and split the hoses and connectors when you get it out the following Spring!

I bought the washer from Aldi 6 yrs ago and it worked well until 5 yrs ago the pump block cracked and i had to take it to a HSS hire centre who handle repairs for Powercraft. The guy there said that these washers are actually built up with Karcher parts (the pump especially ) just last week the pump body must have split again and now its out of guarantee its not worth repairing. It has had very little use (twice a month) so i feel that Powercraft and Karcher may not be such a good buy unless they have strengthened the actual pump (hard type of plastic). Doesn't look like it if you check on Ebay. Rest of m/c is good. Motor build excellent. Be careful if you dismantle it to check parts as motor is very heavy. Pete.

I bought the Powercraft PCPW-160 from Aldi for £60 and it's fantastic.

It's very powerful and cleans floors and walls even without applying any cleaner first. It's powerful enough to cause damage in the wrong hands! It can carve up the surface of wood or dissolve old mortar. And while it won't strip paint fully, it certainly blasts it until the surface is ruined and patchy.

Use the nozzle on a wide angle and hold it a foot away and it will clean patios and tarmac very quickly without damaging them. I has some old weathered wood that was badly in need of repainting but because there grain was so rough I couldn't work out how to clean it and remove the silvered top layer. Sanding wouldn't have got into the grain. But the power washer got right back to bare wood in one pass, though as I said earlier, it was hardly a smooth finish so you wouldn't want to do this on good wood. But for my makeshift repair to a very old window sill, it left me able to fill the rough grain and repaint as soon as it dried.

The one I bought was blue, though I was recently in Aldi and they had a new batch of them in green, possibly with a different model number. But they were clearly the same unit with the same power rating. Mine was labeled as 160-bar whereas the green one was labelled as 2000w. But my one is 2000w too, so it's just a change in labelling.

They're also rated at 97db. It is louder than I'd like, when using in a terraced back garden or to clean the front of a terraced house. I wouldn't like to use it on a Sunday morning or late at night. Or to wash a car regularly outside the house. But if you want to wash the patio or walls on a weekday or Saturday afternoon every few months, or live somewhere where noise doesn't matter, it'll be fine.

The hose is 5M long, so you can put the pressure washer well away from you as you use it.

One potential problem though. If you have those hose connectors that cut the water supply when you pull out the attachment then they won't work with this. The connector sits loosely on the inlet of the pressure washer to allow excess water to spill out before it goes into the machine. This means the hose doesn't attach tightly enough to open the valve in the hose connector and let the water flow freely, so you either get no water or it just splutters, which can damage the machine. Get a hose connector that lets the water pour out if no attachment is connected to it and it will be perfect for this. It does also mean that there will be a lot of water leaking all around the machine, so be careful where you place it.

The box came with the machine, gun, gun hose, dispenser bottle for cleaners, and two nozzles. One is an adjustable nozzle that lets you vary the angle from quite wide down to a fine point. The other just fires in a fine point. I'm not really sure what the point of that one is since it's the same as turning the variable one to a fine point.

Bought a karcher 221m from Argos and took it back because of lack of power. Went and bought this power craft from ALDI that looks like a karcher and it is so powerful.It has a maximum pressure of 150 bar, but works at 120 bar. It comes with brush for the car and detergent. It is quite heavy but is on wheels, I have done all the drive and think it is fantastic. Complete with 3 year guarantee you can not go wrong at less than £80