Backyards, front yards, patios, hedges, and precisely-trimmed lawns. Caring for the exterior of your home can include a series of tough jobs but can be very satisfying when done right. But with such a large number of different tools for an even-larger assortment of outdoor tasks, it can be difficult to determine what you need for your home maintenance jobs.
We’ve written this handy buying guide to help you tame your shrubs, clean your pathways, and keep your windows sparkling, without needing to call a handyman service. Just make sure you only undertake jobs that you can perform safely.
The Right Tool for the Right Job
When it comes to any form of home maintenance or home improvement, having the right tools can make the job so much easier. As such, you need to ask yourself what jobs you need doing around the house. Would you like to easily trim back the edges of your lawn? Maintain the good condition of your deck? Rinse your BBQ area? Cut your shrubbery down to size?
Once you determine exactly what jobs you need to tackle, you can take steps to find the ideal tools.
Types of Home Maintenance Tools
Pressure Washers
A pressure washer is designed for tough cleaning jobs, firing out a stream of pressurised water to blast away dirt, stains, and grime. Sure, you can get down and dirty and scrub away at dirt-encrusted areas, but a pressure washer can remove the need for any elbow grease. Due to the higher pressure, water is often sufficient for most jobs but many pressure washers feature built-in detergent bottles to apply soap, for a more efficient cleaning process.
There are two different types of pressure washers you can purchase: electric pressure washers and gas pressure washers.
Electric pressure washers are generally more compact and quieter than their petrol-powered counterparts but still benefit from high pressures for application towards a variety of different cleaning jobs.
Petrol pressure washers are ideal for areas where it’s harder to connect to a power supply or for really tough cleaning tasks. This is due to the generally-higher PSI (pounds per square inch) which petrol pressure washers are capable of producing.
When looking for a pressure washer it’s important to consider the different spray widths and adjustable pressures. If a model has adjustable pressure, you can tailor it to different jobs - for example, a lower pressure to clean your wooden patio or roofing and higher pressure to clean concrete.
For convenience, it’s also important to consider the length of power cords, water hoses, and the capacity of any built-in water tanks. This is to ensure your pressure washer can effectively reach the areas you desire to clean.
Whipper Snippers and Lawn Care
Keep your lawn and gardens well maintained with a variety of different lawn care products. A whipper snipper, also known as a line trimmer, is designed to cut grass. Most commonly used to trim the edges of lawns to achieve a clean and neat appearance, whipper snippers can be used for mowing smaller areas of grass, as long as the grass isn’t too thick.
Similarly to other home maintenance tools, whipper snippers come in both petrol and electric variants. Petrol whipper snippers can bring more power to bear for longer trimming jobs or to cut through tougher grass.
Hedge Trimmers
Hedge trimmers, as the name may suggest, are used to maintain and trim hedges and bushes in your gardens. Using the saw-like teeth, hedge trimmers allow you to cut back your shrubbery to a satisfactory size.
Hedge trimmers come in multiple variants to tackle different hedge heights. For example, if you want to trim back really tall shrubbery, a pole hedge trimmer can provide a longer reach.
Things to consider when looking at hedge trimmers is the available power needed to tackle the shrubs and bushes in your yard as well as the presence of comfortable, ergonomic grips for easier control.
Leaf Blowers and Vacuums
When you have backyard debris, leaves, dirt, and lint over your patio and pathways, a leaf blower is the ideal tool to push it to the outskirts of your property. Using powerful airflow, a leaf blower minimises the exertion needed for backyard tidying and can free you from the strenuousness of manual raking or sweeping.
Some leaf blowers feature a vacuum mode to suction up outdoor debris, many of which utilise a built-in shredder or mulching function for faster composting and easier disposal.
Window Vacuums
For a different take on vacuuming, a window vacuum will help keep your windows clean and sparkling. Using innovative technology, Karcher has created a device combining the cleaning efficiency of a microfibre cloth to clean and a vacuum function to suction away the dirty water. This simultaneous cleaning performance helps achieve a clean and streak-free finish.
Karcher window vacuums are not just ideal for cleaning windows but are suitable for mirrors, tiles, shower screens, and other smooth surfaces.
Petrol or Electric?
One of the biggest differences between power tools is whether they run on electricity or petrol. Petrol-powered tools can often be more powerful than their electric cousins but are also louder and can be finicky to mix the optimal ratio of oil and petrol for the motors. This increased power comes with a cost, literally, as petrol power tools are generally more expensive than electric power tools.
Electric power tools on the other hand generally run quieter and are lighter, while still being powerful enough to efficiently tackle household jobs. Electric power tools also require less maintenance than those which run off petrol, due to the absence of a motor. With two types of electric power tools, corded and battery-powered, you have to find a model which suits your needs and the type of job you desire to undertake.
At Appliances Online, we have a large assortment of different items for all types of outdoor upkeep. Whether you need a window vacuum to keep your windows clean or a hedge trimmer to knock some tasks off your home maintenance checklist, we have the right tool for the job.