Bunnings Wanted His Pressure Washer in Every Store. This Townsville Sparky Said No to Support All Aussie Homeowners.
A near miss at home and a mate in hospital sent a FIFO electrician looking for a washer with no mains power near the water. He found one at Japan’s tallest dam, spent the COVID lockdowns rebuilding it, and said no when Bunnings and Gerni asked him to make it worse.
Jake Hartley washing the ute with the kids at the family’s home in Castle Hill, Townsville. The bucket at his feet is the whole water supply.
Jake Hartley, a FIFO electrician from Castle Hill, Townsville, never wanted mains power near his kids and water. After a near miss with a damaged extension lead and a mate’s accident, he found a bucket-fed washer at Japan’s tallest dam and spent the COVID lockdowns rebuilding it for Australia.
The result is a cordless pressure washer that runs off a bucket of water, or off a hose if you’d rather. No powerpoint, no extension lead, and it lives in its own hard case.
Bunnings wanted it built with lower-grade parts and sold at almost three times the price. Jake said no.
Sold on bucketjet.com.au. Free shipping Australia-wide, 60-day guarantee. Black Friday price while this first batch lasts.
The Hartleys. Jake, Megan and the kids out the front in Castle Hill.
There is a rule at the Hartley house on Castle Hill, Townsville, that nobody has to say out loud. Nothing with a power cord goes near the water.
Jake Hartley is an electrician who works FIFO, fly-in, fly-out, on some of the biggest sites in the country. He spends his working life around live power, and he knows what a damaged cord can do to a person. At home there are three kids, all under 13, and Megan, his wife, who runs the place on her own for weeks at a time while he is on site.
When Jake gets home, he wants to help around the house the way a man should. And there is always a pile waiting: the bins, the ute, the back steps, the barbecue, the pavers gone green.
Most of it needs a pressure washer. At the Hartley house, that meant his Gerni, the big-name machine in the shed. Using it meant finding a tap, finding a power point and dragging an extension lead across the yard.
Later, Bunnings wanted to sell the machine that finally fixed it, built with lower-grade parts and at almost three times the price.
Jake said no. This is the story of both.
Then He Looked Back. His Youngest Was Carrying the Live Cord.
The lead. The ute had rolled over it months earlier.
Anyone who has owned a ute and a mower has a story about a cord. A dog chews through one. The ute rolls over another in the driveway. A plug and an extension lead sit joined together on wet grass after the rain.
Jake had a mate, Shane, who got his own scare first. Washing his car on a damp Sunday, he felt a tingle through his hand and the safety switch tripped. It was nothing, he said. He told Jake over a beer, “Be careful with those leads. I wouldn’t run one out for that.”
Jake is a sparky. He knew better than anyone. But the pile at home was long, and the extension lead for the Gerni was sitting right there on the shed shelf.
That Saturday. The Gerni, the ute and the pavers, all laid out before the lead came out.
One Saturday in early 2019 he took it out to run the Gerni and do the ute and the pavers. Months earlier the ute had rolled over that lead in the driveway, and he had coiled it back up without checking it.
He plugged it in at the wall and was walking to the tap when he looked back. His youngest, keen to help, had picked up the far end and was carrying it across the wet pavers to him. The tyre had split the plastic coating a hand’s width from the plug, and you could see the copper wire inside. Jake ran, slapped the switch off at the wall with the side of his fist, and only then took the lead out of his child’s hand. A few seconds later and his youngest would have been standing on wet pavers holding live wire.
He sat on the back step with the lead across his knees.
The back step. Jake with the lead across his knees.
“It happens with the cord you’ve used a hundred times,” he says.
Then he wrapped the split in tape, hung the lead back on the shed shelf and told himself he’d replace it. A week later he flew back out.
The call from the dam
Kurobe Dam, 2019. Jake on site, on the tools.
Months later, in 2019, Jake was on a FIFO job at Kurobe Dam, Japan’s tallest dam, when his phone buzzed in the middle of a shift. It was Megan.
His mate Shane was in hospital. That morning he had been washing his ute with a pressure washer on an old extension lead that had been caught in the side gate for years. The plastic coating had worn through in one spot, and water had got in. When he picked up the lead off the wet grass, it was live. It threw him backwards onto the driveway. His wife found him on the ground, awake, with a burn across his palm. The hospital kept him two nights with his heart on a monitor. He recovered, and he has a scar to show for it.
Shane, and his palm. Two nights in hospital with his heart on a monitor, and the burn the lead left behind.
Jake sat down on a pallet and rang him from the dam.
“He was laughing about it,” Jake says. “I wasn’t. I kept thinking, our lead was just like that. The one I’d taped up and hung back in the shed. Our youngest had nearly had hold of it. That’s it. No more cords near water, at work or at home.”
That afternoon, across the site, a crew was washing mud off their boots and tools with small cordless washers about the size of a cordless drill, each one fed from a plastic bucket of water. No hose, no tap, no power lead. When Jake asked, he was told nobody on that worksite wanted mains power anywhere near the water.
“Same rule I’d been living with,” he says. “They had just built the tool around it. And the pressure was right up with Gerni’s top machines.”
He took a photo and sent it to Megan with one line: this is what we need. The kids still tell their friends, “Daddy got it from Japan.”
The crew Jake photographed, washing their boots off a bucket.
Jake asked the crew where the washers came from, ordered one and carried it home in his bag. It worked, but it had been built for a Japanese dam site, and he wanted it to push harder and last through an Australian summer. Then COVID shut the borders, and he was home between rosters with more time than he had ever had.
The shed. The unit in pieces, before the Australian rebuild.
He spent it in the shed. He took the machine apart down to the pump and the battery, and rebuilt it with a stronger pump and a bigger battery. Most nights, after the kids were in bed, he was out there. Megan would bring him a beer and tell him to come inside. It took a long run of prototypes over the lockdown years.
The test patch. The Gerni on the left, the Bucket Jet on the right. Two stripes, same patch of pavers.
It took that long because Jake had one test. It had to clean as hard as the Gerni he’d been dragging round the yard for years, without the cord and without the tap. Every prototype went up against it on the same patch of pavers. “I wasn’t putting my name on it until I couldn’t tell the two apart,” he says.
They had put everything behind it. Jake and Megan remortgaged the house to pay for the prototypes and the first run of machines. Every repayment came out of his FIFO pay, while Megan ran the house and the three kids alone for weeks at a time. If it didn’t sell, they still owed every dollar and there was no plan B.
The result is the Bucket Jet.
Here is what came out of the shed:
The whole kit. It all lives in the carry case.
No tap needed. Fill a bucket, drop the intake hose in. Or plug it straight into the garden hose.
No lead to drag. Nothing to join, nothing that won’t reach.
No mains power near the water. A 21V battery at the nozzle, a bucket at your feet.
More power, longer life. About 1000 PSI and around 30 minutes a charge, and a nozzle that goes from jet to fan to mist.
“Drop the hose in a bucket and squeeze,” Jake says. “That’s the whole product.”
One bin, one pass. Foam on, wait, rinse. The eggs and maggots go with it.
The first job was the one that had been on the pile the longest, the wheelie bin, which had gone off in the summer heat, flies and maggots included. Jake filled a bucket, dropped the hose in, and went at it. The next bin was at Nan’s. They took the Bucket Jet round, and Megan did that one herself.
“I did it on my own,” Megan says. “First time in years I haven’t had to wait for him to get home to sort the bins. The kids carried the bucket.”
Nan’s place. Megan did the next bin herself. The kids carried the bucket.
Then the grout, the car and the back steps. The Gerni stayed in the shed.
Bunnings Offered Him a Way Off the Roster. The Catch Was the Price.
The kitchen table. Bunnings’ numbers, written out.
Jake watched what everything cost. Groceries. The power bill. Petrol. The mortgage rate. He watched Megan go down the supermarket receipt with a pen, line by line, before it went in the drawer. He knew every family he knew was doing the same sums at the same kitchen table.
So when it came to pricing the Bucket Jet, he had one rule.
“I wanted it to be as affordable for the Aussie homeowner as I could make it,” he says.
By then mates and neighbours had borrowed it and asked where he got it, and Jake had started selling a few from the shed. Word got round, and Bunnings wanted to stock it. Every store in the country.
The back of the garage. The first run of Bucket Jets, stacked on a pallet.
He did the sums that night at the same kitchen table. On Bunnings’ numbers it could have paid off the extra mortgage and been his way off the roster: no more fly-in, fly-out, home for every school pick-up and every birthday. For a man who spends weeks of every year away from three kids, that is not a small thing.
Then came the conditions. Jake says Bunnings asked him to swap in a lower-grade pump and battery so the machine would cost less to make. They would sell that cut-down version for close to A$549, nearly three times Jake’s price of A$189.99, and their margin would climb a long way. A worse machine, at a higher price, in a year when everything else was going up too.
- Swap in a lower-grade pump
- Swap in a lower-grade battery
- Costs less for them to make
- Sells for close to A$549
- Their margin goes up a long way
- Gerni wants the price kept high so its top machines look better
Then Gerni got involved. Jake says he was told the price had to stay high, because a machine this hard-hitting at under A$200 would make Gerni’s top machines look insignificant on the same shelf. He understood it. It was business. It also meant Australian families would pay more for less so the big names could look good.
He sat with it for a night. Then he rang them back and said no.
A cut-down machine at close to A$549. A lower cost for Bunnings to buy, a much bigger margin when it sold, and more than most of the neighbours would pay.
A$189.99. The full-quality machine, posted to your door with Jake’s name behind it.
“They wanted me to make it worse and charge more for it, when families are already paying more for everything. I wasn’t doing that to Aussie families.”
So it isn’t in Bunnings, or in any other shop. Jake is still on the roster. The only place to buy it is bucketjet.com.au, and Jake reads the emails himself.
What owners say
Bin had sat in the sun for a week and I wasn’t going near it. Filled a bucket, dropped the hose in, done in one go. No lead across the lawn.
We’re in a unit and the tap is nowhere near the car park. One bucket did the whole car, with water left over for the bike.
Bought it early as a Christmas present for my old man. He washed the car on the Sunday and the ute on the Monday.
Jake’s promise
Jake reads the emails himself.
“Look, I know what it’s like. It feels like we’re getting screwed by anything and everything at the moment.
If I’d taken the Bunnings deal, I’d be out on the boat every day, mango in hand, fishing with my mates. No more fly-in, fly-out. But I’d have been part of the problem, part of the increases.
If you send this article to one friend or the family group chat, that would mean a lot to me.”
Try it at your place for 60 days. If it doesn’t beat the hose and the plug, one email and Jake refunds you.
Check availability 60-day money-back guaranteeQuestions people ask Jake
Do I need a tap or a powerpoint?
No powerpoint, ever. No tap needed either. Fill a bucket from anywhere, even a rainwater tank, drop the intake hose in and squeeze the trigger. If you do have a tap handy, the hose fitting that comes in the case lets you plug it into the garden hose instead. The battery does the rest.
Is it strong enough?
About 1000 PSI. Jake rebuilt it for Australian conditions with more power and a longer life than the one he saw in Japan. It’s handheld, so it won’t replace a big machine on a huge driveway, but it handles bins, grout, cars and steps.
How long does a charge last?
About 30 minutes. Enough for a car and the bins on one charge.
Is it safe to use near water?
The gun runs on a battery, so there is no mains power at the nozzle. Keep the charger dry and indoors.
Is it safe with kids around?
A pressure washer is an adult tool, so one adult holds the gun. Kids can carry the bucket and watch from a safe distance.
Why isn’t it in Bunnings?
Bunnings wanted it built with lower-grade parts and sold at close to A$549, nearly three times Jake’s price, with a much bigger margin for them. Jake said no. The full-quality machine is sold on bucketjet.com.au for A$189.99, with free shipping across Australia.
- ✓ Free shipping Australia-wide
- ✓ 60-day money-back guarantee
- ✓ Everything in the case: gun, 6-in-1 nozzle, foam cannon, bucket hose and hose fitting, battery, charger
Megan can use it as easily as I can. That mattered to me more than anything on the spec sheet. If it doesn’t beat the hose and the plug at your place, send it back and I’ll refund you.
Summer has started and the bins are already warming up. If dad is the hard one to buy for this Christmas, this is the gift he will use.
This is Jake’s first Black Friday. He’s selling this first run at A$189.99, close to what each one costs him to make, because he wants as many Aussie homes as possible to have one. This price won’t be here for the whole of November. When this batch is gone, so is the price, and it won’t be this affordable again for a long time.
Check availability Black Friday sale now on