In 1980, Kärcher took on its first high-profile cleaning project, the Statue of Christ in Rio de Janeiro, which because of the high humidity and pollution in the city needs restorative cleaning every ten years. In 1985, Kärcher made its first foray into the United States, working with the restoration team at the Statue of Liberty to clean the granite base of the statue with high-pressure washers.

Early on, Kärcher determined that it would donate its cleaning services of public monuments, donating skilled labor as well as the technical, analytic and supervisory services necessary to complete such projects. Their reasoning was twofold: not only was the donation a goodwill gesture, but the feedback the company's engineers received was invaluable in refining the innovation and manufacture of future cleaning systems.

To that end, Kärcher has carried out some 80 cleaning projects on historical monuments, including the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin (1990), the Princess Bridge in Melbourne (1992), the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, Japan (2000) and the National Library in Athens (2004). When Kärcher tackled the Colonnades of St. Peter's Square in Rome in 1998, the undertaking was credited by the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest façade cleaning project ever on a historic building. In 2002 Kärcher specialists removed harmful layers of dirt from the more than 3,300-year-old Colossi of Memnon in Luxor, Upper Egypt.

But perhaps the highest-profile cleaning job took place right in the United States. In 2005 Kärcher contacted the National Park Service with the idea to clean Mount Rushmore. Understanding the significance of the project, Kärcher once again donated its services, supervising the German team and local volunteers and professionals who scaled the monument. The cleaning was accomplished in an ecologically friendly manner using only water. Cleaning without detergents was an imperative of the National Park Service, and Kärcher agreed, developing a green, water-only process. In addition, Kärcher engineers learned that hoses 200 meters long would maintain the proper water pressure to successfully clean the famous faces of the presidents.

Our most recent project is the cleaning of the Space Needle, in Seattle, Washington. Click on any of items below to learn more!