Deck Cleaning, it doesn’t have to be a toxic experience.
Usually before I cut the grass for the first time in the spring, I clean my deck. My deck is surrounded by flower beds, which are surrounded by grass. Amongst my flowers are bird feeders and a bird bath, my daughter enjoys the yard and my dog usually isn’t far behind. These are the things that I love about my back yard, what I do not love is the mold and mildew that shows up on my deck every year.
My goal when cleaning my deck is to clean it safely, without toxic chemicals that could kill my plants or kill my lawn. My dog tends to drink anything that looks like water and my daughter will not hesitate to pick up a dropped snack and pop it right back in her mouth. The birds and wildlife that call our yard “home” would not enjoy chemical fumes that linger for days, offsetting the ecological balance. So all things considered, cleaning with toxic cleaners like bleach or TSP is NOT an option at my home.
Hydrogen peroxide based deck cleaning products with an active life of only 4-6 hours before bio-degrading back into water are as safe as they come on the market. The deck cleaning products work with the power of oxygen, which when mixed with water creates millions of tiny bubbles, kind of like dissolving an “Alka-seltzer”™ tablet, when you coat a wood surface with this, the bubbles go to work cleaning and lifting mold and mildew out of every crack and crevice.
The best cleaning method is to mix the Deck Wash in a separate bucket then transferring it to a “garden style” pump prayer. Coat the deck generously with the Deck Wash allowing 15-20 minutes to soak into the deck, then working in small areas at a time and always keeping the area moist with product, scrub with a medium to hard bristle deck brush in circular motions and hose off when the wood is clean.
Depending on when the last time the deck was cleaned, power washing is not always necessary, what people do not understand about power washing is that the high pressure actually pushes the mold spores deep into the wood and if you were going to stain or seal, the mold would come back from under the stain or seal, which looks awful and the only way to remove the mold at that point would be to strip the deck and start over. If you have a pressure washer, it should be run at such a low pressure that you could put your hand under it, like a “pressurized mist”. Any deck that is treated with a coat of our Deck Wash prior to pressure washing will not require a lot of pressure; the Deck Wash will have already lifted most of the mold to the surface so that it can be easily washed off.
