Does anyone have any advice on cleaning, staining, sealing a cedar privacy fence. We put up the fence about 5 years ago. When we put it up we semi-stained it. It has been looking bad the past couple years. A lot of faded & green color I assume is algae although it gets lots of sun. Also the birds have left their mark. We want to clean it & stain/seal it. Can a pressure washer be used to clean it? What kind of cleaner should we use. And what is a good stain/seal? We originally stained it a cedar color. Would we have to stain the same color again. Thanks for any help. Karen

I have a series of questions related to restoring a deck near Lake Tahoe and then a fence in the SF Bay Area: 1. We have a home in the Sierras and the deck needs some cleaning and staining. Seems that all the contractors and homeowners in the area use Superdeck/Duck's Brand but looks like folks on this forum are not fans of the product. Is it true that it will turn black after a year? We've been told by the contractors we've gotten bids from to clean/stain the deck that the best way to keep up with it is to clean with the Superdeck Cleaner and then restain every year anyway because of the sun/snow so maybe it doesn't matter? We plan on cleaning/staining each year ourselves after this major restoration job. Should we try to ask the contractor to use TWP instead? 2. We have a short redwood fence in front of our SF Bay Area ranch house (two horizontal rails turned at 45 degrees) that are 5 years old and need to be cleaned and restained. We sealed them ourselves when the fences were originally installed. There's quite a bit of dirt and white mildew. We were going to use Superdeck but now are considering TWP based on info from this forum. We are doing this ourselves and so would like the most straightforward and fastest way to get this done. I know it won't last forever but if there's something that will last another 5 years before we need to do it again, that would be great (worse case 2-3 years). I assume we use a cleaner first; do we need to use a brightener too? Is there something that is biodegradeable (Superdeck's cleaner is biodegradeable)? Is it best to use a sprayer and then backroll it? Sorry for the long post and thanks in advance. Vicky.

mrmichaeljmoore, I've successfully used products with sodium percarbonate as its' main ingredient. Real course bristle brush mounted to a broom stick. Pour solution into a bucket and dip the brush into the bucket and start scrubbing. After about five minutes a chemical reaction occurs and the mold and mildew begins to liquify. Then I give it another quick brushing and hose it off clean. Let air dry. Its really quite easy. Good luck. All the best, The PorchGuy Remember that this cleaning proceedure is safe to area plants but they should constantly be kept wet and sprayed down during the cleaning as often as possible. Here is a link that might be useful: My Album

WE have one and i think it's 3600, it's gas. I don't want anything electric around water. I use it my self for everything, from cleaning the siding, deck,fences and even washing the car. Depends on what nozzle you use to how powerful it can be. I painted a cement porch once and decided to use powerwasher to strip paint back off. The trick is to not put nozzle to close to object. Daughter used hers last week and was stooped down and with out thinking she laid her hand on top of washer to help herself up. Not smart, she burned her hand bad. Told her there was a warning not to do that, she said, yes i read that after the fact. There great just becareful using it. I do wash things down where i have plants just don't point directly