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Porches & Decks

Help with Cleaning a Severely Weathered Pressure Treated Deck

10 years ago

Please provide your recommendations on cleaning a severely weathered pressure treated deck.
I have read a few web post and many people claim oxyi-clean (mixed at 1/2 cup per gallon of water) applied with a garden sprayer, then scrub the surface with a broom and let it sit for 15 minutes and wash away with a power washer works well. Has anyone used this method and what were the results?

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Comment (1)

DeckGirl
10 years ago
As a professional pressure washer I can tell you that this method should work well for a typical weathered deck. You may need to pull out some bigger guns for your deck because of your assessment that it is "severely weathered". You can buy some DIY kits that include contractor-grade products that will help clean and prepare your work for the next step (staining/sealing). If you didn't want to go to a DIY kit, then I would probably mix soap and bleach...but not just bleach from the grocery store because that is probably 4-6% bleach. You want the mac daddy of bleach that is 12%. You can usually get this at a pool chemical store. Take a gallon of that 12% bleach and mix in 2 cups of soap (you can use Dawn or something similar) and then fill the rest of a 5 gallon bucket with water. Then spray this solution on to the deck and let it dwell from 5-20 minutes and then brush and rinse. BUT BEFORE YOU DO YOUR WHOLE DECK....TEST PATCH TEST PATCH!!!! You may want to do a few test patches because some areas may only need a 5 minute dwell time and other others may need 20 minutes depending on the weathering, mold, mildew, dirt, etc.

Your deck will look clean but it will still look weathered unless you "brighten" the wood. There is a product called "Illuminate" (contractor-grade) that can be sprayed on the clean wood and it will literally brighten the wood. But then you need to start making plans to seal that wood or you will be in the same place you are right now.

There are some DIY Wood Cleaning kits on Ebay that have contractor-grade cleaners.

Good luck!
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