A few weeks back I was looking for an eco friendly way to clean slimy decks and concrete. Coincidentally I came across this article Four Ways To Clean Your Deck in a backdate of Green Ideas magazine, which compared all the available methods.
What came out a winner was 100% sodium percarbonate, (oxygen cleaner) which can be bought on Trademe for $41 for 5 kg, which includes postage.
Sodium percarbonate breaks down to soda ash and oxygen, so was perfectly safe for our concrete drive, from which runoff goes straight into the river.
But it has so many other uses too - I've cleaned up the whole of my rental house with it, including soaking the drapes as it doesn't damage fabric.
For cleaning the deck and concrete, I dissolved 1 cup of sodium percarbonate in 4 litres of very hot water, then applied it to the deck with a mop. It needs to sit for an hour, then I gave it a little scrub with a yard broom and hosed it off.
Here's the before and after shots!
Since then I have discovered that I can buy sodium percarbonate at my local Binn Inn (duh, should have looked there first) for about the same price, but can use my own container.
Just a brief post today - I'm off to do a quick paint between tenants.
What a difference in the wood! It looks great.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I was pretty pleased myself.
DeleteThat's an amazing before and after and perfect timing. I have been wanting to power wash the house and deck but my son's power washer no longer works. I'll use this and get a bit more of a work out for myself at the same time.
ReplyDeleteHi Lois, hopefully a great result with not too much effort. It's great because you don't need to worry about it killing your nearby plants.
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