While a deck is a nice thing to have, with all of the potential for barbeques, family gatherings, and just hanging out with friends. Unfortunately, like everything else, a little preventative maintenance is called for throughout the year, but the rainy season threatens to derail that.
You can’t use deck cleaner in the rain, even though most deck cleaners are water mixtures. The rain will simply wash it away before it has time to work. With most deck cleaners, you want a minimum of five hours before a decent rain to allow for it the cleaner to work.
Deck cleaners need to have sufficient time to clean the deck and it doesn’t work like that in the rain. The cleaning agent gets diluted immediately and unless you have a perfectly level suck that allows for some water retention, it’s just not going to work.
Steps for Cleaning a Deck
It’s never really the best idea when you’re stuck in the wet season, to do a full-blown clean and stain on your deck. You should do both at least once a year, perhaps twice if the environmental conditions dictate that you must.
To do a proper deck cleaning, you want to make sure that you can get it all done before the rain comes and it generally takes two days to do it all. Unfortunately, even the best meteorologist can’t give you any more than about ten minutes of accurate “heads up,” or at least that’s how it seems.
Your best judgment will have to do and there are several steps to get through with the only allowable rain taking place between the cleaning and the staining. July is probably going to be your worst bet. While a little sprinkling won’t hurt your deck, the vicious downpours that come in July certainly will.
- Remove all of the decoration, plants, patio furniture, grills, and anything else from the deck.
- Sweep the deck thoroughly
- Scrub the deck or power wash it
- Apply your cleaner
- Rinse the deck off or take advantage of the rain
- Apply your stain
Clearing and Sweeping
When you go about cleaning and staining your deck, you don’t want a huge circle glaring up at you from your deck because you forgot to remove all of your potted plants. When you sweep your deck, you want to make sure that you sweep every last bit of debris off of the deck.
Anything you miss will get caught up in the cleaning and staining process. Now, you have a choice of getting down on your hands and knees with a medium bristled brush, and some soap and water, so you can scrub the deck, or you can power wash it.
Scrub or Power Wash
There are a lot of advantages to power washing but if you tend to get distracted or can’t make the quick and proper motions necessary, you risk gouging the deck with the jet spray. If you don’t have a power washer, hands and knees it is.
Rinse and Apply Cleaner
Once you are done, rinse the deck off well and let it have some time to dry up if that’s what your choice of cleaner calls for (some require a wet deck for preparation). Some deck cleaners, such as the Star-Brite Non-Skid, are purely designed for pulling the dirt up from its entrenched position in the grain of the deck.
Others, like the Wet; Forget formula, are designed for dirt, mildew, and algae formations that threaten to turn your deck green if they haven’t already. If you did a power wash and/or scrub, and found yourself cleaning green off of your deck, you will want to go with the Wet; Forget.
You may wonder why you should bother when you have already scrubbed it or power washed it off of your deck. The thing is, you can’t see everything and some of the moss, algae, or mold may yet remain, invisible to your eye.
If you have seen any traces of it on your deck, you need to go with a cleaner that is designed to eliminate these things.
Once you’ve applied your cleaner, you need to give it at least five hours to set in. If you can wait until the next morning to apply your stain, do so. Once the proper time has elapsed, rinse your deck off again and do a thorough job of it.
Rinse and Stain
While you should clean your deck through and through a few times a year, or if you see some green showing up on the boards, you should only stain it once a year, unless it takes some serious damage for one reason or another.
To apply the stain, you will need a paintbrush or a roller, since you are essentially doing just that, painting your deck, albeit with a stain and not a color. Ready Seal and Storm System are great options as their stains are long-lasting and highly durable.
They also offer a lot of options in terms of colors, depending on how you want your deck to gleam in the sunlight. Keep in mind, staining and sealing are two different things. Some sealers are not stains and some stains won’t seal your deck.
Sealer is only applied on a dry deck, so you can’t stain it right after washing or after it rains. You also shouldn’t apply a sealer if it looks like it is going to rain or if the weather channels are calling for it throughout the day.
Either way, once you are done, you don’t need to do anything additional and, so long as the rain doesn’t arrive immediately, you will have a nice, stained, and clean deck that will last another year.
Final Thoughts
You should never apply your cleaner in the rain or right before a rain. However, it’s always best to do it on a cool afternoon, perhaps when the sun is setting beyond gray clouds. If you happen to have a deck that is purely in the shade, you’re good to go.
Rain can be a benefit and it can be a curse, so choose your cleaning and staining times wisely, so you don’t waste your materials, personal labor, and money on what may amount to nothing.
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