Easier Method of Scrubbing a Deck?

[silver___30]

I have a fairly large 20 year old cedar deck which I have cleaned and resealed religiously every 2 years for the past 6 years that I have owned the house. I use a wood cleaner/brightener and deck scrubber (a stiff bristle brush on a pole) to clean it... which easily takes 12 to

15 hours over the course of 3 days (after work) to complete to my satisfaction before resealing it. This becomes more and more of a task as I get older. I don't mind the blisters on top of blisters (yeh, I do wear gloves), but the sore back and arms slay me. I do not believe in using a pressure washer. There has got to be an easier method to scrubbing a deck. Has anyone tried using an electric compact walk-behind cylindrical floor scrubber with the nylon counter- rotating brushes (not a rotating disc)? They are advertised as being able to scrub any surface, but usually list tile & grout, brick, cement, hardwood, rubber, carpet, etc. I haven't seen these being associated with scrubbing decks, but I'm wondering why not?

[ransley]

So what do you have against pressure washers, you are missing it, with one its an hours work. Do you paint a house with a brush or roller or sprayer.

[silver___30]

I've done quite a bit of research over the years and using a brush is the prefered method because of the damage a pressure washer can do to the wood fibers. Yep, and I know one needs to keep the pressure low. I did try it once on a small area out of exhaustion from using a brush for several hours. However, it didn't do half as good as several passes with a brush... and that was with the nozzle a few inches from the decking. So, even with the reason of possibly damaging the wood, the results were enough to convince me that a brush was far better.

I painted the exterior of my house a 4 or 5 years back. It's a two story house with a 30 foot chimney. I belt sanded the entire structure and painted it 3 times by brush... 1 primer coat and 2 top coats. Still looks great today. If I had to back-brush it after spraying it, spraying seemed pointless.

[tnom]

I haven't used a dual opposing scrubber for decks but I purchased a Hoover FloorMax Supreme for my vinyl flooring. It works great.

I would caution that the brushes are not very stiff or durable for deck use. I would think that the gap between the planks on the deck would accelerate the destruction of the nylon/plastic bristles.

That being said I believe that the use of this tool would be a improvement over manual cleaning, until the brushes wears out.

When I purchased my dual opposing scrubber I had a difficult time finding anything that wasn't a very costly commercial grade scrubber. I finally found the wallet friendly Hoover that is not commercial grade but cheap enough to justify its purchase.

[silver___30]

It looks like the brushes on the Hoover FloorMax Supreme are disc- like. Is this correct? This would cut across the decking grain. I'm looking for something with roller-like brushes used with the grain. Yeh, the cylindrical floor scrubbers I've looked at are definitely pricey.

[tnom]

Yes. The Hoovers bristles are mounted on a disc with a axis that is vertical.

[ransley]

I have the hoover with the two disks and I dought its what you want. The key is a good cleaner, I use Oxcilic acid and I power wash, not power blast, or ruin any grain, an electric 1300 lb power washer kept far enough away to clean is what I even use on cedar shake homes. Sherwin Williams carries an oxcilic acid cleaner pre mixed, its standard to power wash and it works well evough to stain. If you have alot of black , and shade its likely mold, then use bleach first.

[silver___30]

In my original post I referred to cylindrical floor scrubbers. Cylindrical floor scrubbers have cylindrical (roller-like) brushes. These would be more effective than the disc scrubbers on decking where the board imperfections (grooves and grain) run lengthwise. I imagine there would be less wear on the brushes as well.

I have a 2600 psi gas pressure washer which, like I said, I wasn't impressed with the results (compared to a brush side-by-side). The wood cleaner\\brightener I use contains oxalic acid. Is this the same as the oxcilic acid you referred to? It could be too that I am trying to achieve the better results of a brush (in my experience) because I use a clear finish\\sealer, not a stain. The time and effort invested in cleaning may be less if an opaque sealer is used because the deck is ultimately covered completely.

[Joe]

[Joe]

You may find the answer to your problem at a janitorial supply house. The professionals are likely to have something to keep the task from being labor intensive. Try your Yellow Pages and good luck,

Joe

[DYIJean]

replying to silver___30, DYIJean wrote: Hi, I know I am replying to 2008 post, but it came up in my search and you ask the question I want to ask ... did you ever find a solution? thanks

[Windlass]

replying to DYIJean, Windlass wrote: Likewise I had the same search results and am hoping for a good answer. As noted above, all of the power options seem to involve brushes that spin, cutting across the grain. Wait! A simultaneous search produced the following ad ... looks like our prayers are answered!

(no idea how costly this is or how much wear a deck re-do will incur but I want one!)

[trader_4]

My power option is a power washer and I think that's what most people use. You have to avoid using too much pressure or it will raise the grain, but it's not hard if you know what you're doing.

[SkolVikingsGuy]

replying to silver___30, SkolVikingsGuy wrote: This is a great question. I've been googling to find exactly what you're describing. I spent the day scrubbing the deck with the deck scrubber on a pole. My deck was in pretty rough shape so it took quite a bit of scrubbing. Just using the pressure washer wasn't getting the job done, and I didn't want to overdo it. I'd like to make another pass at it and figured I'd by an electric belt type scrubber online to save some time and effort. I'm so surprised that one doesn't exist. I think this a great opportunity to make some money!

[Robert]

I know it's been 12 years since the original post, but i think the Karcher PCL 4 scrubber might be the answer., although it is not as easy to find.

I'm in Europe and the price for one of this is around 250 USD.

I did order it and waiting to see if it's as good as the reviews said.

Hope it helps.