We have bath stone chippings in our small garden, spread loosely on a concrete base. Over the years they've become contaminated with dead leaves, twigs and compost and I'd like an easy way to clean them. I suppose these are mostly around 1cm^3 +/- quite a lot.
Is there some sort of vacuum cleaner attachment which will only pick up the lighter stuff without lifting the stones? A filter won't do as the dead leaves etc are usually bigger than the stones.
Or perhaps some other method?
Cheers
Standard garden vacuum cleaner is quite good for this kind of stuff. High volume, relatively low velocity airflow will pick up garden detritus but not stones.
Tim
Coicidently I've just come in for a cuppa after rinsing some off in garden sieve with a hose, but that is just a couple of bucketfuls I removed to renew a pipe from the greenhouse gutter to a pond. For a large quantity I would use a cement mixer and hosepipe but you will need to consider where the water may run,some drains may not like too much sediment put down them. Can't think of a method of cleaning them efficiently in situ. In the past I lifted a smallish quantity with a pond vacuum cleaner but that was some that had not been down too long laid on weed control fabric and it wasn't that dirty. Also the pond vac could be sacrificed as the owner after moving to the property had no further use for it.
G.Harman
If there's any depth to the chippings, I reckon you'll find the lighter stuff only on the surface. Below that there'll be a layer of wet mossy muddy gritty composty stuff. If it were mine, I'd hire an electric cement mixer for a day and trundle them around in that, washing with a hose all the while, and tipping them out through a garden sieve to act as a screen. But as someone else has said, make sure the washings go somewhere that'll cope with them, possibly back onto a flowerbed rather than just down the nearest drain.
IME no! The only way I've found is to lift the lot and wash/scrub them in a wheelbarrow, then drain and rinse numerous times. It's a lot of hard work.
Thanks, I'll try that after a dry spell. I wasn't really aware of such things, never having had a need, but it seems they're everywhere.
As for using a cement mixer, there really isn't room and there are insufficient flower beds in which to drain the water. And they'll only get dirty again.
Cheers
We have an old Flymo, a bit like this. Does the job.
Tim
I found our garden leaf vac works much better in "blow" mode than "suck" for getting debris out of our slate chippings bed.
I had the same problem, and the way that I ended up doing it was by rigging up a trough of 3 scaffold boards lined with polythene sheet, with one end raised 25mm, a submersible pump at the low end, it's outlet hose led to the high end, and the water flowing down the trough. If the gravel or stones a re sprinkled onto the flowing water, the muck will wash down the trough fas ter than the stones, leaving the stones clean. It worked even better when I put some 10mm rabbit-hutch wire along the bottom of the trough, but by tha t time I only had 1 ½ buckets of stones left to do.
Stone chippings is what people put down to tart the place up when selling. They very soon look like shit. Mostly because they only put down a thin layer and they move around if driven on. And algea soon turns them black.
replying to stvlcnc43, Keith Thompson wrote: Hello my fellow gardeners! Please advise best way to clean/brighten Cotswold Stone (chippings) -size : 1/2" to 5/8" some 3/4". Yes I am still an old fashioned pensioner! As a thought would Fairy Liquid mixed with vinegar do it? I do not want to use wheelbarrow or pressure hose or vacuum! Thank you in anticipation.
posted on April 3, 2017, 1:58 pm Oooer missus! The great way this web portal ignores years seems not to have been fixed. Brian
It's not the site Brian, it's the idiots who don't bother to read the top line of every post where the date includes the year.
Where is the date, I only use this on uk.d-i-y and although it may be my settings I do not see any date.
It says you're using Thunderbird like me (though it could be lying)
in which case there's a date only if it's not today.
BUT when I click reply it puts the full time and date as Andy
On the top line of every post on HomeOwnersHub site which 'borrows' all our posts on uk.d-i-y ng and where people reply to posts from long ago because they haven't checked the date. They've probably just searched for 'stone chippings' and add their two penn'orth on the end.
Yes but the problem really is it seems unless I'm missing something that posts from different years get bundled together in months a lot on that site. You are right though about unobservant sighties, I am blind but maybe because I am blind I hear the year when I go to the link in the message quite clearly. They seem now to be offering posting rights to unregistered users so I suspect we will see an increase in this kind of problem. Brian
I can hear it quite plainly. Maybe your browser is the issue . I did look on both firefox and waterfox and its certainly on the web site on both, just down a bit from where you arrive from clicking the link to the post. Brian
you have to click the link, nothing appears in the posts here since its just an abstract, the site does not put the date in the feed to usenet in a correct way. However my issue is with the site as the posts here that are to old threads all come from the web portal not usenet. The date and year are on the page, but sadly the way the site sorts stuff is, shall we be charitable here, quirky. Brian
No cos if you do that you end up above the the date so you have to have seen it. Brian
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