patio paving cleaning

Oops - what's an 'l' between friends .. bleach vs water ;)

"What ratio mix of beach/water have you fond to be effective?"

I just buy a couple of litres of the cheap thin bleach out the supermarket and roughly 50/50. Bear in mind though I am starting from relatively clean slabs. The other thing I use is any food stuff in jars that contain vinegar, when empty rather than pour down the sink I filter in to a plastic bottle and when I have enough I use an old liquid dishwasher bottle and go down the lines of the slabs as vinegar is also good for keeping weed free. For me its all about getting a good start with a power washer and then a little maintenance a couple of times a year.

Which weed killer lasts 12 months in this scenario ?

Wouldn't be 100 per cent on the longevity of salt. It will wash through fairly quickly due all the water draining off the non porous surrounding patio area imho. Beside isn't salt reputed to be deleterious to concrete and concrete products ?

Have found vinegar good at keeping moss at bay on windows.

But isn't all this a lot of faffing around to save buying a good weedkiller ?

Even the sodium chlorate treated areas used to show some growth well within the year for us, and wife has just asked about mixing up another dose of glyphosate ( mostly I think for those bits of garden and patio where the soil has been disturbed after treatment, alowing seeds to germinate after the soil bacteria has done it's job on the last lot of sparying)

John

You mean you steal it from roadside bins?

Why not, he steals enough from us in other ways.

On the other hand, he could be referring to putting out pans of sea water to dry.

I found Roundup poor for use on the patios. Weeds returned fairly rapidly. Since the demise of Simazine, another victim of the E.U. I have found Prema zor 57 as effective. One application will last a season with only the very very occasional weed popping its head up. Its a residual weed killer which gives namby pamby gardeners the heebie jee bies as did Simazine but this article gives the lie to a lot of that

String, length of?

I put down the (cheapest available) slabs 25 years ago and now they are knackered, a significant proportion have major frost damage and good for nothing except hardcore.

What was the quote for replacing the slabs?

Salt gives *reinforced* concrete a hard time if there are cracks through to the rebar; no real issue for plain concrete / cement.