Protecting Your Deck

Greg Reveles: Hello, my name is Greg Reveles, I am the founder of Renorr Dynamics incorporated, Alexandria, Virginia. We are talking about how to clean and preserve a wood deck. So, now we have selected our material to protect the wood deck. We have selected an oil based wood preservative. What is the first thing you want to do with your preservative? Obviously you open the container and then I am going to use a drill with a paddle to mix it up real good.

After mixing it up, then you want to pour it through a fine mesh strainer. What this does is this just filters out any solids that might become clogging to your pump garden spray which we are then going to pump onto the floor mostly. The reason you use the pump garden sprayer is that it enables you to get a lot of products down in a hurry. Also using the pump garden sprayer will enable you to get into the nooks and crannies a little bit easier.

But usually I first try to start with the railings and the balusters. It is the most tedious part and while you are fresh and it is early and you have got a lot of patience left still, that is when you want to do in my opinion the hardest part. How do you do that? Use your combination of brushing or with a roller, screwed on the end of a wooden handle for example, enables you to roll it from the pan. You dip the roller into the pan and then you want to make sure that you get all of the sides. You are covering four sides, your balusters, your posts and so forth and then finally at the end, you want to apply it to the top of handrail.

After going around and doing most of all of the handrails then I recommend beginning on the flooring, starting on one end of the floor and just working with the grain, applying the products with your sprayer and your roller and your brush, working it in real good into the wood. Make sure that you get real good coverage, be very generous in your application of the wood preservative. You want to put a lot on, allow it to soak in.

Now, by the time you start on one end of the deck as you work away across to the other side of the deck, that will take you sometime anywhere from let's say half-an-hour to an hour, is sufficient time. If at the end of the half an hour to an hour, if there is still wetness. If you have pounding or puddling, I think we hadn't rolled that off. You want to work that in and roll that off. You don't want to leave too much excess on the wood because eventually over the course of a day or so, it will dry and get sticky and tacky and you don't want to do that.

As you are applying the protectant to the vertical balusters and the railing, they may drip on the floor. Just be conscious of that and work it with a brush. If you do have droplets that fall onto the flooring, take your brush or your roller and work them in right way otherwise, they will actually leave evidence of where the drips have fallen and it won't look as good at the end of the job.

Minimize your steps, if you do need to want to walk on an area that you have already preserved or stained, be sure and take your brush or your roller and roll out your footprints right away. So, now we have finished applying our wood preservative. The deck is looking great, I am real happy about it. Let us talk about clean up. What you need to do for cleaning up? If you have an oil based product you are going to use mineral spirits, if it is a latex, a water based product, you are going to use water. But generally speaking you want to take your brushes, your roller. Usually I just dispose of the roller or the brush. If it is an expensive brush or roller that you want to keep, then by all means just be sure and clean them in the appropriate liquid. So now we have a nice clean deck that is been cleaned, it is been preserved and protected. You will probably get about two or three to four years of good honest protection before you have to do this again. So thank you very much for watching. I hope you have learnt how to clean and protect a deck and enjoyed the video.