alright what did people do before power washers? about sealing deck

[patandchickens]

Porch floors don't get NEAR the amount of weather damage that decks do.

At least around the turn of the century (1900ish), the better-off portions of the middle class painted their porch floors every year (again, cheap plentiful labor was available to scrub/sand the wood down before repainting) but AFAIK a whole big lot of folks just left them bare wood, sanding or sanding-and-oiling anytime things got too unsavory-looking. (e.t.a. -- note that the wood they were using back then was WAY BETTER than what's being used now, both in terms of species [in many cases] and in terms of the durability of the wood within a species... modern plantation-grown spruce/pine/fir is soooo easily disintegrated by weathering, b/c it was grown up so very fast and the growth-rings are so far apart)

Dunno about before that -- I am under the impression that porches were pretty much a late-Victorian invention so they may not go back too much earlier than turn of the century anyhow? Not sure.

Pat

 

[KevsFarm]

~gd....your right...i doubt very much they even had Thompsons water seal during the WW2 era..thats a newer age product..Hardly anybody uses that crappy pressure treated pine/spruce for decking anymore, by the way....any decent builder with knowledge would use cedar decking, mahagonay for higher end clients...

 

[Bubblingbrooks]

Its either a modern power wash, or a good Cinderella scrub.

 

[Marianne]

The old 'laundry recipe' I have states to use your wash water to scrub the porch when the laundry is done.

 

[patandchickens]

Its either a modern power wash, or a good Cinderella scrub.

LOL, very well put, that's it exactly!

KevsFarm, you must move in much posher circles than I do -- despite living in a fairly affluent area full o' big-city commuters with high paying jobs and overfancy homes, I have yet to see a mahogany or ipe' deck in person (they exist, of course, they're just quite uncommon here). There are more people with the composites like Trex or whatever than there are with exotic hardwoods. And there are still a whole lot more people around here, affluence and all, with pressure-treated decks than with cedar. I would think that it would be relatively similar in much of the States still, although having been in Canada for nine years now I have not inspected a whole lot of American decks lately LOL.

If the o.p. has a cedar deck I would recommend being real careful and NOT sanding it unless absolutely unavoidable -- cedar is extremely soft, much moreso than spruce/fir/pine, and in addition to denting quite easily it is all too easy to sand off a lot more than you thought you were gonna. It isn't even *that* rot-resistant, not unless you go to pricier heartwood cedar -- the plain ol sapwood cedar that most everyone uses is not MUCH more rot-resistant than any other typical wood. The popularity of cedar for decks is largely a tribute to the effectiveness of the cedar marketing board's public relations folks, IMO -- not that it's *bad*, but people often have an unrealistic idea of it.

Pat

 

[~gd]

Uh Pat did you forget that Ships had decks for ages?

Er, obviously not, but I thought we were talking about BACKYARD decks not ships decks.

The age-old solution for ships' decks is almost totally irrelevant to BACKYARD decks (i.e. -- build of very very resistant wood, and apply nasty substances periodically by means of vast amounts of manual labor that good luck gettin' your spouse or kids to do anything like THAT today) (e.t.a. - when I was a little kid, the guy who lived across the street was ex-Navy, had been an acting vice admiral or somehting like that in WWII but naturally had not *started* at that rank and had plenty of stories to recount about the amount of sheer hard grunt-work involved in the upkeep of even modern (meaning, WWI and WWII) ships...)

If ships' decks were traditionally made of spruce or pine (even pressure treated), with Thompsons Water Seal or the like slapped on every year or two, after a pressure wash or good scrubbing... uh, major maritime trade would never have developed and human civilzation would probably never have gotten TO the point of having backyard decks to worry about resealing

Pat

Well I know enough not to despute your "wisdom" but that last statement is a real gem. Of course maritime trade ships never had the crew numbers of men-of-war so their upkeep was done in port usually in ship yards while they were having their botton scraped free of barnacles and ship worms. On a warship most of the crew is there to fight and tasks were provided to use their time and energy, young men and boys tend to fight crewmates if there is nothing better to do. I wasn't on a warship, more like a floating service station, but every inch of topside deck was mopped twice per day.
If you insist that there is a huge difference between maritime and household decks so be it, I have better things to do....

 

[patandchickens]

If you insist that there is a huge difference between maritime and household decks so be it[

Huh?

My point is simply that there is a vast difference in the LABOR usually available (these days, I mean) to deal with them.

Presumably if the o.p. had a family full o' people clamoring "please can I scrub the deck some more", this thread would not exist

(And there *are* real differences in materials, too)

Pat, who if you go back and read my posts has said *right from the beginning* that scrubbing is the non-power-washer solution.

 

[KevsFarm]

~gd....forget it, she always has to get the last word in and knows more about everything, than anyone else possibly could...

 

[Icu4dzs]

Just in case anyone REALLY cares, holy stone was used to clean ships decks which were made of teak, not pine or spruce.
Thompsons works great for household decks IMHO
//BT//
Trim sends
USN (ret)

 

[reinbeau]

Enough of the bickering.