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How To Clean Outdoor Brick and Other Pavers


There is an easy and safe way to clean your outdoor pavers. A natural cleaning solution of ultra concentrated oxygen bleach and water can be applied with a deck brush for an easy, safe way to restore the beauty to your brick and concrete pavers, and other natural stone hard surfaces.

Outdoors, it seems like we are constantly cleaning dirt and grim off of things. The windows, the siding, patio furniture, and more. One major cleaning job that may be staring you in the face is the brick patio or paver driveway. The dirt, grim, mildew, and algae from last winter, or even longer than just one season, has darkened and dulled those beautiful bricks and pavers.

You may be at a quandary as to how to clean them, especially if you have an outdoor event planned at your house. But don’t panic!

The process to clean them is simple. And with a small amount of elbow grease your patio or driveway will look renewed, whether your pavers are clay brick or concrete, and whether they have mortared or sand joints. To demonstrate, we cleaned one of our own brick paver driveways, which was in desperate need of cleaning, as you can see in the photo.

To start, sweep off the entire area that you’ll be cleaning (remove any weeds and moss from between paver joints).

You’ll need a good size bucket, a long handled deck brush with short, stiff bristles (make sure the bristles are short and stiff or you’ll be wasting a lot of time and energy), and some ultra concentrated oxygen bleach powder. Do not use chlorine bleach. Oxygen bleach is non-chlorine, non-toxic, non-corrosive, and won’t harm the plants. It is a safe cleaner to use around your family and pets and for us that is an important feature.

Restored and Renewed

Follow the directions on the container of the ultra concentrated oxygen bleach. Mix the instructed amount of the oxygen bleach powder and water together (warm water will dissolve the powder faster) in the bucket. You can stir it to make sure the powder gets dissolved.

 

Do a small area at a time – if you try to do too large of an area all at once, it may dry up before you can get to it. Then, basically, the solution gets poured onto the pavers. Check the container for the amount of time it needs to sit on the pavers before you begin to scrub it with the deck brush. Fight the urge to scrub it right away – give the solution the time it needs to work properly.

When you are ready to use the brush, scrub the pavers changing your position so that the brush can scrub it in different directions. After scrubbing the area, simply rinse it with a garden hose.

Some pavers may need a bit more scrubbing, because you can’t always see if all the dirt was removed until they are rinsed off. We cleaned a 2’ by 2’ area so you could see the difference between the cleaned area and the adjacent pavers. The natural beauty of the brick was restored and it looks great!

Before

After

A power washer may not always be the best way to clean everything outdoors. If you use it on pavers with sand joints, the force of the spray can wash all the sand out from between the joints, which will need to be replaced. If you don’t replace the sand, the joints will collect soil and organic particles which can give it a muddy look. For mortared joints, power washers have the potential to damage the mortar.

 

 

Metamorphosis Monday

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Comments

  1. Ellie says:

    Where can we get ultraconcentrated oxygenated bleach? We have tried online, Lowes & Home Depot.

    • Better Outdoor Living at Home says:

      Ellie,

      The product we used in this paver cleaning post was Stain Solver oxygen bleach. It is available online.




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