Cleaning wood fence ideas?

[Pirate]

I have about 220' of horizontal board on board fencing to clean.
It looks like it may be Cypress, but not sure.
Any good, home brew, cleaning receipies? If not commercial ones?
I do have a pressure washer to rinse with.
Easiest application method? A hose end sprayer would be nice. I used a house cleaner on the north side of our house and the hose end sprayer was great.

How well do those plastic fences last? I'm sure if they made black, it would last a lot longer than white. But a bit on the ugly side for my tastes.

[DirectCedar]

I have washed wooden fence very successfully with just clean high pressure water from a pressure washer. 20-year-old lumber looked almost new. Took about 1/4 the time of hand scraping.

[WaterlooMarc]

I've always had good luck just spraying it down with bleach from a pump type weed sprayer. A little pricey for bleach but it sure is easy.

[Pirate]

The pressure washer can tear out the soft grain easily. Yeah, just back off a bit. I'll most likly try the pressure washer. It's a 3,000 psi 4 gpm, so I will stand back.
I think I read somewhere where bleach isn't good for the wood.
Might use pressure washer first and blow as much green stuff off, then a light spray of bleach water, with a good rinse. Maybe white vinegar instead of bleach.

[MikeMcCoy]

If you have that black algae or mildew I would try Wet & Forget. I used it on some fence posts when I was spraying it on some vinyl siding that was covered with algae (neglected house in a shady area). Follow the directions and just Wet & Forget so it doesn't get any easier if it fits your application.

Wet & Forget Before and After video on decking

[JosephP]

I started ours with a pressure washer. Hadn't been done in at least the 13 years we've been in the house... Or right before we moved in.

I have a junky electric pressure washer, but that is OK because I just wanted to clean it. Took an hour to do a 25' section. Not gonna don that for the whole thing....borrowed neighbors bigger pressure washer (don't recall psi or GPM...but it is more than adequate). Maybe cut that down to 40 min for the next section. Still not gonna do that for 600 + feet.

Summer got busy, project on hold...

Last fall I bought the cheapest Beck cleaner Menard's had (first 6 gallons were free after rebate!). Smells a lot like bleach... Sprayed that on with a 3 gallon hapd pump sprayer and rinsed off with the garden hose. It looks every bit as good as the pressure washed stuff for 1/10 of the time... Goes especially quick when the neighbor rinsed for me as I sprayed. Only thing I'd do different if I had a lot more fence to do would be use a backpack sprayer because that holds more between fill uips and delivers the product more quickly.

Better living through modern chemistry

[Cdshakes]

I don't mean to knock that wet&forget product, but geez, the before &after don't look all that different! just some less algae... seems like you could get most of that with a garden hose and a spray nozzle alone.

Colin

[JosephP]

Do you have Menard's down there yet? This week's ad has the stuff I used free after rebate (Sunnyside deckwash). Limit 4 gallons rebated, but only $4/gallon after that.

[Pirate]

I tried the 3000 psi pressure washer on it, with a turbo nozzle on it.
It worked great. Found the pieces with some rot real fast!
Took about 1/2 - 3/4 hr to do 38' on one side.
Got a total of about 225' But have to do both sides!

[JosephP]

Chemistry man...chemistry!