My area of decking on the back garden has been a real labour of love for me. When I bought my home 3 years ago, the house itself had previously been empty for a year and was so inhabitable it took 6 months of DIY, paying workmen and hours of work to get it to a state where I could actually move in! Needless to say the garden wasn't especially pretty either.

The decking hadn't been erected very well in the first place - it was loose and dangerous in some areas and had been stained a very unpleasant blue colour by the previous owner. Add to that a year of neglect whilst the house was stood empty and as you can imagine it looked quite a sight!

The decking itself leads straight from the patio doors and is raised about 2 foot off the ground with a small set of steps leading onto the garden. The decking floor area is also surrounded by decorative spindles - it's quite a large area stretching across the length of the house itself. I recognized that with a bit of time and repair this had great potential to look very nice and be a great place to have a patio table, BBQ and to sit out in the summer. So against the advice of well meaning family and friends who thought I should just tear it all down and start again - so began the weekends of restoration!

After I had repaired it so it didn't wobble anymore and was basically safe (best place to start really!) - I set about trying to get rid of all the stains, algae, mildew, dirt, mould and all round nasty stuff that appeared to be living on there. There also seemed to be quite a vile layer of grease across the surface of it as well.

I purchased the Ronseal Decking Cleaner as it promised to remove all the nasty stuff as well as getting rid of the blue stain that was also on there. The Decking cleaner is also supposed to clean wood by opening its pores and will also restore it to a natural timber look.

Application

I purchased a 5 litre container of this which states that you can clean 20-24 square meters in area. This was the only size available in the shop and would actually be large enough to clean about 3 times as much decking as I had.

Firstly and to ensure best results I sweeped the decking of as much of the moss and mould as I could. This works best with a stiff yard brush. I also used a knife to remove any of the dirt and moss that had got in between the wooden decking floor.

You then pour the decking cleaner directly onto the wooden area, scrub with a stiff wooden brush and then leave for 15-20 minutes. You then wash the cleaner off.

Whilst the container was fine for applying on the wooden floor it was really difficult to add the cleaner to the spindles and banister. This is because the container was very heavy to lift and also because it has quite a thick spout. When your poured it, the cleaner went gushing down the spindles onto the grass below. This concerned me a bit as I wasn't entirely sure whether the ingredients would damage the grass. In the end I ended up pouring some of the cleaner into a squirty bottle with a finger trigger so that I could spray it directly on to the spindles and hard to reach areas.

I also found that using a jet wash worked very well to get the cleaner off thoroughly. Though if using a jet wash you do have to ensure that it isn't on a very high pressure or you do run the risk of damaging your wood.

Conclusion

The decking cleaner worked really well and certainly removed the algae, mould, dirt and nasty greasy layer. I ended up cleaning it twice in total though as removing the blue stain took a couple of goes. However this may have been more to do with the fact that my decking was in such a neglected state and not because of the cleaner.

The cleaner cost approx £9.99 and I think it is worth the price if you are going to restain your decking and want to treat your wood properly and get it back to its original colour beforehand.

The only reason I didn't give it a higher rating is because of the sheer size of the container. Because it was a whopping 5 litre container I still have loads of it left. The main problem with this is that it strips the colour off your decking (so you can't use it as regular cleaning substance) which is a shame as it was so good at removing the mould, grease and dirt. Although it can also be used for fences, garden furniture and other exterior wood so I may find a use for it yet.

Also I do think applying it to hard to reach places and spindles is really difficult because of the sheer size and design of the container. These areas also need quite a lot of cleaning as you do get a lot of spiders webs on there which get stuck on the wood. I did find that adding the cleaner into a smaller squirty bottle worked really well for me for applying it to the spindles.

Overall the cleaner did work very well I have lovely clean, mould and grease free decking (and a half full whopping container of cleaning fluid left!)