I love my patios, all that beautiful stone in different hues, offsetting the planting around it. But one of the drawbacks to having patios is that they need regular cleaning.
My front patio is circular and made of sandstone. I spent a long time researching where to place it and how to show it off to best effect. A lot of the photos I saw looked like the patio was just plonked there, its environment didn’t add to it, nor it to its environment. My favourite had a mixture of different settings; 1/3 gravel, 1/3 planting, 1/3 lawn. I think the finished result is lovely, so much so that I’ve asked my husband to move his car parking spot so that when I’m sitting at the dining room table, I can admire it out the window.
The back patio is like an extension of the grey tiles in the hallway. It is limestone, the local stone. I always think of it as like an extra room and fantasise about covering it somehow to make it an indoor-outdoor type room. I’d love to be able to sit out there on those sunny but cold days and enjoy the sunshine.
The 3 things I’ve learned about cleaning patios is that:
- They need to be cleaned regularly to look their best.
- Never use a power-washer on sandstone
- Use a scrubbing brush with an up-turned handle
The first one I need to keep learning over and over again because each time I clean them, I think wow they look great, I should have cleaned them earlier. This is the before and after shot:
The second thing I learned is never ever to use a power washer on sandstone. A man at a quarry once warned me about this and for the first year of my patio, I took heed. However, once I was tight on time and the job was well overdue. I cleaned it using the power-washer, it was so simple a 5-minute job and it’s done. The man at the quarry said it would cause black spots which I didn’t really understand but low and behold the patio was speckled in black ground in dirt. Many times of handwashing since has not removed it. You can’t really see the spots unless you are close up but they have the effect of making the stone look dull and lifeless, the exact opposite to the reason you buy sandstone in the first place.
The third lesson was learned the tough way, through painful experience. I started off by using a regular scrubber. As I put pressure on it, my knuckles came in contact with the patio to cries of pain, as the skin on my knuckles got ripped off. Then one day I came across one with an upturned handle, and I thought what a great idea. This is the one I use, it’s ideal, I have it a few years now, and it has lasted perfectly.
Job done, all that’s left to do is enjoy the beautiful stone.
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