Why Shouldn’t You Clean your Wood Deck with Bleach?
When it comes to deck cleaning, you might feel tempted to use chlorine bleach as most of us feel. Chlorine bleach does an excellent job of killing bacteria and viruses but has proved effective in killing molds on porous surfaces. You should think of it as a sanitizer and use it as a mold disinfectant for bathroom and kitchen countertops, tubs and shower glass, but not on wood decks. If you want to clean your wood deck the right way, then it is better to use an environmentally friendly and non-toxic wood deck cleaner that is specifically made to clean mold from wood . Why is chlorine bleach so ineffective for cleaning wood? The object of removing mold from wood is to kill its roots (called mycelia). The properties of chlorine bleach prevent it from soaking into wood-based building materials to get at its deeply embedded roots. Mold and mildew is a vegetative growth, and not a type of dirt to be cleaned. Moreover, bleach itself is 99% water ...