This wood is very dense. Are there any special procedures for cleaning this wood?
I’m not a wood guy so someone with better qualifications please chime in. I washed Ipe deck s with a bleach solution, super low pressure, then then brushed on timber oil and rubbed in with rags. Probably a better way, which is why I don’t do decks anymore.
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I would suggest you read the SDS on the overpriced Olympic Deck Cleaner. It’s active ingredient is weak SH, pretty sure you have plenty of that already. I honestly can’t tell what type of wood that is from the picture but I can tell you it is good quality (no knots to speak of) and if it’s dense it could be Ipe or similar. It will also stand up to PW washing better than soft woods. You can see the paint drips on the edge of the boards but that coating has failed so badly that I think you are going to have a much easier time removing it than you think. Do your testing on some of the face boards where no one will ever see it and you should be fine. The other advantage to doing it there is that because it is a vertical surface it will have faded the least due to UV etc. so whatever works there should work great on the horizontal deck boards.
One other thing, make sure that whatever you use will fade to allow reapplication without having to strip it again, i.e. it will allow you to do a light wash down with weak SH or Sodium Precarb followed by an Oxalic rinse and re-stain. To do that you need to read up on perspective products reapplication section. I get customer’s all the time that have used Behr, Olympic etc, and they don’t realize it requires removal to retreat unless they are going back with a solid and that deck it too nice to do that to.
IPE. Pronounce ee pay.
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Guys, please don’t buy this crap. Use professional chemicals. Not $10 a gallon watered down bleach
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Thanks, guys! I think I remember that he clled the wood something that may have been EEEPAY, which I didn’t recognize as ipe. I will take your recommendations to heart.
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