Keeping patio slabs clean is often overlooked compared to cutting the grass in your garden.
It is worth remembering that without proper care, moss can start growing on patios and be a pain to remove.
Moss damages your stone’s appearance as well as can pose a risk of a slippery floor, which can be quite dangerous.
To avoid this, Daniel Scholfield, director of The Expert Gate Company, claims that there is one common household ingredient that “will kill moss” with his “easy-to-follow” method.
For this tip, households will need bleach, water, a large bucket, a spray bottle and a hard-bristled brush.
The first step is to dilute the bleach, “any brand of bleach will work to kill moss” on your patio. Bleach can be picked up from Aldi for just 60p or from Tesco for 70p.
It needs to be diluted to “prevent any discolouration” on your patio, allowing it to keep its original colour and preventing random stains.
A ratio of five tablespoons of bleach to a gallon of water (roughly 3.7L) is practical for most cleaning uses of bleach.
Mix the solution in your bucket and then fill the spray bottle for easy distribution of the bleach across your patio.
Now it’s time to spray the areas of your patio that have been affected by moss. Be sure to “evenly distribute the moss killer solution” across all of the affected areas. This ensures that the solution will be “most effective”.
Leave the bleach solution to soak on your patio for around 15 minutes, giving the “moss killer time to work its magic”.
However, try not to leave the solution for too long as this may result in your driveway becoming stained.
Using warm water, remove all of the bleach from the treated areas once the time is up. You may want to go over the patio a few times to ensure that there is no bleach left behind. If you miss any spots, this could negatively affect your patio by causing discolouration, so take care with this step.
With the bleach solution now rinsed away, you’ll need to wait for the solution to keep working. You will know that the moss is dead if it has turned a yellow colour.
This means you’re ready to move on to the next step, where you can finally remove the dead moss from your driveway.
Use a stiff, hard-bristled brush to scrub all of the dead moss from your driveway. This will take some elbow grease, but the results are well worth it.
With all of the moss removed, you’ll be left with a perfectly cleaned patio that’ll “look as good as new”.
Households need to keep on top of brushing their patio to “prevent moss spores and seeds from settling into it”. If you regularly brush your patio, there will be a much lower chance of moss being able to stick around long enough to thrive.
