Wood and composite
Deck and Fence Cleaning Services in San Luis Obispo County
Wood decks, redwood and cedar fencing, composite boards, pergolas and trellises, cleaned at a pressure the timber can actually take. Corey Byler is the one on site, and the job is not finished until you have walked it with him.
Mon to Sat, 7am to 6pm · License #17881 · Insured to $1,000,000
Get a fast quote, it takes about five seconds
A deck is not a driveway, and softwood does not forgive
The tool that cleans concrete in ten minutes will ruin a redwood board in ten seconds.
Most fencing on the Central Coast is redwood or cedar, and most older decks in San Luis Obispo, Arroyo Grande and Cambria are one or the other. Both are softwoods. The spring growth in every ring is soft and the summer growth is hard, so a narrow tip held close blows the soft bands out and leaves the hard ones standing. What you get is furred fibre, ridges and wand marks that never sand out of a horizontal deck board. It takes four seconds to do and a full refinish to undo.
West of the ridge the damp never really leaves. In Cambria, Baywood-Los Osos, Morro Bay and Cayucos the fog sits until noon for months, so the north face of a fence and the shaded half of a deck stay wet through a summer that never rains. That is where the black and green film grows. It is slick underfoot on stair treads, it works down into open grain, and on composite boards it settles into the embossed grain pattern where a broom will not reach it.
Inland the problem inverts. Paso Robles, Templeton, Creston and Atascadero go five or six months with no rain and plenty of afternoons over 100 degrees, and UV breaks down the lignin at the wood surface until it goes silver. Harvest dust settles into that open grain every autumn. People see the gray and ask for the deck to look new, which is a different request from clean. Gray is dead surface fibre. You can strip down to bright wood, but you have removed wood to get there.
How we clean wood without wrecking it
Same crew, same owner, every job. Nothing is handed to a subcontractor at any point, so the person who quoted your deck is the person standing on it.
We test the boards before we pick a pressure
Soft rot, boards that were furred by somebody else years ago, failing stain, popped nails and rust runs around fasteners all get found before we start rather than after. A sound redwood rail and a tired fir board that has already been blasted twice do not get the same treatment, and you hear which one you have.
The cleaner does the work, the water only rinses
A wood safe cleaning solution goes on and is given time to sit. That is what kills mold down in the fibre instead of shaving the top off it and watching it come back by winter. Then we rinse with a wide fan at roughly garden hose pressure, held well back. Soft washing in principle, sized for timber.
Rinsing along the grain, board by board
Wand marks come from stopping, from changing distance and from cutting across the grain. We run each board end to end at a fixed distance with every pass overlapping the last. On fences we work top down so nothing streams over a panel that has already started to dry and leaves a tide line.
Plants, stucco and the concrete underneath get looked after
Landscaping gets soaked before we start and rinsed again after. Wet redwood and cedar throw tannin, and that runoff stains stucco, pavers and light concrete if it dries where it lands. So it gets flushed off while it is still wet, not found by you a week later.
We walk it with you
Every job ends with a walk around before we pack up, and anything you are not happy with gets put right there and then. On a deck we also tell you how long to leave it before any stain or sealer goes on. That is the whole satisfaction guarantee.
What is included
- Deck boards, stair treads, rails, posts and balusters, not just the flat surface
- Fence panels cleaned on both faces where we can get to them, including the shaded side that holds the mold
- Pergolas, arbours, trellises and patio covers, overhead work included
- Composite and capped composite decking cleaned at a pressure those boards tolerate
- Black and green growth taken out of the grain rather than skimmed off the top
- A straight answer on tannin bleed and rust runs around nails and screws, and whether they will lift
- Landscaping pre soaked and rinsed, and tannin runoff flushed off stucco, pavers and concrete before it dries
- A walk around with you before we leave
What we do not do
Worth saying plainly, so nobody is waiting on something we were never going to do.
- Staining, sealing and oiling. We clean the wood and tell you when it is dry enough to coat. Somebody else brushes it on.
- Sanding or refinishing. If a previous blasting has furred the boards, cleaning will not lay that fibre back down.
- Carpentry. Rotten posts, soft treads and loose rails get pointed out to you, but a carpenter replaces them.
- The concrete patio or path the deck sits next to. Different surface, different process, quoted separately.
Real reviews, real Central Coast addresses
The light literally shines brighter
Every word below is lifted straight from Corey's Google profile. Nothing written by us, nothing tidied up.
What deck and fence cleaning costs around here
Central Coast market rates for cleaning a wood deck run roughly $0.75 to $2.00 per square foot, so most residential decks land somewhere between $200 and $600. Fencing usually prices by the run, roughly $2 to $5 per linear foot for a standard six foot panel done on both faces. Those are regional ranges to set expectations, not our quote. Tell us the size and the material and you get a real number instead of a guess.
Square footage plus everything vertical
The flat deck surface is the fast part. Rails, posts, stair risers and forty balusters are mostly hand work, and they can outweigh the floor.
Wood or composite
Composite cleans faster and behaves predictably. Softwood needs dwell time, a lighter rinse and more care per square foot, so it takes longer.
How long since the last clean
Three years of black on a shaded Los Osos fence needs a second application and a longer dwell. A fence cleaned last year is one pass.
Condition of the timber
Cupped, checked or already furred boards need slower work and a gentler rinse. Occasionally the honest answer is that the wood is past cleaning and you are looking at replacement.
Access
Hillside decks up on posts, gates too narrow for gear, shrubs planted hard against a fence line and panels that face into a neighbor's yard all add time.
Whether you are sealing afterwards
A deck being prepped for stain has to come up even across every board, edge to edge. That is a fussier job than a maintenance wash.
No obligation, no pressure, no call center
We Guarantee 100% Satisfaction
Every job finishes the same way: a walk around with you before we pack up, so anything you are not happy with gets put right there and then. Corey Byler is the one doing that walk around. Business License #17881, insured to $1,000,000, and no part of the job handed to somebody else.
Deck and Fence Cleaning questions we get asked
Can you pressure wash a wood deck without damaging it?
Will cleaning bring a gray deck back to its original color?
Can composite decking be cleaned the same way as wood?
How do you get black mold off a redwood or cedar fence?
Can a moldy pergola be saved or does it need replacing?
How long after cleaning should I wait before staining or sealing?
Service area
One truck, the whole county
From the fog line in Cambria down to Santa Maria and inland through Paso and Creston. If you are on this list we get out to you. If you are just off it, call anyway and we will tell you straight.
Often booked with this
Ready to see what your glass actually looks like?
Send an address and we will get you a real number. Residential or commercial, anywhere from Cambria to Santa Maria.
Monday to Saturday, 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM · Owner operated · Nothing subcontracted