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Top 5 Maintenance Tips for Wooden Fences

20 July 2014

Applying protective varnish on a wooden texture

Your fence is an important part of your garden and your property; it can add style, privacy and elegance if it’s well looked after, whereas a tired or dilapidated fence makes your home look uninviting and unloved.

Keeping up with the maintenance of your wooden fencing is important as, if you don’t, you could face the cost of replacing it. It also looks bad if you decide to sell your home and is such a small task to take on with huge results.

With our top 5 tips, you can tackle your wooden fence with confidence and bring it back to life.

 

1)    Get the right equipment together

To make life easier for yourself, you should get all the things you need together. This will cause less stress further down the line as you won’t have to stop halfway through the job to pick something up. The main things you need for cleaning your fence are as follows:

  • Hose or power washer
  • Wood stain
  • Protective sheets
  • Brushes or rollers
  • Bleach or wood treatment

2)    Protect your plants and grass

You’re going to be doing some blasting with that power washer and there are also going to be some solutions around which could harm your grass and plants in the garden. To ensure you don’t do any damage to these important parts of your garden, you should lay down plastic sheets. Also, move any damageable plant pots or garden furniture out of the way before you begin.

3)    Bleach and then power wash

Good hardware stores should stock a proper wood cleaning solution you can use to put on your fence, but you can also create your own by watering down bleach. The best way to measure this out is to use one part bleach for every 2 parts of water. Put this solution on your fence and let it rest for a while so it can get to work. Once you start to notice it taking away any mildew and dirt you can use a power washer to remove the solution. If you don’t own a power washer, then a generic hose should do the trick.

4)    Let the wood dry out

Now you’ve given it a good soaking, you’ll have to let the wood dry before you can put a new seal on it. It’s important to do this as you’ll defeat the purpose of new wood stain if the wood underneath is wet. Ensure that you don’t actually paint your wood – wood stain comes in a range of colours and is used to protect your wood, and if you simply paint the wood you aren’t protecting it as well as you could.

5)    Repeat as needed

The consistency with which you carry out this process is up to you. Most people like to do it every couple of years and others wait longer. In truth, it will be up to you to keep an eye on how your fences look – if they are exposed to lots of water and sunshine they will fade quicker and gather more green stains. Often you can get away with giving the wood a quick wash with the power washer but sooner or later you’ll need to re-stain your wood to bring back the vibrancy.

 

Wooden fences are easy to maintain if you keep on top of it, only if you fall behind in this aspect will your fence become dreary looking. Here at Harrow Fencing, we provide high quality fencing to help give you privacy and add a great finish to your property – contact us today for more on our services and products.

 

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