Pressure washing your driveway or outside walls can be a time-consuming task that can also damage your property if you’re not too careful. But a Sydney professional cleaner has revealed a much easier, cheaper, and quicker solution to getting your home looking brand new.
Instead of firing up your Gerni or Kärcher pressure washers, Elijah Stanley told Yahoo Lifestyle you could be better off picking up a few items from Bunnings. He said all you’d need was a pressure sprayer, pool chlorine, and a general house cleaning solution.
“It’s the sodium hypochlorite which is the active constituent in chlorine that essentially eats away at the mould in front of your own eyes. It’s quite amazing,” he said.
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The founder of Grimeless said it only takes around 15 minutes for the mixture to do its job and then it just needs either a light blast of water or a scrub to get rid of the residue of dead organic matter.
“Best practice is to do another application of the chemicals once you’ve done that, and then wait 15 minutes and then rinse it again, and it will be good as new, and you’ve saved yourself hours,” he said.
If it’s done properly, it should prevent mould build up for a year.
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Elijah explained that if you brought a professional cleaner in to tackle this job, it would cost upwards of $350. But if you wanted to do it yourself with a pressure washer, it could take you two to three hours to complete.
Pressure washers shoot water in a very concentrated and narrow way, meaning it takes much longer to clean every centimetre of the desired area.
These machines can also be so powerful that they can peel back the grout and damage your wall or floor.
“Over the years, [the grout] is going to be ruined, and you’re going to have to either get it re-grouted or you have structural problems,” he added.
However, when you use the pressure sprayer, you’re casting a much wider net in a much more delicate way, and it doesn’t take even remotely as long.
Elijah recently posted about his cleaning hack on social media and it received a lot of attention.
“I got so many messages from pressure washing companies saying, ‘You’re an idiot, you’re giving away all the secrets of the trade,'” he told Yahoo Lifestyle.
Elijah showed how his cleaning solution has been able to make light work of stubborn-looking mould. Picture: Supplied
What do you need to buy for this cleaning hack?
You can pick up a 5 litre pressure sprayer for $12.90 at Bunnings, and a 15 litre bucket of liquid chlorine is only $20.21.
Then, you just need to add a surfactant, which is a chemical that can “stir up” the surface you’re cleaning, which can help remove any dirt, mould, or other grime.
“If you use Surf Five in One, you can get it from Woolworths or Coles for $20, mix that with chlorine with just a little cap and spray it out. It’ll be good to go,” he said.
All up, that’s just over $53.
He said it’s important to get the right surfactant, as the wrong one, when mixed with chlorine, can create toxic fumes.
The cleaner urged people to chat to a staff member at their local hardware store if they’re unsure.
When filling the pressure sprayer, he said 20 per cent should be chlorine, 2 per cent should be the surfactant, and 78 per cent should be water.
“I think there’s a big fear behind chlorine,” he told Yahoo Lifestyle. “But this is the way hundreds of thousands of houses are washed every year in Australia.”
Things to be mindful of when attempting this hack
The Grimeless founder said chlorine needed to be handled safely.
He urged people to wear latex gloves, goggles and a face mask when mixing the solution, and it’s best to do it outside so that there is good ventilation.
If you opt for the $15 pressure sprayer, the cleaner said you’ll likely get two or three uses out of it before you gave to toss it out.
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The chlorine can eat away at certain parts if it’s not thoroughly cleaned out and make it unusable.
You can buy a sprayer that can be used again and again but Elijah said it’s more expensive and in the $100 range.
He added that if you’re washing walls or floors near plants then you need to make sure you’re careful.
“You need to pre-rinse all the plants and all the grass that the solution might touch,” he said.
“And then as soon as you finish, you need to post-rinse.”
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