Deck & Boat Dock Cleaning

Wood and composite decking spend the Lowcountry's wet months holding water rather than shedding it. A board that never gets a full day of sun stays wet long after a storm clears — and wet wood is what algae, mold and mildew feed on. Once established, the growth doesn't just discolor the surface — it feeds on organic material in the wood grain, and boards that were solid a year ago start to soften and give underfoot.

Boat docks have it worse. A structure built over open water never fully dries, so algae and mildew move in faster and spread further than they do on a shaded porch. Left alone, the slick coating on dock boards turns a routine walk to the boat into a hazard, and the moisture trapped under a season of growth accelerates rot in the deck boards themselves.

Pressure has to match the material. Wood pressure-washed at the wrong setting raises the grain and leaves boards fuzzy and prone to splintering; composite decking pressure-washed the same way can gouge or strip the factory finish outright. Soft washing uses a cleaning solution formulated to kill algae and mildew at the surface, then rinses it away at a pressure low enough that both surfaces come through undamaged.

Decks also pick up stains from standing water, leaf tannins, and general wear that plain rinsing won't touch — those get treated separately from the algae removal. The same deck-cleaning approach carries over to porches, breezeways, and other hard outdoor surfaces attached to the house, where the goal is the same: lift what's grown into the surface without damaging what's underneath.

Deck cleaning only buys time if nothing follows it. A protective sealant applied once the deck is fully dry slows how fast moisture re-enters the surface, which is what determines how quickly algae and mildew come back. In a climate where a deck rarely gets a full week to dry between rain events, that protective layer matters more than it would somewhere drier.