Yellow Balau Decking Cleaning & Restoration.

Over the last few years, we have seen lots of exotic wood decking’s being installed alongside new built K-Rendered houses and many more properties across Scotland. Recently we restored dark and grey decking to it’s original beautiful look for our client in Tayvallich on the west coast of Scotland. The exotic wood on this project was Yellow Balau that had been covered in decking paint that had failed. The Ronseal brown paint was flaking away on several areas of the decking and with every thick coating that was applied each summer, the wood had lost all resemblance of the lovely Yellow Balau wood. The client had invested a significant amount of money into having these higher-end materials installed around there property.

 

Unlike painting a Yellow Balau, deck Owatrol Tex -Trol does not sit on top of the surface of the wood as paints do, the application of Tex -Trol slowly seep deep into the wood grains and dry within the wood surface. As the first application is applied it starts to dry into the wood leaving no residue on top of the wood after 10 minutes or a little more weather depending the wood is recoated. The second coating of Tex -Trol fully saturates deep into the Yellow Balau and leave no residue on top of the wood as we often see with brown paints.

 

• 

This product is designed to protect the wood with the added bonus of enhancing the woods natural look. On this decking restoration, we had to strip 2 or 3 layers of brown Ronseal paint of the Yellow Balau deck that was applied to it previously. To strip the failed Ronseal of the Balau deck we first used Prep Decks from Owatrol to strip the paint from the wood. The thicker areas we had to apply several coats of Prep Decks to get to the wood below the brown paint. After a dwell time, we did the scrape test on certain areas of the paint before we used our modified low-pressure washer to strip paint from deckings. Once we started the machine and proceeded to fan jet the brown paint from the wood we could see the areas of thick Ronseal peel away with each pass of the fan from the low-pressure washer we use. We have uploaded a little video to our YouTube channel of stripping this Yellow Balua decking.

After we have stripped all the brown paint from the decking boards staircases and fixings on this deck we cleaned the areas around the deck of any Ronseal paints and dirt that comes from washing and stripping. We also cleaned all the windows adjacent to the decking before leaving for that day.

After what seemed like months the Scottish Rain stopped for a few days which let the yellow balau decking dry out enough to be sanded by hand using 80 Grit paper and electric sanders to open the wood pores and remove any areas of rough or splintered woods from the surface, We all walk barefoot at some point on our decking’s. We take great pride in the level of finish we leave the decking in before we treat the wood to any Owatrol finishing products. We believe in the 95 % preparation to 5 % finishing. After the wood has been sanded the dust is blown off the deck using a leafblower. The sanding process can take various times depending on the size of the decking being restored. This project sanding was over a full day with 2 men sanding to get the wood barefoot smooth as the clients described it to us,

 

The next step is applying Tex-Trol clear coat to the Yellow Balau, once the first application has been brushed in or rolled or even sprayed it is left to seep into the wood. The drying will vary depending on the weather, hot days it doesn’t take long to start to dry enough for the second application of Tex-Trol to be applied straight over the first coat.

We only work several boards at one time to save any walking over coated boards to recoat them. we will add a picture of this method for the DIY, ers and other company’s that follow our methods and techniques.

 

If you would like to have your Yellow Balau Hardwood Decking restored using Owatrol products, get in touch with our friendly customer support using the contact form. Alternatively, you can call. 01506 635551 or email. softwashscotlandltd@gmail.com