You want to be able to use your patio whenever you have company over. Many people have parties out on their patios and you might even just enjoy eating lunch on the patio from time to time.
The problem is that patios can get pretty dirty for a variety of reasons. Sometimes patios get messy due to natural causes such as storms blowing dirt on the patio.
You could have spilled something on the patio as well. This could leave the patio stained if you aren’t able to clean things up in a timely fashion.
It’s definitely possible to clean your patio up nicely and get things looking great again no matter what happened. However, not everyone wants to use chemicals to clean the patio.
Patios are often located fairly close to garden areas, and you won’t want any chemicals to harm your plants. This is why you need to know some methods for cleaning your patio without chemicals.
Keep reading to learn exactly how to clean your patio without chemicals. This will show you how to get the job done right so that your patio will look its best once more.
Remove All Patio Furniture and Sweep the Patio
Before you move any further, it’s going to be necessary to get ready to clean the patio. You likely want to clean your patio deeply to get stains off of the concrete or just to make things look nicer.
It won’t be possible to do that until you clear the patio and get things ready. The most convenient way to go about doing this is to move your patio furniture somewhere else for the time being.
You could simply place the patio furniture in the yard for the time being while you’re handling the cleaning. It should be fine in the yard on the grass, but you could put it on top of a tarp if you’re at all concerned.
Once the patio furniture is out of the way, it’s going to be best to take the time to sweep the patio. You need to get all of the loose debris off of the patio before you start scrubbing things with cleaners.
There will almost surely be loose dirt, leaves, and other things that you’ll want to sweep away with a standard outdoor broom. You can sweep the patio as thoroughly as possible and then bag the debris that you swept into piles.
Dispose of the debris bags so that you will be ready to move on to the next step. Sweeping the patio shouldn’t take that long to do, but it’s a step that you can’t forget if you want the cleaning process to go well.
Soak Your Patio with Your Water Hose
Go and get your garden hose so that you can soak the patio down. You’re going to want the patio to be quite wet so that you can scrub it and clean it up.
You should be able to make your garden hose reach your patio without it being a problem. Just keep spraying the concrete down until you think that it’s wet enough.
If you don’t have a hose that you can use for whatever reason, then you could just pour buckets of water on the concrete. This would be less efficient and it will make rinsing the patio a lot more difficult later.
It would be best for you to go out and buy a garden hose if you need one. A standard garden hose will do just fine and you don’t really need to get anything fancy.
Having a nozzle that will help the garden hose to spray more powerful blasts of water might be helpful in some ways. However, it’s not something to worry about if you just have a garden hose with a standard nozzle.
Create a Natural Cleaning Solution
Creating a natural cleaning solution is going to allow you to clean your patio effectively. You don’t need to use chemicals to be able to clean your patio area really well.
The best natural cleaner that you can create easily at home will use baking soda or distilled white vinegar. You don’t want to mix these two together though because they will cause a reaction to occur.
You can put some baking soda in a bucket of water along with a bit of dish soap to create a powerful cleaner. It’s possible to do the same thing using vinegar instead of baking soda.
Many people choose to go with a vinegar and water cleaning mixture because it’s easy to handle and it works brilliantly for cleaning purposes. Mix things up in a bucket so that you can start cleaning your patio up nicely.
Pour some of the cleaning mixture that you created onto the patio itself. Next, you’ll want to grab a deck brush so that you can start scrubbing the cleaner into the patio.
Deck brushes work well for this because they have stiff bristles that will help you to penetrate deep into the concrete. It should be capable of removing dirt stains as well as other types of stains, assuming that the cleaner is working properly.
It might not always be easy to get optimal results when scrubbing only a few times. This might take a bit of elbow grease and you might have to add more cleaner to give things another go if you didn’t get things as clean as you wanted to.
You scrub the patio with the deck brush using the cleaning solution the best that you can. Then you rinse things off using the garden hose and see how everything looks.
Do it all over again if you aren’t getting the best results. You should be able to see that you’re making progress if everything is going as planned.
Some stains are going to be very hard to get out of concrete, though. For example, oil stains can be very stubborn, but an oil stain will be a more common problem when you’re cleaning a driveway than it is for a patio.
What About Grease Stains?
Grease stains can definitely occur on your patio if you grill on the patio pretty often. Sometimes you might make a mistake and a significant amount of grease will fall onto the patio itself.
During this situation, your best bet is going to be to try to clean the stain immediately. The longer you wait, the harder it is going to be to get the stain out.
If you waited too long, then you might need some type of industrial cleaner that uses chemicals to get things done right. Attempting to clean things right away can get you much better results.
Attempting to clean a grease stain or another type of stubborn stain will involve making a cleaning solution and trying to coax the stain out of the concrete. Mix up some water and baking soda to create a basic cleaning liquid.
Add a little bit of cat litter to the mix since that can help with stains. Try pouring this mixture on the stain and let it sit for a while.
It’s said that you should give the mixture between one and three days to get up as much of the stain as you can. This is all before you’ve even started cleaning and scrubbing.
Once you’ve waited long enough, scrub the stain and see if you’re able to get it to come out at all. If it’s coming out a bit, then you might be able to get the whole stain if you keep using this same method.
Just understand that this can take some time and that it isn’t always easy. It might be a bit monotonous to remove stains from the patio this way but it can work well enough.
If you don’t have any cat litter that you can utilize, then you can replace it with corn starch. Hopefully, the stain will come up and your patio will look as good as new.
You Can Also Clean Your Patio with a Pressure Washer
Another option that might be worth looking into involves using a pressure washer to clean your patio. If you happen to own a pressure washer, then it’s going to be a very useful tool during this cleaning process.
Pressure washers can do a really good job of removing gunk and slime from your patio. It should work well whether your patio is made out of concrete, brick, or wood.
Just make sure that you’re careful where you’re spraying the pressure washer since it might be strong enough to break certain things if you aren’t careful. You don’t want to spray yourself with the pressure washer accidentally either.
That being said, you should know that using a pressure washer is a very efficient way to clean your patio. You can keep your patio looking very nice if you choose to clean it with a pressure washer every so often.
Many people who own pressure washers choose to use them on their patios each month. It helps to keep grime from ever getting too bad on the patio.
If your patio has significant stains, then you could use a detergent along with the pressure washer. There are actually environmentally safe options that don’t use harmful chemicals that you can purchase.
This should help you to remove even significant stains from your patio. If you don’t want to spend days trying to remove a stain using baking soda and kitty litter, then a pressure washer along with some detergent might be your best bet.
These pressure washers are superb for helping you to get rid of mildew on your patio as well. If you live in an area where mildew is a common issue, then having a pressure washer will be so worthwhile.
It’s also worth mentioning that you can get a pressure washer at a fairly low price these days. They aren’t overly expensive when you’re looking at entry-level models that will work fine for cleaning standard patios.
Final Thoughts
Knowing how to go about cleaning your patio should help you to get the job done easier. It’s always good to take the time to clean your patio so that it’ll be ready to use when you want to entertain guests.
You should try to get in the habit of cleaning your patio more regularly to avoid having significant issues that will be tough to clean. Sweep your patio regularly and give it a deeper cleaning whenever you have the time and you know that it needs to be done.
It’s easy enough to give your patio a thorough cleaning using a natural cleaning mixture. You can use baking soda, water, and a bit of dish soap to clean your patio if you’d like to go that route.
Some people prefer to replace baking soda with vinegar because they think it’s a bit easier to work with. Either option is going to be just fine.
Scrub things down with a good deck brush and try to get rid of all of the grime that you can. After you’ve rinsed the patio, it should look a lot better than it did before.
When you’re dealing with grease stains you can try to get them up by using baking soda, water, and kitty litter. It’ll need to sit on the stain for several days, but you might be able to scrub the stain up if you get to things fast enough.
If you have significant stains then the easiest thing to do will be to use a pressure washer along with some detergent. It’ll help you to get the stains up nicely so that you won’t have to worry.
Having a pressure washer will certainly be a boon when you’re trying to clean your patio efficiently. It’ll save you time and it’ll keep you from having to scrub the patio manually too much.
Go with whatever method works for you the best. You’ll be able to keep your patio clean and it’ll be ready for any parties that you want to throw soon so long as you put in the effort.
I have a bachelor’s degree in Film/Video/Media Studies, as well as an associates degree in Communications. I began producing videos and musical recordings nearly 15 years ago. I am a guitarist and bassist in Southwest MI and have been in a few different bands since 2009, and in 2012 I began building custom guitars and basses in my home workshop as well. When I’m home, I love spending time with my three pets (a dog, cat, and snake) and gardening in my backyard.