These pictures are from decks that we cleaned and stained with Ready Seal from last year. The wood is cedar. We have dozens of decks like this that we are recleaning and staining for our customers in Minnesota. We have offices in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Milwaukee, Chicago, Madison, Fargo, Rochester MN and Eau Claire WI. Our largest office is in Minneapolis/St. Paul where we have had the most occurences of this problem. We just received our first call from a customer in Rochester that has the same problem. We have not seen the problem in North Dakota or Milwaukee. We have had very few of these in Chicago although there has been some. The most common response from our customers is that they never had this problem until we stained their deck. We have previous customers that have used us every 2 years for the past six years where it has just started. When I go to neighbors decks to the left and to the right I do not see the problem. Those decks have a stain that is a film. The commonality between each deck that has the stains is that it is made of cedar and that it is an oil based penetrating stain. One theory that I'm pursuing is that we were not neautralizing these decks effectively. In the past when we redid these decks, we would treat them with bleach but not neutralize them. The spots would come back within 4 to 6 months. At this time, we are heavily neutralizing them. We are also trying to find out exactly what the black spots are. We pulled a heavily infected board from one of our customers and cut it up into 4 pieces. We then cleaned 1 with bleach, 1 with hydroxide and 1 with percarbonate. We neutralized them all. We then shipped them to the University of Iowa. We are waiting for the results. If anyone has any ideas, I would like to hear them. Thank you.
These pictures are from decks that we cleaned and stained with Ready Seal from last year. The wood is cedar. We have dozens of decks like this that we are recleaning and staining for our customers in Minnesota. We have offices in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Milwaukee, Chicago, Madison, Fargo, Rochester MN and Eau Claire WI. Our largest office is in Minneapolis/St. Paul where we have had the most occurences of this problem. We just received our first call from a customer in Rochester that has the same problem. We have not seen the problem in North Dakota or Milwaukee. We have had very few of these in Chicago although there has been some. The most common response from our customers is that they never had this problem until we stained their deck. We have previous customers that have used us every 2 years for the past six years where it has just started. When I go to neighbors decks to the left and to the right I do not see the problem. Those decks have a stain that is a film. The commonality between each deck that has the stains is that it is made of cedar and that it is an oil based penetrating stain. One theory that I'm pursuing is that we were not neautralizing these decks effectively. In the past when we redid these decks, we would treat them with bleach but not neutralize them. The spots would come back within 4 to 6 months. At this time, we are heavily neutralizing them. We are also trying to find out exactly what the black spots are. We pulled a heavily infected board from one of our customers and cut it up into 4 pieces. We then cleaned 1 with bleach, 1 with hydroxide and 1 with percarbonate. We neutralized them all. We then shipped them to the University of Iowa. We are waiting for the results. If anyone has any ideas, I would like to hear them. Thank you.
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