How to Maintain Slippery Stone

We don’t get many rainy days here in Arizona, but when we do, it pours. 

There’s nothing better than staying home on a rainy day, but we don’t always have that luxury, like today. People still head out to work, run errands, even visit friends when it’s raining, which heightens the opportunity for accidents not being careful.

Everything gets slippery in the rain, especially your driveway, outdoor natural stone pathways and pavers. And since we’re pretty sure the last thing you want to do is step out of your home and slip on your wet stone, we have a couple of ideas that will keep the outside of your home as safe as possible on a rainy day.

The easiest way to keep a stone pathway or stepping stones from becoming too slippery in rainy weather is by keeping water off them the best you can. While it may seem almost impossible to keep water off your pathway during a rainstorm, there ARE ways to reduce the amount of standing water on the stone. 

If there’s a break in the rain, or you’re getting ready to go out, take a bristled broom and quickly sweep all the standing water off of any areas that are walked on. While constant rainfall will prevent the water from completely staying off your stone, this will reduce the amount of water buildup, and the chance that you’ll slip. 

There are also ways you can prevent your stone pavers from getting slippery even before it starts to rain. Moss and weeds can become VERY slippery when wet, so by keeping your pathways maintained, there will be less of a chance that plants will add to the danger a rainstorm brings. 

There are also a number of anti-slip products you can buy from practically any home improvement store. These products come in a variety of ways to be used, including sprays, paints, and even sheets of anti-slip grip material. This allows you to choose the best type of product for your home and type of stone. These should be reapplied on a semi-regular basis to increase their effectiveness, the best time for re-application being after you clean your stone pavers. 

We hope these tips help you on rainy days like these. If you don’t need to go anywhere, curl up on the couch and enjoy some TV!

How to Clean Mold off Pavers

When you decide to decorate the outside of your home with stone, whether it is the siding of your house or the walkway, you want to make sure it’ll stay looking its best. A few weeks ago, we told you how to clean moss from stone on the exterior of your home. Moss can get in between the deepest cracks of your stone pavers, and maintaining a cleaning schedule for them is necessary to keep such a problem under control.

However, more than just weeds and moss can grow around and on the decorative stone and pavers outside your home. Mold is commonly known to grow in between cracks and separations of pavers, as well as on top of them, and unlike weeds or moss, you can’t just scrub it away or yank it out with your hands.

Mold growing on your pavers can become an issue, if you let it. If you live in an area where mold grows quickly due to extra moisture in the air, you may not be able to get rid of it permanently, but we’ll tell you just how to keep it as manageable as possible. 

Before you start, check the weather. Make sure you’re taking this project on when it’s warm outside. The sun will help the stone dry faster, plus, a rainy day isn’t the best day to decide to remove mold outdoors.

First, clean the surface of the pavers to get any regular dirt off before you get down to the nitty gritty. Use a broom to sweep the entire area, and then hose the pavers down. By doing an initial clean with just water, you’ll make sure your cleaning solution will be as effective as possible without any dirt or extra rocks in the way. 

To make your solution, add 1 part bleach to 10 parts water in a bucket and swirl to combine. Using a mop, scrub the mixture onto the pavers. Use some elbow grease to make sure the solution seeps through every bit of the mold on the stone and between the cracks. 

Once you’ve cleaned the entire area, let the sun dry the solution into your stone. Not only will it sink into the mold, but it’ll dry it out and make it easier to remove. Once dry, spray the whole area with a hose thoroughly, removing the bleach mixture. 

Check out these beautiful (and might we say, very clean) pavers from Monarch Stone!

If you want to take this project one step further, refer back to our blog on how to clean weeds and moss from your stone here http://bx3.me/DjSnfRZM. Keeping plants near your pavers cut as short as possible will not only keep them looking neat, but will lower the chance that mold will grow from plant moisture. 

Quick tips: Make sure your cleaning solution doesn’t get on any plants you DO like, as it will kill them. If your pavers are surrounded by plants you want to keep, use a sponge instead of a mop to scrub your stone. Wear gloves to protect your hands. 

We love this technique because you can use it as an overall cleaning method, a preventative method, and for spot cleaning. Clean pavers are happy pavers!