Deck furring or fuzzing after cleaning heavily oxidized and mildewed deck.
One thing that can potentially happen when your deck is cleaned or stripped is that it’s possible to get “wood fuzzies” or “wood furring” when finished. This looks like very small raised wood grain fibers or hair on the decking boards. When you are prepping a deck you essentially remove a layer of oxidized or damaged wood cells. The more you need to remove, the greater the chance of making the wood look “fuzzy” or “soft”. This is totally normal and only cosmetic, it doesn’t affect how long a stain or sealer will last and doesn’t do any damage to the wood itself.
Over the years ourselves and many others in our trade have tried different methods to reduce the chances of this happening. Initially it was thought that too much pressure was the cause, so ourselves and some colleagues in the industry did some experimenting. We tried using only water to clean with just enough pressure to remove the greyed wood, a mixture of deck cleaning detergents and less water pressure, cleaners and garden hose, deck brighteners and deck brushes . All of these methods produced some degree of furring when removing mildew and oxidized greying wood. Here is an interesting thread we found where a homeowner ended up with the fuzzies without even using a pressure washer from DoItYourSelf.com
Of course this doesn’t always happen and there are ways to prevent this from happening as well as fix it if the cosmetic appearance of the “Fuzzies” bothers you. The main factors are how much oxidation (greying) and green mildew are on the deck? An untreated deck that is exposed to the elements and left to gray (oxidize) from the UV will need to have all of the damaged wood cells removed to bring back it’s color. The next step after greying is eventually turning green and developing mildew. The more grey & green on the wood, the more you will need to remove from the surface and the greater the chance of getting the “fuzzies”. Basically the best way to avoid this is to take care of your deck regularly.
You can see now how proper and regular maintenance is very important. Once a deck is built it does need a little time to weather and dry out from the pressure treating process at the mill. After the small “drying” time it is important that within the first year of the deck’s life it should be stained and then maintained every two to three years from then on. This will eliminate the chances of “furring” happening to begin with. That’s not to say that there’s no hope if the deck is older. We have all multiple deck restoration services we offer, Deck Cleaning, Deck Stripping (old stain removal) Deck Sanding, and Deck Staining.
Our solution to this is our Sanding Service. We can smooth out these small fuzzy fibers after the cleaning service on our second visit to your home along with the staining. The horizontal surfaces of the deck are smoothed out, the residual dust is cleaned up and then we’re ready to stain.
There is a lot more useful information on this subject as well as a thread of many homeowners and contractors discussing this occurrence at DeckStainHelp.com