This page documents my experience with "pressure washing" my vinyl fence and siding. I have pressure washing in quotes, because it's SH or sodium hypochlorite (or bleach) that does the bulk of the work. Pros often call this "soft washing".

For vinyl fence soft washing, you want around 1-2% SH. Most household bleach is 6% SH, so if you mix 1 part bleach with 5 parts water, you'll get around 1% SH.

You also want to use a surfectant to help the mixture stick to the fence. I used Dawn Ultra. Some people claim that some dish soaps will cause a bad reaction with the bleach, ranging from "mustard gas" to neutralizing the bleach.

I personally found that at 1-1.5% SH, the mixture was safe to use around grass. I wet the grass before and after applying the mixture, and I didn't see any damage.

Supplies

• 1 Gallon Pump Sprayer
• Measuring cup
• Dawn Ultra
• Whatever 6% bleach you can find

Recipe

1. Add 3 cups of 6% SH bleach
2. Add 0.8 gallons of water
3. Add 2 fl. oz. of Dawn Ultra

Make sure to put the soap in last, or your mixture will foam up and overflow the sprayer when you try to close it.

Spray the mixture on the fence, let it sit for about five minutes, and then rinse it off. You can use a garden hose, but I personally found that using a Ryobi One+ EZ-Clean worked better. I'm sure a pressure washer would have been even faster, but it is less convenient to use.

That's about it. This removed most of the staining.

For some areas that had large amounts of growth, I used a Ryobi Scrubber to physically remove it before spraying.

The bleach was not able to remove all stain spots. For those remaining spots that were in conspicuous places, I used a magic eraser / melanine sponge.