Keep Your Terrace Free of Moss DIY

Everyone with a garden, terrace, or any other kind of pavement around the house, is aware of the annoyances. The growth of moss and algae on your tiles, bricks or other kind of pavement. The green tarnish is ugly and makes your tiles dangerously slippery when rained on. How can you remove mosses, and how do you keep the moss gone? In this blog we will explore this. There appears to exist a great product which prevents the growth of moss on your garden tiles.

What exactly is moss and why does it affix to stone and tiles?

The first modern humans are likely to have populated the earth some 200,000 years ago, but some fossils of mosses are more than 400 million years old. The next time you are annoyed by the moss on your tiles, or you nearly slip on it, it is a good moment to look at the plants better and with more respect. They can survive in places where ordinary plants are struggling to grow at all. For example, where the grass in your garden struggles with an overly acidic or hard surface, low temperatures, excessive moisture or too little light, it does not matter to moss at all. Moss loves shade, likes acidic soil, likes too much wetness, is not affected by a hard, porous surface and can easily grow on tiles. Moreover, moss is not only unsightly on tiles and jointing, the joints may also be affected by the mosses because they secrete acids that can directly affect the cement.

Biologically, moss is very interesting, but you don’t want it all over your garden, especially not on your tiles. A lot of DIY-ers and gardeners look for an effective way to remove moss from tiles – and keep it gone.

Removing moss from tiles and terraces

How to get rid of moss? Let’s begin with removing the existing moss from your tiles. That’s not easy, because moss is a tough plant. Still, there are some ways to get it done.

Old fashioned and harmless cleaning products, like green soap and cleaning vinegar, are very effective. Also road salt or kitchen salt is used to remove green tarnish, but one should only use these in places where no other plants grow, since will be affected by the salt too. Also, don’t use it on tiles with a coating, since the salt can affect the coating of these tiles.

Sometimes, Biotex green is used, even though this product is less environmentally friendly than the previously named house- kitchen- and garden substances. Whatever you do, do not use chlorinated water to clean your terrace tiles. Chlorine is very aggressive and very harmful for the environment. All surrounding plants, grass and other vegetation will be affected by the harmful effects of chlorinated water reaching the soil.

Apart from the substances named above, a high-pressure spray is also an effective way to get rid of moss and other green tarnish. But be careful, although water pressure upwards of 200 bar cleans your terrace, but also make the external layer of you tiles more porous, and the surface more rugged, making it easier for mosses, algae and other dirt to come back.

Prevent moss and tarnish on your garden tiles

When your terrace tiles and other pavement is cleaned, you want to prevent green tarnish from quickly reappearing. Luckily, there is a great solution for that. The impregnation product Oppercon forms a non-visible, water-repellent shield on tiles, brickwork and other kinds of stone, in order to effectively stop the growth of algae, fungi and mosses.

Oppercon is an impregnation agent consisting of natural ingredients. It is non-toxic, environmentally friendly and safe to use in and around your garden and terrace area. Oppercon forms a water-repellent coating around every grain of material and every pore up to 5 mm deep into your tiles. This tile coating will not crack, peel or flake, and the protective layer will last for a very long time.

You can easily apply Oppercon on large surfaces with a low pressure spray. Smaller surfaces can be done just fine with a paint brush or paint roller. You can apply Oppercon when the tiles are hand-dry. After the tiles dried for 12 hours after treating them with Oppercon, they will be perfectly water-, algae- and moss-repellent.