November 16th, 2022 by Sarah Miles

Winter brings the harshest weather conditions of the year and while you may be dreading going out in the rain, cold, and snow, just think of your poor patio out there, bearing the brunt of all of it! OK, so we jest a little, but the hard surfaces of your garden can indeed come under extreme pressure from winter weather, and this can impact their lifespans.

How can you protect them?

The best thing you can do for your patio, and other hard surfaces such as driveways and paths, is to give it a layer of protection by sealing it. This makes it weatherproof and, therefore, much more able to resist the damage that winter can inflict.

How harsh weather can potentially damage patios

Cold and wet weather presents several challenges to patios. Stone is a porous material, so if left unsealed, it will absorb water when it rains or snows. That water then freezes and expands, then thaws, then freeze again and so on. This freeze-thaw cycle puts pressure on the structure of the stone and causes it to crack and splinter. This is called spalling. If you weatherproof it, the water is repelled, and this doesn’t happen.

Likewise, salt applied to de-ice hard surfaces can also penetrate the stone, causing discolouration and damaging it. Again, sealing protects against it.

A cleaner patio is a safer patio

To seal a patio, you must first clean it (there’s no point sealing a dirty one) and using a good patio cleaner will remove common blights like mould, moss, and algae. These are things that can make the patio very slippery when they get wet or freeze so it’s much safer for walking on if you remove them before winter. The benefit of cleaning the patio and then sealing it is that it protects it from the regrowth of these organisms, keeping the surfaces safer over the winter and well beyond.

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It keeps it looking better for a longer

While we have focused so far on the functional benefits of sealing your patio, there are also aesthetic advantages too. Your patio will look better once cleaned, whether you use a patio cleaner that will get rid of dirt plus mould and algae or black spot remover which eradicates black lichen. Sealing it will keep it looking like that for much longer. It also brings out the natural colour of the stone, preserving it at its best.

Over the course of the winter, as we get wet weather and the garden gets muddier, the paths and patios will, naturally, get dirtier but due to the layer of protection, this is much easier to clean as the sealant repels stains and even grease and oil.

Now is the best time to do it

Autumn is the perfect time to attend to the patio in this way. You can remove all the organic growth that will have multiplied over the warmer summer months and there is still enough good weather to have your pick of dry days to complete the job. You must always apply cleaner and sealant to dry stone and ensure that it has time to cure before rain is expected. It only takes around 4 hours to be weatherproof and 24 hours to cure fully so you should get plenty of opportunity at this time of year.

It then has full protection ready for all that winter conditions can throw at it. It will also be much easier to spruce up come the spring when you start to get the garden ready for more outdoor living.

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