Whenever possible, sanding is recommended on the first visit. These are the things that sanding can do that power washing cannot:

• Get rid of splintering
• Smoothe boards to a mill smoothe surface
• Erase scratches, deep stains and other impurities within the wood
• Return redwood to it's natural, deep red color.
• Remove all existing stain, paint, or other topcoats

During maintenance however, applying more of the same product will not create this problem.

All of our maintenance packages are based on power washing. This works fine once we have sanded the deck once.

Power wash look compared to sanding. The basic difference is that we cannot bring out the natural red in redwood without full sanding.

This job is a full sanding.
Realize that we can tint the wood along a spectrum of color, your wood does not have to remain this red.
The wood here is fairly new, (2 years), but we
have gotten this same look out of much older wood.

This is a power wash job. this was done with the same stain as on the wood above, and the same type of wood, but with only power washing and chemically treating the wood.

Notice the browner tones with the same stain as above applied.

One more power wash v. full sand with same product