How to Clean Mold From Vinyl Siding

Over the past weekend I decided to tackle a project that has been hanging over my head for quite a while.  My white vinyl siding was moldy and I needed to clean it for the benefit of my own conscience.  I had been staring at molding siding on my garage for over a year and I finally decided it was time to take action.

I figured I would find a lot of easy solutions for cleaning vinyl siding on the internet, but in fact I had quite a hard time.  It seems that every web site I went to was “selling” their own special cleaner to remove mold from siding.  I wasn’t really interested in buying yet another chemical since I already owned about 10 different types of soap already.

I thought about it for a bit and decided to use a mild soap that I owned for my car.   Car soap works great on metal and vinyl trims of vehicles…so why wouldn’t it work great on vinyl siding?   I put the soap to the test and you know what?  It worked great!  It completely lifted all the dirt and grime from the vinyl siding and it significantly removed most of the mold.

So how did I get rid of the rest of the mold on the vinyl siding?  I used a truck brush.  This also is used for washing cars, but in my case I wanted a soft bristle brush with a long handle that I could use to reach the high spots as well as be able to put a little “leverage” into while I was scrubbing.   It worked great also.

After talking it over with a buddy of mine, he made another good suggestion that I’ll be sure to try next time I ever need to clean vinyl siding.  He said I should have used extremely warm water from inside the house to fill the soap bucket and used the hot water to lift the mold right off the surface.   Of course this made sense…I just never thought about it.

Agitation, heat and some type of surfactant (soap) are the keys to cleaning anything.  In my efforts for cleaning mold from vinyl siding I used a simple soap that I already had on hand as well as a little elbow grease.   No fancy cleaners or expensive high pressure washer rentals were needed.   My garage vinyl siding looks like brand new and it only took me about 2 hours to do the whole thing.

Next time you find yourself in a situation of needing to remove mold from your siding…or just plain old dirt and grime for that matter, consider just using a mild soap and a brush.  You’ll be amazed at what a little hard work can do.