After spending a lot of time and money having a wooden decking installed the last thing you want is for the wood to start rotting, sweeping off the leaves is only part of the answer, some deeper cleaning is required.

Supplies

Tools required:

Hammer

Saw

screwdriver

Hand drill

Materials:

For the skate

1 off 50mm x 50mm x150mm hardwood offcut

2 off 75mm x 100mm x 3mm plastic sheet or plywood

2 off 5" galvanised nails

4 off roofing tacks

For the pusher

1 off Pickaxe handle ( or broom handle or similar.

1 off 20mm x 6mm x75mm steel bar

Step 1: Initial Reasoning and Design Thoughts 1

The decking boards are laid over wooden stringers and where they cross is where rot can start, when you sweep off the dirt and leaves of everyday use some of the dirt piles up at that crossover point. The dust retains moisture giving rot a starting point. I wanted to find a nice cheap and easy way to keep the gaps clear.

Step 2: Initial Reasoning and Design Thoughts 2

I decided that a two part tool would fit the bill, one piece I will call the skate and the other piece is the pusher.

I found an offcut of oak which I drilled to take the two 5" nails, I did the hole slightly oversized and bent the nails for a stiff fit, this was to make it easy to adjust how much of the pointed end sticks out, the dimension should be just shy of the thickness of the decking boards.

I dropped this "skate into a board gap and pushed it along with my foot..... I instantly discovered my first problem.

The skate would bounce a bit when kicked, time for part 2, the pusher. I had an old, cracked pickaxe handle which I modified by cutting a 90-degree notch in the end. I used this to push the skate I then discovered my next problem.....

Step 3: Stones in the Gaps

My garden has stoney paths leading up to the decking, dogs and people walk them onto the deck and they do one of three things, sit on the surface where they can be swept off, fall through onto the ground below or jam themselves into the gaps, these are the ones that stopped the skate.

Ok then a three-part tool..... I made a wire skewer into a hook and proceeded to hook a stone or two out of the deck only to watch one of them bounce once and fall into a gap further along the deck!

I then reasoned that if the stones dropped in the top of the gap they could be pushed through the bottom of the gap.

I had a piece of aluminium to hand that I folded in half to make it thicker and, after cutting a slot into the end of the handle, fixed it in place with a couple of screws so that it sticks out the same distance as the thickness of the decking.

This will be replaced with a piece of steel at a later date.

Step 4: Off Centre Push

Now the skate was moving better and I realised that an off centre push made one nail rub one deck board and the second one rubbed the board on the other side of the gap making it more efficient!

To make it easy to push off centre I attached a piece of plastic sheet on either side of the block using roofing felt tacks, the plate sticking out of the end of the pusher slots neatly between the plastic and a nail locating it perfectly.

Step 5: All Done

An admission, I should have done this around 3 years ago when the decking was a year old, I had a bit of catching up to do and the gaps were crammed with muck, I had a lot of places where I needed to work at it, but from now on an annual wander up and down behind the skate and pusher will be a doddle!