The Brew Cabin

I have just moved into a new house with a well designed back garden with several nicely slabbed and walled areas but with some poor workmanship. The majority of the slabs look as if they are sealed - glossy when wet but matt when dry (and the sealer is slightly coloured). A couple of areas are unsealed and some have cement stains.

My questions are :-

(1) can you give me any clues about what products to buy to bring the unsealed areas to the same condition as the sealed areas.

(2) I read the info page on removing cement stains and am slightly worried about the action of chemical cleaners on the sealer ... what are they likely to do ?

I'm not going to be much help to you here. I can't tell you which sealer to use to achieve a match, as I've no idea what was used originally. However, if it's not glossy or satin when dry, it may be one of the Lithofin MN products, but I can't be sure of that.

Are you sure they are sealed? Does water sit in discrete globules on the surface? What about oil?

You might achieve a 'best match' by re-sealing the whole lot with summat decent, like SuperSeal or the aforementioned Lithofin.

For your second Q, different chemicals will have different interactions with different sealants. I can't give a comprehensive listing of what does what with what, but, very genberally speaking, a good quality sealant, whether it's acrylic or polyurethane, is unaffected by the vast majority of cleaning products. The only exception may be high molar strength acid-based cleaners or Etching Fluid.