toilet cleaner

LittleMissAspie

I used to use Bio-D, it was fine but my boyfriend kept complaining about the vinegary smell. It also went lumpy like someone said above, didn't bother me.

Now I use the Co-op's eco loo cleaner. I bought some last week for only £1, thought it seemed cheap so maybe it was on special.

Ben84

aboard_epsilon wrote: »

I've tried caustic soda ..it does not work ..and doesn't touch the lime scale.

Do you mean caustic soda or soda crystals? People tend to confuse them, which is really not a good thing. I'd advise against using caustic soda down the loo, but recommend soda crystals. A heavily scaled loo should be filled with a strong solution and left to soak overnight. However, provided you start with a scale free loo, cleaning with a weaker solution every couple of days and not leaving overnight should keep the scale away. I have very hard water and the loo is entirely scale free.

aboard_epsilon

caustic soda .thats what i tried and failed with ..

what is soda crystals ..
is it washing soda ?

all the best.markj

Kirri

aboard_epsilon wrote: »

caustic soda .thats what i tried and failed with ..

what is soda crystals ..
is it washing soda ?

all the best.markj

Caustic soda isn't very eco friendly :eek:

Fire_Fox

Neither soda crystals nor caustic soda will work because they are alkaline, as is limescale! You need an acid - citric acid (lemon juice) or acetic acid (vinegar).

aboard_epsilon

There are a lot of things that are eco friendly replacements ...and not very good at doing the job they are meant for .

for instance creosote was a first class preservative for wood ..eg fence panels ..

the replacements are not ..

so we have now to chop down more trees sooner to replace fence panels that only last half the life span.

cars ....

They are now making cars with so many environmentally gizmo's ....and enforcing the rules on pollutants emitted by them.

SO...that they are going to the scrap yards because they will not pass the mot tests ...because gizmos are failing and have lifespanns of not much more than 5 years !!!
Cars are entering the scrap yards that have still a long life ahead of them if they didn't have to comply .
So more cars are made ...it takes more energy and causes more pollutants to make another car ..than to keep an old one going for a few more years .

Did you know that making a car makes 10 times the CO than its makes using petrol in its liftime !!!!

Eco friendly domestic appliances are being made with an ever shorter life span ..so you buy a new one ....forcing another new one to be made .and probably on a similar scale to cars .

The country now builds hospitals and schools with no thought to the futures.

My local hospital is only 30 years old ..and is due to be torn down and a new one built ....

They built them in the past to last 100 years or more .

I think the most eco friendly thing we could do is advice child birth ..to two children to each family

as its the growing world population that is at the heart of it all.

link to chart projecting population growth below

http://www.allcountries.org/uscensus/1350_total_world_population_1950_to_2050.html

all the best.markj

Ben84

Fire_Fox wrote: »

Neither soda crystals nor caustic soda will work because they are alkaline, as is limescale! You need an acid - citric acid (lemon juice) or acetic acid (vinegar).

To look at both materials, that is exactly what I would predict, but it turns out soda crystals are very good at removing limescale. I use them to descale my kettle, and to remove heavy scale from the toilet.

I'm not entirely clear how they work. Never questioned it before, and yet they look like two very similar ionic compounds, and adding alkali to alkali, as well as adding carbonate ions, look very unlikely to work well on limescale. Yet they work really well.

My best guess (would like to know if anyone has the answer?) is that sodium carbonate is water soluble, while calcium carbonate is not. The carbonate being added from the soda crystals is not limescale, it's not stuck to the kettle/toilet bowl, and I see no reason why it would decide to form a strong bond. Meanwhile, adding soda crystals introduced sodium ions, which can interact with both the carbonate in the water and the carbonate in the limescale, and in the latter they will convert it to a water soluble compound and progressively detach it from the scaled surface.

This seems consistent with the fairly long time it takes to descale with soda crystals (kettle being faster than toilet, but I do boil it to speed things up), and the resulting 'soft limescale' with white sludge in the water that rinses away. It doesn't appear to have been dissolved or turned in to carbon dioxide, no obvious gas is produced.

If it's the sodium ions doing it, then I presume that table salt in the kettle would do the same? As I currently have a really scaled up kettle, I'm going to test this out and see what happens.

Ben84

aboard_epsilon wrote: »

caustic soda .thats what i tried and failed with ..

what is soda crystals ..
is it washing soda ?

all the best.markj

Soda crystals, washing soda, sodium carbonate, these are all the same thing.

aboard_epsilon

ok just bought a couple of 1 kg bags ..
its quite cheap at 59p a bag at home and bargain..so nothing lost nothing gained if it does not work.

all the best.markj

aboard_epsilon

RESULTS

no results....not even a whole 1k packet of soda would touch it never mind a table spoon full...not even softend

back to the masonry cleaner i think.

all the best.markj