Bicarbonate of soda, where to buy in bulk please?

leonie_2

Hi Galtizz

Theres no one recipe I stick to as I love to experiment with different things like apples or nettles, whatever is in season at the time. I do however always add coconut, palm and castor oil as these make a good hard cleansing bar of soap with nice fluffy lather. I then usually add olive oil, sunflower oil, cocoa and shea butter to make it mild and gentle, with a teeny bit of the butters or jojoba oil added at the end to make it really special.

You dont need any special apparatus, except perhaps two thermometers to check you have the temperature of the oils and caustic soda right before mixing. You will also need something like an old pyrex jug to make up the caustic soda and a non aluminium pan to warm up your chosen oils. When I first started I used old ice cream tubs as molds, but now i've progressed onto posh wooden ones, much nicer to get a good square bar of soap.

Have a look on the internet for advice on making your first bars. Its not something I would recommend delving straight into without first knowing about how the soaping process (saponification) works and what different oils will contribute to the soap.

If you are just looking to make a bar of soap that will cleanse your family in the bath then a straight forward recipe will do the job. However I like to make soap more into a skin care product by adding luxury oils and butters. I find that I no longer need body lotions as my skin is left soft and moisturised by the soap.

Hope this helps :-)

arkonite_babe

Hi Leonie

I got 5 litres of vinegar in my local chinese supermarket for £1.99

I'd recommend looking in there for bulk supplies, you could look and see if they have bicarb as well. I haven't needed to buy any for a while, so I can't rememeber where I bought it last.

HTH

Loadsabob

Grrr...I know people have said it before, but it really seems Bicarb is dearer when you buy it in bulk!!!

Tesco - 200g for 44p = £2.20 / kilo, so £11 for 5 kilos.

Aromantic.co.uk - £16 for 5kg!!!!!!!! Presumably without the packaging... cheeky varmints! Yes, I would prefer to not get the packaging, and to not line Tesco's pockets. But it's tricky sometimes, and I'm not paying £5 more, plus delivery, for the privilege!!!! (although my health food shop charge about the same, so that's okay)...better get thinking up fabulous used for those empty plastic tubs!

smartcat04

Do those "scoop" type places sell it? You know the kind of place that sells things in drums which you scoop out in to plastic bags and get weighed. Wondering if that would work out cheaper?

domestic_goddess_wanabee

Do you have a chinese supermarket by you?. I bought 5kg of bicarb for less than £3.00 if I remember rightly and the 5lt of white vinegar even cheaper!

Our local one is Wing Yip.

Loadsabob

No - I live in Cornwall - we don't have anything exciting or ethnic! It's VERY hard to even find poppadums that you fry yourself, or tins of oriental veg!!!!!!!! I mean it, we're talking a supermarket 10 miles away being the nearest for those things. It's bonkers! And we don't have any scoop 'n' saves, either...we had one once.

These days you're fine around here if you want to buy a print of a seascape, book a holiday, or get a tan or mobile phone! All very useful of course...

calleyw

Loadsabob wrote:

These days you're fine around here if you want to buy a print of a seascape, book a holiday, or get a tan or mobile phone! All very useful of course...

If you are tourist.

Sounds like a lot of towns. Bath is one of them fine if you want an boots, superdrug or something that is related to the roman city.

But if you want to food shop it forget. You have one little somerfields, a safeway and a co-op. If you want a big supermarket you have to go at least 10 miles and no local lidls etc. Strange considering it is student town and not all of them are loaded.

Yours

Calley

Grumpysally

This has no doubt been answered somewhere before but am in a bit of a rush.
Where can I get big packs of bicarbonate of soda. I asked at my local chemist and they said they could get tubs of 200g. Now my brain doesn't work in metric so I said that sounds fine. When I picked them up they weren't much bigger that the ones you buy for cooking and were £1.09 each which I don't think is very economical.
BTW are the quantities of bicarb and vinegar crucial for cleaning drains, or can I just slosh it down?
'Ta'
Alie

squeaky

Most people advise local Indian or Chinese supermarkets for bulk buying, though there are two threads in the Cleaning section of the MEGA Index sticky that discuss this.

Further down there's a thread on drains which gives quantities for a kitchen sink one.

Zziggi

Can anyone suggest where i could get a bulk amount of bicarbonate of soda?

I've been buying those little tubs you get in the supermarket near the cake decorating stuff. Thoses tubs don't last me very long so wanted to buy a bigger quantity.

Also, I am sure i read a thread on here about cleaning the grout between tiles using bocarb + something else (white vinegar no doubt...) Can anyone recall this?

Thanks