Cleaning Boat

Any ideas on what to use to clean mildew off vinyl seats? I don't want to use the bathroom mildew cleaner as it's made for tiles.

Also, any suggestions for cleaning really dirty carpeting on the floor if the boat?

Ian

Reply to
istock
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I was cleaning my golf cart I'm not sure if I just used 409 or stuff with bleach. A carpet cleaner with hand attachment would clean carpet. Use mean green with some oxyclean.

Greg

Reply to
gregz

This is gonna be a long post, but that's because it's about cleaning, which is something I do a lot of and like to think it's something I know a lot about.

As a general rule, the best thing I've ever found to remove dirt from microscopically rough surfaces (like painted walls) is the Mr. Clean "Magic Eraser" or generic equivalents. This stuff actually started off as a synthetic foam made by BASF called "Basotect Foam". It was originally used for the seat cushions in aeroplanes because of it's very low weight. Basotect foam looks like a tightly grown hedge bush under a microscope, and it's excellent cleaning ability arises entirely as a result of the extremely fine structure of the hedge. That is, the tiny branches of a tight hedge can get into smaller crevices than the comparitively large telephone poles which are the bristles of a scrub brush. You can use a Magic Eraser on anything, but keep in mind that the foam the Eraser is made of is actually a fairly hard substance, and so scrubbing with a Magic Eraser can leave abrasion damage on softer surfaces like plastics, plastic laminates and paint. Also, because of the way the foam works, you get better results by scrubbing off the dirt gently in different directions than by scrubbing harder in one direction. And, that prevents the abrasion damage I warned you about, too.

If it's alive, bleach will kill it. But, bleach works by spontaneously breaking down to form oxygen atoms, and lone oxygen atoms will react with large organic molecules to break them down into pieces. This is why when you leave a cotton rag or a cellulose sponge soaking in bleach, it turns into mush. Most of the cellulose molecules are in smaller pieces so the sponge doesn't return to it's former shape if you squeeze it like it would do if the cellulose molecules were undamaged. When you "bleach" a red t-shirt white, the old red dye molecules are still there, but in pieces and those pieces don't absorb the same wavelengths the original dye molecules did (or any wavelengths of light for that matter). And that makes the pieces invisible (because they're so small) that if not for their collective red colour, you wouldn't see them. That's also why oxidizing bleaches like Ozone will remove smells from rooms, and why hydrogen peroxide removes the colour from hair. The smells and colour are both caused by large organic molecules.

So, you have to be careful what you use bleach on. Always apply it in a small inconspicuous spot to see if it does any damage before applying it liberally.

Commonly occuring elements like copper, zinc, arsenic and boron are natural fungicides. The fungicide in copper naphthenate wood end cut preservative is the copper atoms themselves. Boron is on that list, and borax is a wide spectrum general fungicide used in Impel and Cobra rods that are used in both telephone poles and log homes to protect the wood from rotting. Best of all borax is cheap and safe for mammals. In some countries, borax is used as a food additive. And, every supermarket on the continent sells 20 Mule Team Borax as a laundry detergent additive in their laundry detergent aisle for about $6 per box. Just dissolve some in water, and have at her on anything that you think might be alive, but don't want to use bleach on for fear of discolouring it.

I'm the only landlord I now that has his own carpet cleaning equipment and cleans his own carpets. I've actually found the best cleaner for really cruddy carpets in high traffic areas is a mild acid. I mostly use CLR mixed with about 5 or 6 parts water, but I've used phosphoric and hydrochloric acid based bathroom cleaners dissolved in water with equally good results. That's because most of the "dirt" in a high traffic carpet is actually road grit that people have tracked in, and that has become embedded in the soft plastic fibers of the carpet pile. The acid dissolves the road grit, thereby removing it from the carpet. I think as long as you stick with CLR, or another mild acid like Limeaway, you should be OK because the procedure does not involve pouring acid into the rental machine.

Instead, you spray the acid solution down with a spray bottle, agitate with your fingers to work the acid solution into the carpet and then shampoo the soiled acid solution out of the carpet normally using clean water from the rented machine.

I like to think I know a little bit about carpeting too. Almost certainly, the carpet in your boat will be made of a plastic called "Olefin", which is very similar to polypropylene. Thats because both Olefin and polypropylene have excellent water resistance, excellent resistance to UV light from the Sun, and both Olefin and polypropylene float in water. These are the reason the yellow rope you see so common in boating activities are made of polypropylene; it's perfectly suited to boating and marine activities.

Olefin fiber, again like polypropylene, cannot be dyed by conventional means. The only way to give it colour is by something called "solution dying" which is where tiny solid coloured particles are mixed in with the plastic before drawing it into a fiber. The result is a fiber that gets it's colour from pigments suspended in the plastic very much like raisins in raisin bread. As a direct result of that construction, you can use bleach straight out of the jug on an Olefin carpet to remove otherwise impossible stains. That's because the bleach comes into contact with the molecules causing the stains, but not the original colour of the carpet because the pigments are encased in Olefin plastic and are never actually in contact with bleach.

Nylon makes for the most durable carpets, so a top quality boat might have solution dyed nylon fiber carpet instead of Olefin. But, in that case the pigments are encased in nylon plastic instead of Olefin, and you can still use bleach to remove stains without affecting the colour of the nylon carpet. I don't know about nylon's UV resistance, tho, and I know it doesn't float.

Warning: Hydrochloric acid will dissolve chrome metal and chrome plating at any concentration, so don't clean any shiney part of your boat with hydrochloric acid. Phosphoric acid is the active ingredient in most general purpose bathroom cleaners because it dissolves soap scum like crazy, but won't attack chrome plating at even very high concentrations, so I wouldn't hesitate to use it on your boat.

The best thing to dissolve soap scum is oven cleaner, but the reason why is too long to add to this post. I can explain it if you want tho. Warning: Oven cleaner will dissolve aluminum. Don't use oven cleaner on anything you suspect is made of aluminum.

And, if there's no good reason for anything to be infested with fungii or road grit, then the dirt is probably just loose on the surface (like the boat's steering wheel) and just any good quality detergent will do. Mr. Clean is actually one of the best surfactants out there, along with Fantastik, and for any crude oil related dirt, use Simple Green. All of these detergents work by encapsulating the dirt in an envelope of soap molecules that are all highly soluble in water. Generally, the more similar the soap molecule is to the dirt molecule, the better that encapsulation and removal will be. So, to clean greasy finger marks from french fries off a seat (for example), use a detergent meant for cooking oils like dish washing detergent.

Also, the ONLY way the dirt molecules can become encapsulated in the cleaning solution is through scrubbing them off the surface. That gets the dirt molecules suspended inside the cleaning solution so that the detergent molecules can surround and suspend them in the water. And, once suspended in the water these "colloids" of dirt and soap molecules remain suspended in the water because all the soap molecules are soluble in water and want to stay in it. That prevents the dirt molecules from being redeposited on the surface that's being cleaned in the scrubbing process. So, just remember gentle scrubbing is essential to the cleaning process.

And, if you know what you're cleaning off of what, combining cleaners also works very well. If you're cleaning french fry greasy finger marks off of a painted wall, use a dish washing detergent on a Magic Eraser to do it (as an example), scrubbing gently in all directions.

Reply to
nestork

You can learn a lot about cleaning at the American Cleaning Institute's Website at:

'The American Cleaning Institute (ACI) | For Better Living'

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It used to be called the "Soap and Detergent Manufacturer's Association" but they changed it because so many of the cleaning products people were making weren't soaps or detergents. They were acids, strong bases, naturally occuring elements like boron or synthetic foams.

Also, for anyone that cares:

Our word "soap" almost certainly comes from Mount Sopa on which much of ancient Rome was built. In Roman time, Mount Sopa is where you went to ask a favour from a God. You would buy a small animal from the merchants there, climb as high up onto the mountain as you could, build a small fire, kill the animal and sacrifice it's body to the God of your choice. You would call out what you wanted the God to do for you as the smoke rose so that your message would be carried to the heavens by rising smoke.

But, what was actually happening was that the fat from the burning animal carcass would drip off it's body and combine with the ash from the fires to produce a crude form of soap that would just lay on the ground at the fire sites until the rain came. Then it would be washed into streams by the falling rain. Roman women noticed that washing their clothes in the streams that flowed off Mount Sopa immediately after a rain got them cleaner than washing them anywhere or anywhen else. It's not know what if anything the Roman women attributed the better cleaning to, but the fact that they noticed it and the similarity between "soap" and "Sopa" makes it hard to deny a link exists.

Reply to
nestork

I'd use one of the kitchen type cleaning products that has bleach or antibacterial in it. Fantastik type is probably fine too, and after it's wiped off, you could follow it with a diluted bleach solution, to kill the mildew.

Rent a carpet cleaning machine, that would probably give the best results. Could possibly just use one of the spray products that comes in a can, followed by hosing it off, if the carpet can be removed, as most boat carpet can.

Reply to
trader_4

On Monday, June 16, 2014 11:08:47 PM UTC-4, snipped-for-privacy@sherwoodwindows.com wrot e:

o use the bathroom mildew cleaner as it's made for tiles.

I have a boat and I've tried a lot of things. For really bad I us ethe clo rox cleanup with bleach. But I've had the best general results with the cl orox disinfecting bathroom cleaner. For some reason it really brightens my vinyl. But it dries it out so after cleaning I use the 303 aerospace prot ectant. But if you really want to keep your boat nice, garage it.

Reply to
jamesgang

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