Update on cleaning 3 more toilets of brown streaks using HCl (pool acid)

[Danny D.]

The main problem with pouring into the toilet bowl is that much of the staining is up near the top of the bowl and that much of the scale is inside in the channels that the water follows.

After having done it the correct way, and having also done it the incorrect way, I can definitely suggest what I found to be the best method.

BTW, gloves are helpful; a mask isn't really needed; and eye protection is a good idea in case you accidentally splash.

1. Don't be stingy on the acid (a gallon is a good amount).
2. Empty the toilet bowl of water (any way you want).
3. Plastic wrap the bowl (no need for tape).
4. Ventilate (a fan is enough but windows are good too).
5. Pour acid slowly using a funnel (no splashes!).
6. Plastic wrap the tube (no need for baggies & rubber bands).
7. Wait an hour (this is the slow and easy method).
8. Remove plastic & pour baking soda (it will use a lot!).
9. Remove tube plastic wrap over tank tube (ask me why).
10. Flush like there's no tomorrow (10 flushes is good).
11. Inspect & reapply as needed.

Note: If you cup and re-use the acid, you can get away with a quarter of a gallon; but it's not worth saving the half hour or the gallon to expose yourself to more HCl fumes than you need to be exposed to (but don't expect to be fume free. If you can't talk for a few minutes, then you got way too much; but otherwise, expect a few whiffs of the stuff to the point that you immediately notice it, and you simply hold your breath and move away to breathe again until the ventilation system removes those fumes.

[krw]

You can be dead right, too.

[krw]

No gloves are going to protect your lungs. You got of easy. Maybe.

[Danny D.]

Here's a personal look into my very private "glove" drawer:

1. For working outside, the best I can find are the TIG welder's gloves. Not too thick but nice and long.
2. For most chemical jobs, I use the Costco nitrile gloves by the boxfull (since they're single-use only).
3. For the easy jobs in between those two, I use the Costco set of rubberized cloth gloves (but they are also single use only as they're destroyed within minutes in most cases).

The lesson here, learned from experience, is that there is not a single outdoor working glove in all the hardware stores that doesn't fall apart in a day - or which doesn't protect well enough (either the leather is too thin or the wrists are too short); so I've come up with only three glove types that work.

If you have better ideas for more durable outdoor work gloves, that would be very useful advice indeed!

Note: That quest is OT for this thread, so I should take it up.

[Danny D.]

Oren,

EVERTHING, and I mean everything, you said was right on the money!

- The brown stuff wasn't rust

- Scrubbing is futile

- Supermarket chemicals won't work for the tough stuff

- Bleach only whitened the problem

- The acid worked and nothing else did!

[Danny D.]

What I'll say, from experience, is that you 'can' touch the acid - but that you shouldn't.

It won't hurt too badly - at least not in the beginning - but it's just not worth it since nitrile gloves protect your skin rather well.

At least I know what I'm talking about when I say this.

And do not drop sodium metal in water either. Do not cut the sodium metal with a butter knife, and then lift the shiny chunk out of the kerosene and drop it in a pan of cold water. Immediately, it will spin around around sizzling away until, all of a sudden, BAM! It will explode and shoot tiny particles of burning sodium in all directions.

(Ask me how I know this.)

[Danny D.]

Some lessons have longer-term implications ... like stepping in front of a train.

[Paddy Waggin]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

WOW...Just when I think I've seen it all, someone like you comes bumbling along.

I bet you're the type that leaves the sun shield in place on your car windshield, just to see how far you can get, before getting dead, huh? OR, wait...you want to step off a hi-rise 30 stories up too see if gravity really works....

You are a clever troll/dummy of the highest magnitude...

Like a red-neck, "watch this"...

You,son are sick!

[Roy]

Those TWO characters are hopeless but there is no use saying anything as they will just have to learn the hard way. "Scooping acid with one's bare hands"...totally ridiculous. Too many Superman comics perhaps???

[dadiOH]

Outdoors I use leather if I use any at all. But we weren't talking outdoor, we were talking HCl. I probably wouldn't wear gloves for that either but if I did they would be rubber.

[dadiOH]

Of course you can touch it, you can also cut your carotid artery with a straight razor; no reason to do either. The key (with the acid) is how long it makes contact.

I once had occasion to photograph a journalist named Victor Reisel. He had a knack of striking appropriate poses whenever I began to shoot. Big deal? Yes, in this case because he was blind. He was blind because someone who didn't like him threw sulfuric acid in his face. Hydrochloric would have had the same result.

You can also taste it (HCl). One (about the only) of my memories from chemistry class was the instructor dipping a glass rod into HCL and then licking it. As I said, how long it makes contact is the key.

[Danny D.]

There's a thread on alt.usage.english about this; it's cooties. :)

[Danny D.]

It always amazes me that we habitually eat carboxylic acid at 8% concentrations, by volume.

And, it's interesting that latex gloves offer no protection (to glacial acetic acid); but nitrile gloves do. It can even be ignited when it's at high concentrations.

Yet we pour it on our salad every day...

[krw]

You might as well. When your lungs are gone, the rest isn't worth much.

[krw]

LOL! I didn't even think WebTV was still alive or that anyone was stupid enough to still be using it. You really take the cake for stupid. You must be a Canadian.

[Danny D.]

:)

[Danny D.]

You'll be glad to know that I just cleaned the beer bottlecap rust stains in my outside cooler, the caked on cement on my shovel, the insides of an old coca cola bottle, the rust stains on my white outdoor table, and the slimy limey deposits on my pool pump with a bottle of 28% HASA muriatic acid.

And the whole time ... I wore nitrile gloves!

You 'can' teach an old dog new tricks! :)

[Danny D]

By way of update, the pool acid is turning out to be one of my favorite 'miracle fluids', in this case, for instantly dissolving the whitish scale off my outdoor pool equipment:

Here is a before picture of my second pool pump, the filter pump:

Pouring the 28% HASA muriatic acid on the pump body frothed immediately:

Within seconds, almost all the whitish scale had been dissolved:

After dousing with water, the steaming pump was black again:

One unexpected problem was that, after a few hours of storing the acid, the spray bottle mechanism inexplicably just stopped pumping. The white tip had some kind of odd greenish color to it:

Looking closer, I noticed the o-ring was also green; apparently the acid attacked the rubber o-ring or other parts of the mechanism:

Whatever it was, this incapacitated the spray bottle - necessitating pouring of the acid, where I had been contemplating Oren's suggestion of spraying the noxious stuff: a

Moving on, since the pump worked so well, I tried the same acid-bath test on my pump base to see whether it would equally well remove the scale and rust from the bolts that I had to shear off to remove the pump from the concrete pad:

Again, the acid worked well to remove the white deposits on the flat part of the pump base, but, inexplicably, not the rust:

Plus, it needed a few more applications to wholly remove deposits from the vertical sides:

In addition, I was hoping (without much reason) that the acid might clear up the cloudy pump basket cover:

But, it had no effect on the clouded plastic. Q: What 'miracle fluid' do you use to clear up cloudy pump baskets?

[Danny D]

By way of update, the pool acid is turning out to be one of my favorite 'miracle fluids', in this case, for instantly dissolving the whitish scale off my outdoor pool equipment:

Here is a before picture of my second pool pump, the filter pump:

Pouring the 28% HASA muriatic acid on the pump body frothed immediately:

Within seconds, almost all the whitish scale had been dissolved:

After dousing with water, the steaming pump was black again:

One unexpected problem was that, after a few hours of storing the acid, the spray bottle mechanism inexplicably just stopped pumping. The white tip had some kind of odd greenish color to it:

Looking closer, I noticed the o-ring was also green; apparently the acid attacked the rubber o-ring or other parts of the mechanism:

Whatever it was, this incapacitated the spray bottle - necessitating pouring of the acid, where I had been contemplating Oren's suggestion of spraying the noxious stuff: a

Moving on, since the pump worked so well, I tried the same acid-bath test on my pump base to see whether it would equally well remove the scale and rust from the bolts that I had to shear off to remove the pump from the concrete pad:

Again, the acid worked well to remove the white deposits on the flat part of the pump base, but, inexplicably, not the rust:

Plus, it needed a few more applications to wholly remove deposits from the vertical sides:

In addition, I was hoping (without much reason) that the acid might clear up the cloudy pump basket cover:

But, it had no effect on the clouded plastic. Q: What 'miracle fluid' do you use to clear up cloudy pump baskets?

[Danny D]

Thanks for the tip. Apparently 3M makes a headlight lens polish. Basically you sand it down with really fine grit and then apply a varnish.

Scope creep being my middle name - I'm going to have to let the pump basket lid project lie dormant, although I did try an overnight dunking test of the plastic motor base in a quarter gallon of

28% HASA muriatic acid in a bucket of water:

But I did learn that it must be a 'special' spray bottle that can withstand a few hours of the acid without destroying itself.