The apartment I've just moved into is very nice, apart from the fact that the toilet is encrusted with an appalling amount of limescale around the rim etc.
I would be interested to know of your recommendations as to the best stuff to use to banish it. What would be the best form of abrasive for tackling this?
I wouldn't use an abrasive at all. There are LOADS of products on the supermarket shelves for removing limescale. I would think the gel type would be best but it will probably need several applications.
We bough shitloads (apt, as it turned out) of gel descaler, and a quart of brick acid.
Both ate through the scale slowly, and I ended up knocking off lumps with a chisel.
Every night the bowl was filled with acid and left.
The rim wasnt too bad, but round the bend was evil. It was about half the diameter it should have been and not JUST scale., Layers of scale ad shit. Years of scale and shit. Took about a week of acid, chipping, and flushing for an hour after work each day, to clean it all up.
The good news is it all did clean up.
Thats when I decided to never be without brick acid and caustic soda ever again. And the next house would have a softener..
Be VERY careful with gel cleaners on CHROME tho. It dulls the surface permanentely. So does brick acid. I guess its chrome sulphate.
Abrasives are moderately useless. If a bog brush won't clear it, use a chisel. Get a cheapo wood chisel with a sharp edge, and go gently.
What I found was thet the clingy gel stuff etched the edges UNDER the scale, and chunks could be levered out..then more gel or overnight acid would do the same again. Bit by bit the enemy was pushed back..and mopped up.
Acid isn't too effective on the shit part. What you can do in this case is to alternate it with another powerful cleaner, such as washing machine or dishwasher detergent dissolved in hot water and left in the trap over night, which are both good at clearing the organic debris.
When switching cleaning agents, flush the previous one well away first, enough times to clear the sewage pipework too. Mixing of different cleaners can cause violent chemical reactions and production of toxic fumes.
If you block the thing up with a rag, fill to the brim, and leave overnight, even weak acid like citric will do it. Sulphamic (Fernox descaler) is better (and easy to use) but I don't like the fumes from hydrochloric (brick acid) indoors
Builders mercahnts for brick acid, or a good hardware shop.
Don't expect it all to go instantly.It takes time to dissolve decades of urine, limescale and shit.
Someone mentioned phosphoric acid. I think thats 'jenolite' rust remover. Brick acid is about 30% hydrochloric. Most descalers are sulphamic, but any acid will ultimately crap all over carbonates, apart from carbonic acid!
Other acids you can get are formic - I think Kilroc uses that..and sulphuric. That's generally for specialised sanitary cleaning type operations. Or car batteries of course.
Even vinegar (acetic acid) or rhubarb juice (oxalic acid) will do a bit to scale.
The one poster who mentioned blocking the loo and filling it up with acid had a good idea if its rim based stuff.
Dymashift is the product you want. About £10 for 5 litres. It has 25% phosphuric acid and is used by commercial cleaning companies for cleaning toilets for one.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.