Experiment removing brown toilet bowl stains with various acids

[Danny D.]

Now that's interesting!

I wonder how they prevent the lye from reacting with the aluminum while they're both still in the Drano bottle?

[hrhofmann]

I was wondering the same thing. Good thread, great pictures!!!

[Danny D.]

LESSONS LEARNED:

My sister's brownish reddish stains dripping down from the toilet bowl rim were not removed with scrubbing, vinegar, household bleach, or 20 minutes of naval jelly pink slime.

The stains were removed after an hour of 28% muriatic acid.

Subsequently, 15 minutes of 28% pool bleach had a whitening effect - but I'm assuming that's a minor triumph.

No obvious damage appears to have been made to the smooth toilet bowl glazing (although a survey of roughness should have been made prior to the start of the experiment).

What was extremely surprising was that the plastic-wrap method of containing the corrosive gases was effective!

At no point in time, other than when actually pouring the hydrochloric acid into the refill tube, did I get a whiff of the corrosive muriatic acid fumes.

The procedure actually followed was almost what Oren' had suggested (with the one inadvertent mistake as I couldn't figure out how to empty the bowl completely of water without also emptying the tank, since the water supply was turned off).

EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE:

1. Safety goggles, gloves, mask, & spill towels were prepared.
2. The ceiling exhaust fan was running the entire experiment.
3. I shut off the water supply valve & flushed the toilet.
4. This left about 2 inches of residual water in the tank.
5. I sealed the bowl with three sheets of plastic wrap.
6. A plastic funnel was placed in the tank refill tube.
7. Approximately 1/4 to 1/2 gallon of pool acid was poured.
8. The refill tube was sandwich bagged, & rubber banded.
9. The acidic concoction was allowed to bubble for an hour.
10. A half cup of baking soda was sprinkled in the tank & bowl.
11. The water supply was turned back on & the toilet flushed.
12. A cup of pool bleach was poured in the tank & flushed.
13. My sister kept asking me if I knew what I was doing, and, if I did, then why was it taking so long?

Before & after results are shown below:

[Stormin Mormon]

Now that's interesting!

I wonder how they prevent the lye from reacting with the aluminum while they're both still in the Drano bottle?

[Robert Macy]

THANKS FOR BRINGING THIS QUESTION UP!!

We have HARD well water and on a septic system. Based on comments here, purchased muriatic acid at HD for around $5/gal ! We had one wing of our home unused and all the water evaporated out of traps and toilet bowls in that section. Hard as a rock brown crusty coating on bowl. Turned on fan, held breath, and poured small amount of acid [??

1/2 cup] into the reduced water content bowl. WOW! foam and everything just slid off. Used a plastic brush and scrubbed around completely cleaning the bowl out.

Foaming continued for a while, but fumes weren't bad.

Neutralized with baking soda, now THAT foamed and foamed and foamed. Used about 1/6 of the box! before foaming stopped when adding powder. Now it's clean! Thanks again.

So armed with that I attacked 'my' toilet bowl [note one way to stay married a long time is to ALWAYS have separate bathrooms] This bowl only had slight brownish streaks in the bottom. But foamed up again. Then while scrubbing out found what looked like two four inch long angle brackets made of brownish calcium deposits. Obviiously up out of sight from all previous cleanings. These were thick and glad whatever that is is out of there. Again thanks for the thread.

That evening, I had severe nose bleeding. I'll bet the fumes took their toll and I just did not notice. So, when people say avoid the fumes, AVOID THE FUMES!

[Danny D.]

I found Oren's suggested trick of plastic wrapping the toilet bowl for the hour that the muriatic acid sits worked well. I didn't even need to tape it down.

Likewise, the plastic sandwich bag on the overfill tube also worked to prevent fumes, as did the use of the ceiling fan.

Interestingly, the loud ceiling fan also drummed out the sound of my sister nagging on the phone to my Mom that I was gonna kill her kids with the fumes, so, the ceiling fan had a fortuitous secondary benefit.

[dadiOH]

Does if you piss in the tank :)

[dadiOH]

No water. The lye is solid.

Note: I'm talking about Drano in a can, not the bottled stuff.

[HeyBub]

Because it's FUN! Why do people climb mountains, drive race cars, or join the Marines? Because it's FUN!

Anything that can't be made to explode, fling a projectile over 1,000 feet, posion the immediate environment, or cause dismemberment is considered WORK.

You'd think everybody would know that.

[Danny D.]

And, because we handle minor dangers every day, first by asking for advice, from the experienced team at a.h.r ... for example:

- Winding garage door torsion springs

- Clearing 4-inch thick poison oak with chainsaws

- Washing discolored swimming pool walls with acid and yes ... the new minor mundane task of

- Cleaning toilet bowls of brown stains

[Danny D.]

I consider myself a master at freeware, so, there's almost nothing that can't be done with the best freeware.

The effort, in freeware, is in finding the best of the best, so that you don't waste time on the second-rate pretenders.

For arrows and text, the best, by far, on Windows is Paint.NET, while, on Linux, the best, by far, is KolourPaint.

For autorotation, autonaming, & resizing, Irfanview batch operations are the fastest on Windows, while ImageMagick and the Linux shell are the quickest on Linux.

For example, on Linux, I rotate & resize the photos to a common size: $ for f in *.jpg;do jhead -autorot $f;convert -resize 800x600 -quality 75 $f;done Similar batch commands are available in IrfanView on Windows.

Then, I create the montage, on Linux, using ImageMagick: $ convert photo1.jpg photo2.jpg +attach side-by-side.gif $ convert photoa.jpg photob.jpg -attach top-and-bottom.gif

Of course, I could just as easily have used Kolourpaint: $ kolourpaint photo1.jpg [KolourPaint]Edit->Paste from file->photo2.jpg

IrfanView has a create-panorama command, which works as well, on Windows.

The reason Paint.NET is needed, on Windows, is that IrfanView stinks when it comes to texting and arrows, something that Paint.NET is stellar at.

Likewise, on Linux, the Gimp stinks at drawing circles, texting, and creating arrows, which KolourPaint does with aplomb.

You're welcome to ask any image-editing question as I've been researching the best freeware for decades, so, I pretty much know what I need (and have spent a LOT of time on alt.comp.freeware & rec.photo.digital over the decades).

[nestork]

There were some statements made in this thread that I think need to be corrected for the benefit of any newbies in here.

Bleach doesn't turn anything white. Bleach, NaOCl, breaks down into Na+ and OCl- ions in water, and those hypochlorite ions are inherently unstable and break down into chlorine (Cl-) ions and lone oxygen atoms. Single oxygen atoms are highly reactive and tend to react with unstable molecules that would break down on their own given sufficient time, and those are generally large organic molecules (like DNA for example). Since most smells, tastes and fabric colours are created by large organic molecules, the presence of lone oxygen atoms removes smells, tastes and colours by breaking up those large organic molecules. The resulting pieces are still there, it's just that none of those pieces affect our nose, taste buds or absorb light the way the large original molecule did, so the smell taste or colour appears to disappear. Bleach doesn't turn blue denim white; it breaks up the blue dye molecules so that they no longer absorb yellow and red light. Thus, the denim looks the same as if it had never been dyed blue.

No bacteria or mold could survive having the molecules from which it is made of being broken up into pieces. That's like saying a brick house could remain standing despite all it's bricks being broken into pieces.

The primary reason for bathroom drains to clog is because of human hair accumulating in the drain pipe. The primary reason for kitchen drains to clog is because of cooking oil/grease accumulating in the drain pipe.

Lye, which can be either sodium or potassium hydroxide (NaOH or KOH) can theoretically clear both types clogs. That's because lye will both:

a) dissolve hair. Next time you're cleaning an oven, use a natural bristle brush to paint the oven cleaner on, and you'll find out that the oven cleaner dissolves the brush bristles. The fix is to use a nylon or polyester bristle brush to avoid that problem.

b) react with cooking oil/grease to form soap and glycerine. And, unlike cooking oil/grease, both soap and glycerine are easy to remove because they both dissolve in water. That chemical reaction between lye and oil/grease to form soap and glycerine is called "saponification":

'Saponification - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia'

So, the reason why Drano uses lye as it's active ingredient is not because lye digests organic material. Lye dissolves animal hair, and it reacts with grease to convert it into a water soluble compound called "soap" and that makes it effective at clearing the most common cause of clogs in both bathroom and kitchen sinks. Or, so the makers of Drano would have you believe.

[notbob]

Careful reading of my statement reveals I said nothing about the mold surviving. And while the brick house may not remain standing, the crumbled rubble of the brick house remains. ;)

nb.

[dadiOH]

I was being simplistic.

[dadiOH]

If all you want to do is make one image from two or more, it is easy to do so with what you already have: MS Paint.

1. Open MS Paint

1. Open an image in any graphic program (including another instance of MS Paint)

2. Copy the image (Ctrl + A then Ctrl + C) or a portion of it (select the area then Ctrl + C)

1. Now paste into the MS Paint from #1 above. It will paste into the top left hand corner but you can move it wherever you want.

2. Repeat 2-5 as many times as you wish

1. Save the new composite image.

MS Paint starts off with a very large canvas (space to put stuff) and available space that doesn't get filled up with your images is also saved. You can get rid of it in MS Paint but it's a pain to do so; far easier to open the new image in IrfanView, select and copy what you want, paste it into a new IrfanView instance and save that.

[dadiOH]

Here's an example:

Everything within the brown border is one image made as I explained above. Text is via IrfanView.

[Danny D.]

Oren,

I got carried away in the prior reply; so I'll directly answer. I used a combination of Imagemagick & Kolourpaint on Linux to create the DIY montages above.

1. Imagemagick to resize the photos to similar sizes.
2. Imagemagick to slap similar-sized photos together.
3. Kolourpaint to hand craft the more complex arrangements.
4. And, Kolorpaint to text, circle, & arrow the results.

Had I been on Windows, I would have used:

1. Irfanview to resize the photos to similar sizes.
2. Irfanview to slap similar-sized photos together.
3. Paint.NET to make the more complex arrangements.
4. And, Paint.NET to text, circle, & arrow the results.

IMHO, there is no single freeware program on either platform, which will perform all the tasks necessary to assemble and annotate a typical task-oriented photo scenario such as is shown in the better amateur do-it-yourself (DIY) project writeups.

PS: I'm not sure what the difference is between a collage and a montage, so, I used the word "montage" to indicate an assemblage of photos & screenshots intended to help in explaining how to do something, in a single resulting image.

[hrhofmann]

I'm a Paint fan also, you can do all sorts of good stuf with/on it.

[hrhofmann]

I shoudl have said I'm a Paint.net fan.

[Danny D.]

Nothing wrong with MS Paint, but the collage (or is it a montage?) also required texting, circling, and arrowing - which is problematic in most programs.

IMHO, on Windows, nothing does curved arrows easier (or better) than Paint.NET; and, as you noted, nothing crops easier than IrfanView.

But, the choice of freeware depends on which program does the sum total of the needed tasks easiest and best.

Unfortunately, I've never found ONE program (on either Windows or Linux) that does the five basic DIY-editing tasks:

Easy stuff like cropping, texting, rotating, naming, & format conversion; plus, the harder stuff like circling and arrowing & canvas enlargement.