OK to use washing soda for wall preparation?

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Zakko saying something like:

Thank f*ck you're not a baker.

Nope, I'm not a baker and anyway I don't like soda bread!

Have you got any info about my question?

The message from Grimly Curmudgeon contains these words:

Indeed!

That's a relief.

You don't get it, do you?

;-)

Washing soda is sodium carbonate BTW, which is likely to soak into the plaster and leave a deposit of hygroscopic salts. Even if this is a kitchen where the deposits are oily/fatty, hot water and detergent would be a better bet

You could buy a single sachet of sugar soap - 50g for 55p (incl. vat!). If that is too much, perhaps you should consider spending even less money by not buying emulsion paint either?

I promise you that having lots of something is no reason to use it inappropriately. E.g. I have lots of mud in the garden, sawdust in the garage, gravel on the drive, PVA in the shed. I wouldn't use any of them for cleaning a wall.

Oh FFS. What's the difference between washing soda and sugar soap anyway? Pretty much bugger all. Both are strongly alkaline and IMO shouldn't be used on plaster walls. No need for snide remarks about baking powder either.

I move it every night. It's the only way :-)

Did ya move the bed last night MrNoble? ;-)

In message , George writes

lets stop all these caustic comments right now

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Stuart Noble saying something like:

Why don't you go and buy or rent a sense of humour for the day?

Just for the day you reckon? You're not likely to say anything else funny then?

Or maybe washing/baking soda could work because sodium bicarbonate used to be the major ingredient in early formulations of Sugar Soap.

OK. The point you have repeatedly missed is that washing soda is NOT sodium bicarbonate.

Washing soda is sodium carbonate, not bicarbonate.

Can you still get washing soda? ISTR that it was almost always 'made' by ICI.

I think trisodium phosphate was the norm circa 1970.

The majority of powder sugar soaps that I checked earlier are in fact something like "Blend of Sodium Sesquicarbonate, Sodium Alkylbenzene Sulphonate (&) Sodium Tripolyphosphate". (Liquid ones often seem to contain all sorts of other substances.) I believe (though I could be wrong) that the sesquicarbonate is less alkaline that plain carbonate.

I shall try to remember to include smileys. :-)

A mixture of mud and sawdust would probably work quite well. Throw it on, give it a good rubbing, wash it off. Your wall will look just like new!