How to clean the toilet from rust — recipes and professional tools

It would seem that rust can only form on met­al, but res­i­dents of cities with cen­tral­ized water sup­ply often notice char­ac­ter­is­tic yel­low and orange marks on toi­lets, sinks and oth­er plumb­ing fix­tures. The com­po­si­tion of tap water is to blame for this, in which iron impu­ri­ties from the soil and traces of cor­ro­sion, which the walls of non-gal­va­nized pipes are exposed to, can be found. More­over, tap water often con­tains chlo­rine, which reacts with met­al in the aquat­ic envi­ron­ment, so the inner sur­faces of the pipes rust. And if the toi­let cis­tern or the faucet in the sink, the bath­room is leak­ing, that is, the water con­stant­ly flows down a lit­tle over the sur­face of the plumb­ing, a rusty coat­ing appears on it. It is not easy to remove it, but mod­ern house­hold chem­i­cals help to cope with the task, they are most effec­tive in this mat­ter. Also, some expe­ri­enced house­wives, who are used to doing with­out pur­chased chem­i­cals, use their own prepa­ra­tions and meth­ods to clean the toi­let from rust. From this arti­cle, you will learn how to get rid of such a house­hold prob­lem with­out much effort.

Work Precautions

What­ev­er tool you use to clean the toi­let bowl or oth­er plumb­ing from rust, you need to keep in mind that the com­po­si­tion of the drug may be too aggres­sive in rela­tion to the skin of the hands, mucous mem­branes, olfac­to­ry organs, as well as some details, for exam­ple, to the plas­tic parts of the inside of the tank. There­fore, in order not to harm your­self or spoil the plumb­ing, you should fol­low sim­ple rec­om­men­da­tions dur­ing clean­ing:

1. Always car­ry out all house­work, if you fore­see the use of any clean­ing prod­ucts, with rub­ber gloves. And when using drugs such as Domestos (based on acids) — this is gen­er­al­ly an iron rule.

2. It is high­ly desir­able to clean the toi­let in a res­pi­ra­tor, wear­ing “con­struc­tion” glass­es and a rub­ber (plas­tic) apron.

3. If the prod­uct has a too strong smell, try to ven­ti­late the room both dur­ing the pro­ce­dure and after it.

4. If rust stains have appeared not only in the toi­let bowl, but also in the tank, before clean­ing it, drain all the water (you can use a small buck­et) and, if pos­si­ble, remove the plas­tic parts, as acids can have a neg­a­tive effect on mate­ri­als that are not resis­tant to such sub­stances.

5. If rust streaks appear in the sink, bath­tub, show­er, be sure to fix the plumb­ing (faucets, pipes, leak­ing com­po­nents, etc.), as the prob­lem will occur again and again. If it’s a mat­ter of water qual­i­ty, you can put a com­mon fil­ter.

6. All brush­es, sponges, wash­cloths used to clean the toi­let from rust should be thor­ough­ly washed after the pro­ce­dure and sent for stor­age out of the reach of chil­dren and ani­mals. It is not worth using them for house­work, for exam­ple, for clean­ing the kitchen.

Well, the last piece of advice — if the clean­ing agent gets on the skin or mucous mem­branes, you do not need to wait for a neg­a­tive reac­tion from the body, imme­di­ate­ly rinse the place where the chem­istry has splashed. And if there is severe dis­com­fort, pain, burn­ing, irri­ta­tion of the skin, tear­ing, pain in the head, it is bet­ter to seek med­ical help, per­haps this is a reac­tion to a chem­i­cal burn or an aller­gy to the com­po­si­tion of the drug.

How to clean the toilet from rust with household chemicals

Now in any store you can find a wide range of clean­ing prod­ucts for plumb­ing, includ­ing toi­let bowls. They are avail­able in the form of pow­ders, sprays, liq­uids and gels, the lat­ter are more con­ve­nient to use, as they slow­ly flow down the walls and cov­er the sur­face with a film, which ensures con­stant con­tact between the active sub­stances and the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed sur­face. Such drugs can be divid­ed into three groups, depend­ing on whether which com­po­nents are includ­ed in the com­po­si­tion pre­cise­ly in order to dis­solve rust, limescale and oth­er per­sis­tent con­t­a­m­i­nants:

1. 
   Acids that dis­solve organ­ic and inor­gan­ic con­t­a­m­i­nants. These are, for exam­ple, hydrochlo­ric, orthophos­phor­ic, sul­fu­ric, sili­cic acids. Typ­i­cal­ly, these harsh chem­i­cals are only includ­ed in slur­ries in com­bi­na­tion with acid cor­ro­sion inhibitors, which should slow down the reac­tion and pre­vent degra­da­tion of the sur­face to be cleaned. Such prepa­ra­tions are ide­al for remov­ing rust and oth­er stub­born dirt from met­al, faience, enam­eled objects, includ­ing toi­let bowls, uri­nals and oth­er san­i­tary ware. Acid-based chem­istry should not be used on sur­faces that are not acid-resis­tant. This, for exam­ple, mar­ble, gran­ite, acrylic.

2. 
   alka­lisdesigned to remove sub­stances of organ­ic ori­gin. They can also have a neg­a­tive destruc­tive effect on rusty plaque.

3. 
   Chlo­rine, which has cleans­ing and antimi­cro­bial prop­er­ties and the abil­i­ty to neu­tral­ize unpleas­ant odors. How­ev­er, chlo­rine-based prod­ucts are unlike­ly to help deal with rusty deposits.

What­ev­er active sub­stance the plumb­ing care prod­uct con­tains, it will def­i­nite­ly con­tain sur­fac­tants — an impor­tant com­po­nent of solu­tions that allow you to clean sur­faces from rust, plaque, and scale. Most high per­for­mance for­mu­la­tions use non-ion­ic sur­fac­tants, as they not only exhib­it high deter­gency but also inter­act well with the main actives.

How to use household chemicals

To begin with, let’s take a quick look at the most pop­u­lar tools that are used to remove rust on plumb­ing. Sure­ly you have seen such drugs on the shelves in the store, after read­ing the list, just select the most suit­able prod­uct, start­ing from the com­po­si­tion (the pres­ence of acids is high­ly desir­able, oth­er active ingre­di­ents may be inef­fec­tive), the release form, the vol­ume of the bot­tle and its price. If the bot­tle says “Anti-rust”, “Anti-plaque” is what you need.

So, the list of house­hold chem­i­cals that can cope with rusty smudges on plumb­ing:

1. Domestos.

2. Cil­li Bang.

3. Toi­let duck 5 in 1.

4. comet.

5. Lima Pro­fes­sion­al.

6. Chistin 3 in 1 for plumb­ing.

It is not rec­om­mend­ed to use two prod­ucts at the same time to enhance the effect. Some drugs may con­tain sub­stances that neu­tral­ize the effect of the com­po­si­tion of oth­er drugs.

Instruc­tions for the use of a par­tic­u­lar house­hold chem­i­cal prod­uct must be present on the bot­tle label. It must be care­ful­ly stud­ied and fol­low the man­u­fac­tur­er’s rec­om­men­da­tions. But usu­al­ly they offer to clean the toi­let from rust like this:

1. Wash the toi­let from eas­i­ly sep­a­rat­ing dirt with water, using a brush.

2. Apply the prod­uct on con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed sur­faces, leave for 30–40 min­utes.

3. Wash off the prepa­ra­tion with water, brush­ing off the remains of rust.

There is noth­ing com­pli­cat­ed in the clean­ing process, so mod­ern house­wives pre­fer house­hold chem­i­cals, rather than home-made solu­tions.

How to clean the toilet from rust mechanically

If house­hold chem­i­cals did not help to ful­ly clean the plumb­ing from rusty drips, you can addi­tion­al­ly use abra­sive clean­ing prepa­ra­tions to care for plumb­ing. By them­selves, they are inef­fec­tive in remov­ing per­sis­tent con­t­a­m­i­nants, but since rust has already suc­cumbed to the destruc­tive effects of active sub­stances from the com­po­si­tion of the gel or liq­uid, you can try to “fin­ish off” it with an abra­sive par­ti­cle, that is, mechan­i­cal­ly clean off the rem­nants of rusty plaque. To do this, you can take drugs such as Pemolux Soda, Chistin Lemon, Comet or sim­i­lar in terms of release form and com­po­si­tion. Wet the sur­face with rust with water, apply the pow­der, let it soak in mois­ture for a cou­ple of min­utes. Then you need to take a com­fort­able brush with stiff bris­tles, prefer­ably with a long han­dle, to reach hard-to-reach places with­out kneel­ing. Well, three spots of rust until it final­ly dis­ap­pears. If nei­ther liq­uid house­hold chem­i­cals nor abra­sive prepa­ra­tions helped, you can resort to “heavy artillery”, that is, pro­fes­sion­al chem­istry. In the event that she does not help to cope with the prob­lem, there will be only one thing left — to call a spe­cial­ist from the clean­ing ser­vice to the house.

Professional anti-rust products

It makes sense to use pro­fes­sion­al chem­istry for those who face a large amount of work every day, for exam­ple, own­ers of mini-hotels, clean­ing ser­vices or oth­er sim­i­lar com­pa­nies. Pro­fes­sion­al chem­istry is more expen­sive than con­ven­tion­al house­hold prod­ucts. But it is usu­al­ly more effec­tive, often avail­able in a con­cen­trat­ed form, so that it can be dilut­ed to the desired con­cen­tra­tion. Here are a few rep­re­sen­ta­tives of this group of drugs:

1. Clean­er S Pramol.

2. Rost-Ex S1 Pramol.

3. Rost Ex M8.

You can buy pro­fes­sion­al chem­i­cals for clean­ing toi­let bowls and oth­er plumb­ing fix­tures from rust, plaque, from sup­pli­ers of clean­ing com­pa­nies or on spe­cial­ized sites on the Inter­net.

improvised means

Here are a few recipes from expe­ri­enced house­wives that will help you out in a sit­u­a­tion where you need to urgent­ly clean up, but there are no house­hold chem­i­cals at hand:

1. 
   Soda and vine­gar. You can take soda ash and vine­gar essence (dilut­ed with water) to enhance the effect. First, soda is applied to a wet sur­face cleaned of organ­ic con­t­a­m­i­nants — as much as it sticks. Wait 30–50 min­utes for the soda (lye) to take effect. Then vine­gar (acid) is poured into the spray bot­tle, after which it is sprayed over the soda. The reac­tion begins, abun­dant hiss­ing foam appears, at this time it is nec­es­sary to treat places with rust with a hard brush. If the desired result is not achieved, the pro­ce­dure can be repeat­ed. Or just spray more vine­gar on the rust and leave for 60 min­utes, peri­od­i­cal­ly brush­ing the sur­face and adding more acid, then rinse it all off with water.

2. 
   ammo­nia and hydro­gen per­ox­ide. We take 1 part of ammo­nia and 20 parts of per­ox­ide, mix, pour into a spray bot­tle, spray the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed sur­face, leave for more than 1 hour, rinse with water. If nec­es­sary, the pro­ce­dure can be repeat­ed 2–3 times. But just keep in mind that ammo­nia smells very strong­ly, you need to make sure that peo­ple do not enter the room, even if it is ven­ti­lat­ed, espe­cial­ly chil­dren, the elder­ly, preg­nant women, and the sick.

3. 
   Ordi­nary bleach or chlo­rine-based prod­uct, for exam­ple, White­ness, famil­iar to every­one from child­hood. We apply to pol­lu­tion, wait 30–60 min­utes, rinse off. If the prepa­ra­tion can­not cope with rust streaks, then it will def­i­nite­ly clean well not such per­sis­tent pol­lu­tion, dis­in­fect and elim­i­nate extra­ne­ous odors.

4. 
   House­hold cor­ro­sion neu­tral­iz­er. Any met­al rust remover will do. It should be applied to the sur­face for a short time, for exam­ple, for 5 min­utes, then rinse off and eval­u­ate the result. If the rust is not com­plete­ly dis­solved, the pro­ce­dure can be repeat­ed. The main thing is not to leave the chem­i­cal on the plumb­ing for a long time, as it can dam­age the coat­ing.

5. 
   An aque­ous solu­tion of cit­ric acid. More pre­cise­ly, not even a solu­tion, but a paste of this pow­der and water. Apply a thick lay­er or spray the solu­tion from a spray bot­tle, wait 30 min­utes, rinse off.

How do you clean a rusty toi­let bowl? You can’t fill it with White­ness, vine­gar, or hydro­gen per­ox­ide, as plas­tic parts can be dam­aged. In this case, you can try an inter­est­ing folk method — “dis­solv­ing” rust with Coca Cola in com­bi­na­tion with a bag of cit­ric acid. Nei­ther one nor the oth­er can dam­age the plas­tic, so pour as much Cola into the tank as need­ed to cov­er all the drips, add acids, leave the mix­ture for 60 min­utes, after which you need to fill the tank sev­er­al times by unscrew­ing the valve that shuts off the water and drain­ing water in the toi­let.