I need a very strong natural cleaner for the bottom of the loo .....

[Elf]

I've been urged on by the recent thread about bicarbonate of soda, white vinegar etc, bought loads from Summer Naturals, lovely company yes, and it is all great on most things but,

how do I clean that really yucky stuff at the bottom of our loo which has been there aeons? We once had a cleaner (many moons ago) and he used a really toxic thing to clean the loo bottom.

I wondered if there was an extra strong recipe using bicarb etc? Thanks.

It is probably limescale.

Vinegar should do it. Use lots and let it soak overnight.

Thanks Sophy, I'll give that a try next.

I posted about this a long time ago and in the end I use the plastic side of a dishwashing brush (needless to say I didn't reuse it for washing up). It enabled me to scrape everything off and get further down the loo than the conventional toilet brush

I use both methods - vinegar and dishwashing-type brush. Put vinegar in, leave to soak. This will loosen scale quite a bit. Then use brush to scrub the more stubborn bits. The brush lets you brush under the rim and right down under the water level too. Works a treat both as an everyday/every week treatment and also an emergency measure if you've really let things slide...

Any particular type of vinegar? And would it be better to empty the loo of water first, so it isn't diluted?
(I have the same problem as Elf)

I empty water first and then drape a cloth soaked in vingar (or lemon juice) over the worse areas. I find the cloth helps to keep the vinegar in the right places. Also use a pumice stone for scrubbig off the limescale after.

I don't think this is very green but my dad always recommended Spirits of Salts which I think is hydrochloric acid. It was very effective on a disgustingly stained loo in a house we were renovating though it is a strong chemical and you don't want to inhale fumes etc!

Hi Elf, I got this off the "Kim and Aggie" website as I remembered them using it in one of their shows ( at admitting publicly to watching this!!)

"We found the best way to clean a dirty toilet is to use 5 tspoons of baking soda mixed with boiling water. If you leave this in the toilet overnight the dirt should just fall off the next day. And for an even nice odour use the zest of a lemon aswell."

I think I remember them scooping out the water from the toilet bowl (having turned off the water at the side - sorry not very good at the proper plumbing terms!) before putting the baking powder mix in overnight. It should be the consistency of a paste with which you then coat the bottom/sides of loo. Leave overnight and then scrub/scrape off.

A company called natural clean do a great limescale remover. You can buy it online at www.naturalclean.co.uk. Once you have got rid of the limescale they do a great oxy cleaner for the loo.

I thought a can of coke was supposed to work

it has to be white vinegar. I used a pumice stone to get the limescale of the enamel, but dh reckons that this has scratched the enamel, but it's at the bottom of the toilet so you don't notice. Probably not recommended.

I agree with MrsR ... I had heard that a couple of cans of coke put down the loo over night did the trick ... it has got to be worth a go!

Thanks everyone. I have the same problem as Posey as in I need people to be more specific sometimes. I did put white vinegar in overnight but didn't know how much and put it in the water.

I think I need to get the water out (again, nice) and then do the baking soda trick. Is that the same as bicarbonate of soda? And of course scrubbing. Mmmmmmmm. I changed all my clothes after the last attempt because I felt so yeuch.

hi our loos were awful when we moved in and we haven't done anything about them for three years. I started to use denture cleaning tablets (another Kim and Aggie trick, but I've only watched them once ever, honest!) in combination with lots of scrubbing, and I have actually begun to shift the horrible brown scaly deposits in our downstairs loo. Denture cleaning tablets have bicarb and citric acid in them, so perhaps a combination of those would work just as well - in fact that's pretty much what baking powder and lemon juice is too.

My procedure is: scoop out water from the bottom of the loo, until I reach the level of the deposits (so there's only a bit of water left in the loo); leave two denture cleaning tablets in there for about half an hour; scrub as much as possible with my toilet brush; flush it away and squirt BioD or Ecover toilet cleaner in the normal places and leave it for as long as possible before another scrub.

I tend to do this in the afternoon when I'm the only person in. I'm wary of leaving stuff at night as someone in our house is bound to need the loo at some point

by the way baking soda usually has an acid in it (like cream of tartar, which is tartaric acid by another name) as well as the bicarbonate. They are both activated when combined with water and warmed up a little. Not a good idea to substitute bicarb for baking powder directly in recipes, as I found out when I was a teenager making pastry