when you clean the loo......

[lucytails]

how long do you leave the bleach/loo cleaner down for? My bottle of bleach recommends to leave it overnight but i always remember reading somewhere that its dangerous to mix bleach with urine so i don't like to do this just in case one of the childrens gets up in the night to use the loo. Then this afternoon i squirted some down and the OH went and used the loo and flushed the bleach away literally two minutes after i left it bloody typically. We don't have any major limescale problems where we live thank god, but even though i'm not OCD i do like to feel its had time to kill all the yucky germs and bacteria down there. I mwan does it really take all night for the bleach to work or can anyone recommend me a good time to clean the loo?

Erm - twice a week???

Twice a month more like!!!

I am a minger, aren't I?

i did the bleaching before shower thing this morning. genius lol.

frozenchocolate - yeah course toilet duck and bloo is enough. I always think of toilet duck and harpics and the like as just a fragranced bleach. I only use bleach for the loo and thats only because i like the clinical smell of it down there. My sister swears by the green toilet duck.

no, you don't need bleach to clean. not the loo, not the rest of the house.
just hot soapy water, vinegar, elbow grease should do unless you need your home to be sterile for some reason and then you would need far far more bleach than you would get in household products.

I don't use a brush but put bleach down after every no.2, this usually gets rid of it.
Once in a blue moon I have to use tissue but that's only if ds has sneaked one in and obviously isn't yet trained to chuck bleach down.
(can't really believe I'm discussing this online!)

Reading this thread I feel a bit sad at how much bleach must be going into the ecosystem every day. I guess I just have a rose tinted environmentally aware outlook on life

I use wipes to clean the loos and get rid of any pebbledashing and chuck some bleach down for a few hours once a week.

Bleach is not bad for the environment. It breaks down into salt and water. Surfactants (non bleach cleaners, detergents) are usually much worse. People think bleach is bad because it is powerful, but in the grand scheme of things it isn't. Plus you don't need to use much.

You have to put bleach in the toilet???

I live in a hard water area and find that bleach just encourage limescale, shameless plug for Harpic limescale remover.

Have to sit down now having made my first ever contribution to a good housekeeping thread. I dont know whether to feel proud, or some how a little bit dirty

And things like wipes ( non woven fabrics) are not great environmentally either as thu don't break down easily. I have an environmentally aware outlook and there are other offenders I would go for before bleach.

spagbolagain - i'm glad you say that bleach is ok to use environmentally.

Ok since this thread has evolved into a general loo cleaning thread can anyone explain how bleach actually kills germs??? I've always kind of wondered what is happening when i put bleach down.

I think we should minimise use of all thing where we can, I should rephrase to say flushing anything down the loo isn't great, but bleach is not the worst offender! In terms of its mode of action, don't think it's totally clear, but I think it produces an acid which can interfere with bacterial metabolism and DNA. Or something.

I agree with minimising things, so if I cleaned the loos daily, I wouldn't use bleach or possibly, wipes, but as I do it weekly, I feel it's ok.

Yes, sorry wasn't meaning to sound sanctimonious :)
You have to be pragmatic about these things I think, it's always a balance!

Yeah i agree i think bleach should be used in moderation as with all cleaning products in general for various reasons, but bleach starts as salt, is turned into liquid bleach with a few other cleaning agents, and then breaks back down into salt quite quickly in the water system. Even if you don't use bleach on whatever goes down the sewers it'll eventually meet chlorine as part of the sewage treatment anyhow. What a delightful topic eh ha.

In answer to how bleach kills germs, i think its like a similar process to say if you put salt on a slug. It sort of dries them out and sucks the life out of them. If you have ever spilt bleach on your hands you will see it dries out your skin.

I only ever use bleach in my sink, because it's a "white" (haha) granite-effect one & gets really badly stained in the bottom

Once a month - ish - it gets a long soak with very dilute bleach which shifts most of it. One bottle of bleach lasts me about 2 years

No bleach or wipes in loo - just ecover cleaner & a lovely hygienic brush (unlike \link{\Ken Shabby})

Bleach down the toilet every night and scrubbed with a loo brush.

I wipe the toilet with dettol/flash wipes everynight too

I'm more in the twice a month camp too, FrozenChocolate. I'm getting better slowly.

I put my ecover cleaner down, clean the rest of the bathroom, then scrub the loo (I'm in the pro-brush camp).

ok thanks spagbolagain and stofstg for the explanation of how the bleach works. i sometimes feel its a shame you can't hear or see the germs being killed of lol.

Can anyone confirm whether or not bleach is safe to use when you have a Klargester sewage treatment plant? I always thought it wasn't, and I use Ecover loo cleaner but am not sure if that is as effective as bleach, and whether or not it is safe for the Klargester.

if it is anything like a septic tank, then you shouldn't use bleach at all. also not other bleach containing cleaners.

in the manual it only says not to put large amounts of bleach or bleach containing cleaners in
maybe write to them and ask?

Yep my bottle of domestos has written on the instructions that it can be used with septic tanks (i only know this because of the amount of time i've used the bottle for quick reading material whilst sat on the loo lol). No idea how it only kills the bacteria in the toilet bowl but not the septic tank. Personally i would use very little perhaps just once a week for the big clean and continue using your ecover for in between because it can be expensive to rectify any problems.