Blast away that unsightly toilet limescale.
Our trusty friend and companion, the loo, bog, toilet, lavatory; whatever you call it, is a wonderful refuge from our day-to-day life. Limescale is a devilish little thing that lurks in the water; it loves to grip onto our lovely white toilet bowl, which in time, leads to an unseemly discolouration of the porcelain. In this article, we’ll cover the do’s and don’ts on how to remove limescale from your toilet.
What is Limescale?
First things first, you need to know what it is; it’s a hard, chalky deposit, made up of mainly calcium carbonate (CaCO3) and often tends to build up in kettles, hot water boilers, and pipework, especially for hot water. Limescale builds up in places where “hard water” evaporates. After which, limescale usually turns a funny colour. The colours can vary from off-white through to a range of greys and pink or reddish browns. In addition to being hard to clean and not so pleasing to the eye, it can cause serious damage to plumbing and heating components.
How NOT to Remove Limescale
As always with cleaning methods, there are many myths out there. Here are the two most popular limescale removal myths we’ve discovered:
Bleach – Common, household bleach is one of the staples of everyone’s cleaning cupboard. It can remove tough stains, brighten darkened surfaces, disinfect, and it kills basically everything. So, it would be understandable as to why so many people think it works. The truth is that it doesn’t remove the limescale, it just brightens the discolouration. In this case, it makes the limescale more destructive, as you can’t see it and aren’t aware of the damage it’s doing.
Coca-Cola – According to this myth, pouring a bottle of Coca-Cola into the toilet bowl and leaving overnight will destroy the limescale. The idea is that the acid in the cola will get rid of the limescale. In reality, all this will do is give you a cola coloured stain..
How to Remove Limescale from Your Toilet?
Now that we’ve debunked those little myths, let’s see a few DIY ways of de-scaling your toilet. Here’s what you’ll need:
White vinegar
Sandpaper
How to Remove Limescale with Vinegar:
Get 1 litre of undiluted white vinegar and pour it into the toilet bowl. Make sure you get all sides of the bowl.
Leave it to sit for at least 3 hours – go make yourself a cuppa!
Using a toilet brush or a scrubbing sponge, with more white vinegar, give the toilet bowl a good scrub.
Flush to remove all remaining residue.
Repeat until your toilet is sparkling like new!
How to Remove Limescale with Sandpaper:
We recommend using 2 types of sandpaper for this job – medium-grain and fine-grain
Scrub the inside of the toilet bowl starting with the medium-grain sandpaper.
Carry on until the majority of the limescale is gone and don’t apply to much pressure so as not to scratch the bowl.
Using the fine-grain start to buff the inside of the toilet until the stain is completely gone.
Flush the loo to get rid of any residue and clean the toilet as you usually would.
