Kitchen sink
Usually stainless steel, and the surface in a house most exposed to the two things that damage stainless steel: chlorides and abrasion.
Precautions
- Rinse thoroughly afterwards
- Never mix with other cleaning products
In detail
A stainless steel sink concentrates almost every hazard the material has. Salt from cooking water, bleach used to freshen a drain, and dishwasher tablets dissolved in a bowl all put chloride in prolonged contact with the passive layer, which is the specific condition that produces pitting corrosion rather than the general dirt a sink looks like it has. The trade association's guidance is unusually direct about the domestic case: soaking stainless sinks or cookware in dilute bleach solutions for long periods, overnight for instance, is stated to be inadvisable, and surfaces should be washed after food preparation because salt residues cause pitting over time. Abrasion is the other half. A sink is where scouring pads live, and wire wool leaves particles of ordinary carbon steel embedded in the surface which then rust — producing what looks like a stainless sink rusting and is actually a contaminant corroding on it. Sinks also accumulate hard-water marking faster than most surfaces, for the ordinary reason that they are wet several times a day and usually left to dry themselves.
Related
- Kitchen sink is made from Stainless steel
- Kitchen sink is commonly affected by Water marks
- Kitchen sink is commonly affected by Limescale
Hacks and claims involving this
- Steel wool for stubborn marks on stainless steel Does not work
- Leaving bleach in the sink overnight Does not work
- Drying a surface prevents water marks Supported
Sources for this page
Sources
Cleaning methods for stainless steel
British Stainless Steel Association · Trade or professional body
Relied on for: That soaking stainless steel sinks or cookware in dilute bleach for long periods is not advisable, and that salt and concentrated salt and vinegar mixtures may cause pitting over time. (states this directly)
Verification: a person has read the passage relied on.
Read on — The whole article, compared clause by clause against SSAS Information Sheet 7.20. Supports a wider statement — our claim was widened. Recorded as a dependent source, so it cannot carry a claim alone. Its overnight-bleach-soak instruction and its salt-and-vinegar caution are the specific, domestic-scale statements CleaningHQ needed and are cited alongside the information sheet rather than instead of it.
What CleaningHQ cannot answer yet
These are recorded questions about this subject that we have not yet researched to a standard we would publish.
- Diagnose odour from a kitchen drain
- Address odour from a kitchen or bathroom drain
Last reviewed by a person on .