Toilet
Glazed china that tolerates more than people think, surrounded by fittings that tolerate much less. The mistake is treating it as one surface.
Precautions
- Check the manufacturer's instructions
- Never mix with other cleaning products
- Ventilate the area
In detail
A toilet is the one bathroom fixture where the manufacturer permits a soft abrasive: vitreous china is described as scratch- and abrasive-resistant, and soft abrasive cleaners may be used when necessary, though strong ones will scratch and dull the glaze. What the same guidance protects is everything attached to it. Toilet bowl cleaners are for the inside of the bowl only, and splashes must be wiped from plastic or plated surfaces immediately — the seat, its hinges, the flush plate and the waste fitting are the vulnerable parts, not the china. In-tank cleaners, the block dropped into the cistern, are ruled out entirely because they can damage the flush valve or other working parts, and that failure happens where nobody looks until the cistern runs. The other hidden problem is mineral: hard water deposits gradually clog the rim holes and the trapway, so a toilet that flushes weakly may have scale in its waterways rather than anything wrong with its hygiene. Treating that as a cleaning problem of the bowl surface misses where the deposit actually is.
Related
- Toilet is made from Vitreous china
- Toilet is commonly affected by Limescale
Hacks and claims involving this
- Putting a cleaning block in the cistern Does not work
Sources for this page
Sources
Care & Cleaning: Toilets or Lavatories Made of Vitreous China
STERLING (Kohler Co.) · Manufacturer documentation
Relied on for: That soft abrasive cleaners may be used on vitreous china while strong ones scratch and dull it, that bowl cleaners are for the inside of the bowl only, that in-tank cleaners can damage the flush valve or other working parts, that splashes must be wiped from plastic or plated surfaces immediately, and that hard water deposits may clog rim holes and trapways. (states this directly)
Verification: a person has read the passage relied on.
Read on — The care instructions list and the hard-water care tip. Supports the claim as stated.
What CleaningHQ cannot answer yet
These are recorded questions about this subject that we have not yet researched to a standard we would publish.
- Identify scale in rim holes and trapway as a flush problem
- Effervescent tablets as a descaling route
- Whether a soft drink removes toilet staining
Last reviewed by a person on .