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
Start here
What this is, what tends to go wrong with it, and what to do about it.
Made from
Which part are you cleaning?
These parts take different answers. Cleaning one the way you clean another is a common way to damage this.
- Toilet seat
Usually thermoplastic or coated wood, and both are damaged by the products used on the ceramic underneath it.
Household plastics
Things not to use here
What tends to go wrong
A hard, chalky calcium carbonate deposit left by hard water. Dissolved by acids, essentially untouched by detergents.
Why it is difficult: Water hardness, Crystallisation, Adhesion and cohesion
What the last clean left behind. It attracts soil, so the surface gets dirty faster — and the usual response is to use more of what caused it.
Why it is difficult: Residue and resoiling, Soil shielding, Why different surfaces get different dirt
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 has the component Toilet seat
- 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
- One spray for the whole bathroom Does not work
- Pouring cola into a toilet to clean it Unresolved
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)