On Thursday, November 13, 2014 1:17:09 AM UTC-5, nestork wrote:
Mickey:

Most COMMERCIAL toilet bowl cleaners are gelled phosphoric acid or
gelled hydrochloric acid. Generally, phosphoric acid is strong enough
to remove anything normally found in a toilet bowl, but hydrochloric
acid based cleaners are very much more agressive and will remove marks
on the porcelain left by using metal tools in the toilet bowl, like a
plumber's snake. If only one of your bottles says that it contains
acid, then most of what you have was purchased in a supermarket, not a
janitorial supply store.

Never use hydrochloric acid in a bath tub or sink because it will attack
chrome plating, including the chrome plating on the tub or sink drain.
It'll also attack any chrome plating on your faucets if you get
hydrochloric acid on those too.

Phosphoric acid is not only used as a toilet bowl cleaner, but as the
active ingredient in general purpose bathroom cleaners as well. That's
because it cuts through soap scum like a hot knife cuts through butter,
but it won't attack chrome plating even at high concentrations.

I've used both phosphoric acid and hydrochloric acid based toilet bowl
cleaners for the past 25 years for all kinds of different reasons, and
never had one "dry out" on me as you describe. You may be using a
bathroom cleaner like "Scrubbing Bubbles" which I don't think contains
any acid at all.

Your best bet is to simply remove the dried up clog with a knife or
something and throw the dried up stuff in your garbage. Plastics are
generally immune to acids and bases so dumping dried up acid in your
garbage won't burn a hole in the garbage bag.




--
nestork

Inquiring minds want to know how that toilet bowl cleaner is going
to get to the bathtub if all he does is weight the container down
and put it in a bathtub with water. And even if a tiny bit does come
out, it's going to be diluted by 10+ gallons of water in the tub.
It's not going to harm anything.

I presume this is a spray container? If so, just remove the spray
part and soak that in a sink. If it's the whole inside of the container
that's dried up, then I don't understand the bathtub idea at all.