wrote in message ...
I'm new to Septic tanks and have recently moved to a house in a hard water area that
has 5 toilets, all of which are badly stained. I presume I can't use brick acid, Harpic
toilet "pills", or similar so how do I de-scale the loo? With a wooden scraper?

(A water softener is going to be in my future to solve the problem, but this won't be
for at least 6 months and I need to de-scale them now)

With reference to your "can't use brick acid, Harpic toilet "pills"" presumably
this is because you can't allow the resulting liquid to go past the S bend into
the tank.

What's been suggested on here before, although I've never tried
it myself, is to block the bend with an inflated balloon pushing it as far round the
bend as you can. But not so far that you won't be able to puncture it
easily afterwords.

And then apply a concentrated solution of your remedy of
choice to the remaining water. Depending on how long you can leave this
solution in place will probably govern how easy it is to remove the stain in
each case. So that it may need more than one application.

Using a sacrificial soup ladle or similar, (or maybe not sacrfifcial if funds are
very tight, I suppose) its a fairly simple matter to bail out almost all of the water
in the bottom of an S bend (and thus the toilet) into a bucket afterwards if this
is thought necessary.


michael adams

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