How To Remove Hard Water Stains From The Toilet Bowl
Cleaning a toilet will never rank as my favorite house cleaning chore. I love having a clean toilet bowl but I hate cleaning the toilet….that is until now. Making your toilet look as good as new, no longer has to be a task you want to put off until next week.
What is Hard Water and Why is it on your Toilet?
Now and again it is essential to remove hard water stains from the toilet bowl if you want your toilet to look presentable. The stubborn stains that build up in your bowl are a natural part of having hard water. Hard water builds up because of mineral accumulation and over time these mineral deposits (and bacteria that it collects along the way) accumulate to form limescale. This green or brown colored limescale is found at the end of the toilet bowl, forming rings at the top of the toilet water or even growing under the rim.
Every toilet will develop this limescale, however, there is a cheap and effective method to remove these hard water stains and make your toilet look as good as new.
Here Is What You Will Need :
- Cleaning vinegar. If you cannot find cleaning vinegar (around 6% acidity), then regular clear vinegar will do.
- An old towel.
- A plunger.
- Rubber gloves.
- Toilet paper.
- Toilet brush.
How To Clean The Toilet Bowl :
- Put on your rubber gloves and start sticking the plunger into the toilet water. Keep plunging the toilet water until the water has been pushed down and the bowl is empty. There may be some water remaining after your plunging efforts, however, this process works better if the vinegar is undiluted, so catch your old towel and stick it down the toilet bowl. Soak up the rest of the water with the towel and then remove the towel.
- Next, get the vinegar and pour some down the toilet until it not only covers up the hard water stains in the bottom of the toilet but also covers the hard water stain lines as well (where the toilet water line was).
- Next, grab the toilet paper and take a couple of pieces at a time, dip them into the vinegar (in the toilet bowl) and stick the vinegar-soaked toilet paper on the stained rim. Cover the rim all the way around.
- Now, let the vinegar soak for several hours (overnight is the easiest).
- When you come back in the morning, scrub the lower bowl with your toilet brush (with the vinegar still in there). Remove the toilet paper from the rim and discard it in the bin (because there will be too much to flush down the toilet all at once). After removing the toilet paper, scrub the underside of the rim with the toilet brush.
- Flush and scrub a couple of times.
- Voila, your toilet should look as good as new. Depending on how bad it was previously, you might need to do this process more than once.
In the first video below, you can see that the vinegar in the bowl worked great, however, just smearing vinegar on the rim wasn’t very effective.
In the second video, the guy had the clever idea of placing vinegar-soaked toilet paper around the underside of the rim. This meant the vinegar-soaked into the rim a lot more effectively and the results were a lot better.
How to prevent stubborn hard water stains in your toilet
There are two ways to prevent hard water from staining your toilet tank and bowl. The first way is the cheap way. Regular cleaning with vinegar. Simply pour one to two cups of vinegar into the tank and on the inside of the bowl, let it sit for a while, and scrub clean with a toilet brush. After 30 minutes, flush the toilet. Schedule this as a regular part of your bathroom maintenance.
The second way costs more money but is easier to do. Water softeners are ion exchange systems that remove minerals from water. They produce soft water by converting calcium and magnesium ions into harmless sodium ions.
Before purchasing any water treatment equipment, it’s vital to understand what pollutants are in the water supply. A certified laboratory can analyze your water and test to determine if softening is needed. The water test may also reveal if other water treatment is needed.
A home water softener will need professional installation and can cost anywhere from $400 to $3000.
So there you go, a simple method on how to remove hard water stains from the bowl, making your toilet look as good as new.
