How to get rid of sandy residue and silt in the toilet tank
Mineral silt and sediment build up in toilet tanks due to changing water supply systems, leaving stubborn residue that requires manual cleaning or bleaching. Removing this water usually involves tedious trips to dump a shop vac or dealing with messy setups, making the whole process a major hassle.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Using thick bleach to remove residue
- 2Scrubbing the bowl walls
- 3Cleaning out sediment manually from the toilet tank
- 4Using a shop vacuum to empty the toilet bowl
- 5Carrying water out to the garden in buckets
- 6Lifting the toilet straight into a cement mixing tub
- 7Using cheaper bulk sodium polyacrylate instead of branded water-absorbing crystals
- 8Using a bucket and a sponge
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Do not buy liquid lock. I buy a 5lb bag of sodium polyacrylate for 30bucks on Amazon. It's an insane racket for oatey to sell a few grams for 4 bucks”source ↗
“over the last six months she’s been getting this residue in both toilets. It doesn’t come off easily with cleaners though bleach does remove it.”source ↗
“she says the city (Vancouver) did change over to a new piping system. So maybe that’s it? How long would it last?”source ↗
“usually its two trips out to the garden to dump the water before I can safely pull the toilet, add stairs and multiple doors and pets and cleaning the shop vac and its kind of pain in the ass...”source ↗
“itd be nice to just lug the auger in and get it done without the shop vac.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
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