Shower Spray Progress

You may say your life is more exciting than mine, but then you would be a fool. I am still making progress on my daily shower spray.

I decided to check the ingredients and see what real chemists put in these products. The most useful combination I found (easiest to duplicate) was “nonionic surfactant” and lactic acid.

I am not a housekeeping chemist, but I was not raised in a cave, either. I have seen the phrase “nonionic surfactant” before. It’s on the labels of dishwashing liquids. Dawn is full of a nonionic surfactant. I guess it’s synonymous with “detergent.”

Does this mean Dawn is just as good as the surfactant in the store spray? Danged if I know. Maybe there is a huge variety of surfactants out there, with different qualities. But I have a jug of Dawn sitting around, so experimentation is cheap. Dawn is what I used in my last batch, and it seems to do the job.

I believe the lactic acid is to keep minerals from depositing on shower surfaces. This must be why people use vinegar in homemade products. It’s an acid that cuts calcium deposits. Vinegar smells, so my guess is that lactic acid is in commercial products because it does the same job without the stink.

Sadly, lactic acid is not available nearby in large cheap containers. Also, I don’t know how much I would need. Liquid acids are solutions, and the solvent is water. There’s a big difference between an acid with a lot of water and an acid with very little.

Muriatic acid (weak hydrochloric acid) is available at hardware stores, but it would probably be rough on grout. It eats ceramics in a hurry. Maybe lactic acid does the same thing.

I considered adding CLR to the spray. It’s a commercial product that eats mineral deposits. It’s supposed to eat rust, too, but I have never seen any evidence that it works. Electrolysis is the best way to get rust off of stuff, and if you can’t use that, I would go with phosphoric acid.

I don’t know what’s in CLR, but it will damage aluminum and a bunch of other stuff, so it’s out.

I wonder if citric acid would work. I’ll bet it would, and it wouldn’t smell like vinegar. I would need some cheap lemon juice. Looking around online, I see that citric acid is commonly used to remove scale from things.

The stuff I’m using now seems to be doing the trick, though.

You can buy citric acid on the web for eight bucks a pound. It’s a solid, which is something that has always confused me. I’m familiar with citric acid as a cooking ingredient. It’s also called “sour salt.” It makes foods sour. I’m used to seeing acids in liquid form, so the idea of acid powder is strange.

Maybe someone who took organic chemistry can explain.

Or someone can Google it, find the answer, provide it in a comment, and pretend they already knew it. Not that people ever do that.

I think a quarter of a cup of cheap lemon juice would be a good addition.

I don’t know if the various ingredients would react with each other.

Dealing with soap scum is a drag, so any semi-automated solution is a blessing.

I have a steam machine for removing crud from surfaces. I suppose it would work for soap scum. It works on baked-on oven grease. But it would be more work than scrubbing, and it would not be great for paint.

It is imperative that I succeed at this. The thought of spending three bucks a bottle for shower spray is just too painful for me.