Sassylass

I agree with Lime Away, I tried everything else and it was the only one that worked for me!! My house will never be without it now.

Endora

CLR used with hot water is how we rid our basement toilet of hard-water stains and deposits. We let the solution sit for an hour, then scrubbed. Took two treatments.

roguequilter

when we moved to current house the toilets were so bad that if i'd had the money i would have replaced them. everyone had suggestions ..vinegar, CLR and several other commercial & home diy products. nothing worked. found the pumice sticks while cruising isle of home cleaning stuff at Ace hardware. was afraid they'ed scratch & damage ..but i was desperate. i tried & as mentioned above ..lots of elbow greese for that initial cleaning. now i use them all the time..always a bit of elbow grease needed, but they aren't black like they were when we moved in. we have a water softener ..had water tested recently by guy who maintains the tank ..he said our water was an "18" ..hardest water he's seen. anyway ....i've been using the pumice sticks on my toilets for over ten yrs now and there's no damage to porcelain surface. they don't stain any more easily now after years of cleaning with pumice sticks.

Chasing Hawk

I just bought some CLR to soak the shower head and the other faucets in. I am going to try this on the toilets. We have well water and it leaves that icky water line ring even though I clean the pottys several times a week.

Prism99

I think there are different types of pumice sticks sold for toilets. Years ago I bought one and it was quite hard -- did not crumble as I used it. Recently I bought another one from Amazon, and this one is very soft -- crumbles quite a bit when I use it.

It's true that toilets are made of porcelain and can be damaged by abrasion. Pumice should always be used with lots of water for lubrication. I don't drain the toilet when I use one; having the water in the bowl is actually helpful to using pumice. I much prefer the crumbly pumice stick I have now because I am less likely to damage the porcelain using it. With either stick, I would use lots of water and not apply too much pressure.

I do think older toilets may be made of hardier porcelain than newer ones. With the new ones you also have to be careful about liquid toilet cleaners. Someone (not me!) must have splashed a little bit of it on the toilet rim and didn't clean it up right away. The porcelain in that spot has lost its shine.

Edit: I should add that our water is very hard, but we do have a good water softener. Even so, because the water softener cycles on and off, I'm sure there are times when our water is more on the hard side than the soft side. This is why we still get some hard water stains in the toilet and shower. It would be totally unbearable if we didn't have the water softener. When we first moved in and didn't have one yet, there was obvious build-up in just 3 weeks.

MarleneC

We have a water softener on our well and I still get those stains. I have also used the pumice sticks. Now, I either pour some bleach in the toilet or toilet cleaner with bleach and let it sit for awhile. Makes the toilet clean again. I've used CLR and Lime-A-Way and they haven't worked as well. We also change our filters about every 6 months at most. We use the micro filters.

tranum

My garden potting bench has an old fashioned porcelain sink with two side drainboards that came out of my parents basement and had paint spills and rust stains. I tried everything and a good old pumice stone got it clean as a whistle.

Kitsie

No, no, no! I have the hardest water. We have a well and the previous owner did not care for the toilets.
My "go to" learned here on the board is to plop 3 denture cleaner tablets in the bowl and let sit over night!
Also works to soak the shower head in a pie plate with a couple of them.

Cactus Stitchin

I'm with Kitsie! (In fact, I believe I may be the one who told her about it!) When we used to visit my father-in-law in Tucson his shower head was all but unusable. My husband wanted to replace it for him but I remembered an HGTV ad that said 'the same thing you clean your dentures with will clean your shower head'. It worked so well that we laughed, laughed about it at the time.

Stitchnripper

I am just wondering if water in different parts of the world have different chemical compositions as far as hardness/softness goes. Because when we lived in south Louisiana we had "soft" water from artesian wells. Delicious right from the tap. Hard to rinse soap off. But left toilet rings. None of the commercial products worked for me except early versions of a product called Ring King. But then the formula was changed and it didn't work any more. I tried denture tablets, Coke, all the commercial products, vinegar, bleach (not together) and finally the only thing that worked was a pumice. In metro Atlanta we have different water and it doesn't taste good from the tap but after 2 years toilets are still easy to clean and don't get rings. Curious for sure