Why can't I get my shower screen clean!
'I've tried every product out there to clean my glass shower screen of soap scum but nothing works. It actually looks worse now than before!" We hear comments like this time and time again. Is soap scum really the problem? Probably not. In actual fact what you're probably seeing on the glass is actually glass corrosion. 'What!' you might think 'glass can't corrode. It's not metal' but glass can corrode and it does react to a number of various and readily available cleaning products. Yes, that's right, glass is NOT IMPERVIOUS as most people think. When glass corrodes it's often the result of highly alkaline cleaning products....but hold on, lets go back to the beginning of your showers life which is well before it showed up in your home as a shower screen...Your glass in your home is most likely soda glass, no, we're not discussing the drinking soda type. It is the mineral 'sodium' that soda glass gets it's name from. It's called 'soda glass' due to there being sodium and a number of other various minerals added to give glass it's desirable characteristics. Your glass has silica + sodium oxide (Na2O) + lime (CaO) + magnesia (MgO) + alumina (Al2O3) in it. In fact the actual silica content may be as low as 70%. Some of these additional minerals have varying negative impacts on the glass when it comes to cleaning and maintenance and one of those is its sensitivity to alkalies and many of the dissolved minerals and additives found in tap water these days. The result? As soon as that new beautiful clear shower glass gets it's first shower of water on it a process of water staining and corroding of one sort or another begins to occur almost unnoticed. You, the diligent caring home cleaner, clean the shower glass as needed and it looks so much better! After some weeks or months the same cleaning process doesn't seem to bring about the same beautiful clean and clear results. For some reason there appears to be soap scum building up on the glass. Those white hazy rings are more noticeable than ever. Time for you to get tough so down you go to get the strongest cleaner you can find...this is where it often goes belly up. Remember that glass with it's various added minerals is susceptible to damage from alkalies and now you've just bought the strongest cleaner you can find which is likely to be a strongly alkaline formula. Yes, it'll remove the soiling and soap scum but it's only going to make the water staining/glass corrosion worse, much worse. Now it's got a white hazy appearance all over. It looks absolutely dreadful! Is all lost? Can the glass be restored or is it a throw away job? To be continued....
