Selleys Ask an Expert: Tips for Cleaning

Selleys Ask an Expert: cleaning questions answered

This is the index of cleaning questions the Selleys technical team has answered. Each one is a real customer question with a specific answer, so if your question is close to one of the headings below, go straight to that page rather than reading a general cleaning guide.

Most of the questions here are about one product — Selleys Original Sugar Soap. That is not an accident. Sugar Soap is a professional-strength, concentrated alkaline cleaner with a pH of around 11, which makes it very effective on grease and grime and also means it has genuine limits. Most of the questions below exist because someone reached the edge of one of those limits.

Sugar Soap: what it is and where it stops

The three limits that account for most of the questions on this page are printed on the product's own data sheet:

• Wipe it off immediately from aluminium and brass surfaces.
• Rinse it well from glass before the product dries.
• Floors, baths and shower recesses must be rinsed well after use.

Nearly every "it left a mark" question traces back to one of those three, usually combined with a stronger dilution than the recommended half a cup into a 5 litre bucket.

Questions about what Sugar Soap can clean

• Preparing ceilings for painting — the dilution to use, and whether you need to rinse before repainting.
• Can Sugar Soap clean timber? — using it on a deck stain, and why it must be rinsed off before it dries.
• Marks on wallpaper — a diluted mix on wallpaper in sound condition, with a spot test first.
• Removing mould under eaves — Sugar Soap cleans visible mould off but does not kill the spores, so it can return.
• Using Sugar Soap to clean a shower — the directions, the rinse-off rule, and a better-suited alternative.

Questions about where Sugar Soap should not go

• What Sugar Soap does to brass and aluminium — it can tarnish or discolour bare metal. Do not use it there.
• Can I clean windows with Sugar Soap? — the short answer is no, and why.
• Can I add bleach to Sugar Soap? — never mix them. Use one, rinse thoroughly, then the other if you must.
• Sugar Soap and septic tank systems — believed safe in most systems, but check with the manufacturer of yours.
• Cleaning car interior fabric — a specialty automotive product is recommended instead.

Fixing marks Sugar Soap has left behind

• Streaking on windows after using Sugar Soap — what the deposit actually is, and the dilution that avoids it.
• Removing white Sugar Soap marks from glass — how to clear the salts deposit and keep the glass clean afterwards.

Scale, lime and calcium

Sugar Soap is an alkaline salts-based cleaner, and hard-water scale is a mineral deposit that responds to acid rather than alkali. These two questions cover the mismatch and what Selleys recommends instead.

• Removing lime and calcium from bathroom tiles
• Descaling a washing machine — including the warning to check with your machine's manufacturer first.
• Removing fertiliser rust stains from concrete

Oven cleaning

• Can I use Selleys Oven Clean on oven door glass? — no, and the answer explains what to do if it gets on the glass.
• Where to buy Oven Plus Heavy Duty Gel

For the whole job start to finish, see how to clean your kitchen oven.

Removing cured adhesives and sealants

These two get asked constantly, and both answers are the same in substance: once these products cure, solvents will not save you.

• Removing Kwik Grip once dry
• Removing cured Selleys No More Gaps

For cured silicone and other sealants specifically, Selleys Sealant Remover is the product made for the job, and how to remove old sealant walks through the method.

Where to go next

If your question is not on this list, the product pages carry the directions, dilutions and limitations for each cleaner: the multi-purpose cleaner range including all the Sugar Soap variants, mould removal, oven cleaners, glass cleaning and bathroom cleaning.

For longer how-to guides rather than single questions, see top 5 Sugar Soap hacks and how to eliminate mould in your home.

One rule that applies to all of it

Test in an inconspicuous area first. It appears on nearly every Selleys cleaning data sheet, and it is the single instruction that would have prevented most of the questions collected on this page.

Safety: the two products behind most of these questions

Two products account for most of the questions collected above, and both carry the signal word Danger.

Original Sugar Soap is classified H318 — causes serious eye damage, Category 1. That is the only hazard class assigned to it, and it comes from the same property the page above describes as its strength: a pH of around 11. The alkalinity that lifts grease off a ceiling, and that tarnishes bare brass and aluminium, is also what makes an eye splash a permanent injury rather than a sting.

Connect that to the work these questions describe. Preparing ceilings for painting means a sponge above your head and a solution running back down your forearm towards your face. Using it neat on stubborn marks — which the directions allow — means concentrate on a sponge squeezed by hand. Both are upward-facing, close-range jobs. Wear sealed eye protection for ceiling work, not just safety glasses, and gloves for neat use. A splash needs a 15-minute flush and a Poisons Information call.

The instruction never to mix it with bleach, already given above, is worth taking seriously for the same reason: you would be adding an unknown reaction to a Category 1 eye hazard you are holding at arm's length.

Selleys Sealant Remover is H304 — may be fatal if swallowed and enters airways (aspiration hazard, Category 1), with H226 (flammable liquid and vapour), H336 (may cause drowsiness or dizziness) and H315 (causes skin irritation). It is Poison Schedule S5 and Dangerous Goods Class 3, UN 1133, Packing Group II.

H304 has one practical consequence that differs from every other product on this page: if it is swallowed, do not induce vomiting — the danger is the liquid being drawn into the lungs on the way back up. Call the Poisons Information Centre. It also means keeping it in its own labelled container, never decanted into a drink bottle.

H226 and H336 are about where it gets used. Stripping old sealant means a shower recess, a vanity cupboard or under a sink — small, enclosed volumes with the door shut. Open the window, leave the door open, and keep it away from a gas water heater pilot.

Lower-hazard alternatives in the range. For spot cleaning rather than a bucket job, Instant Sugar Soap is signal word Warning with a single classification, H319 (serious eye irritation), and Sugar Soap Wipes are Warning with H315 and H319. Neither carries H318. Where the job is marks on a wall rather than a whole ceiling, that is a real reduction for no loss of result.

Poisons Information Centre — 131 126 in Australia, 0800 764 766 in New Zealand.