Ways to clean up WC tubing

N

noskill

n00b
Joined
Sep 18, 2004
Messages
29
In my TEC I was using distillated water and HydrX, nothing more... Tubing was ClearFlex vynil. After using that for some time tubes went into strange white-green color... I thought -- that's because of coolant temps being somewhere around +45C, but then tried to clean tube and... it become clear again! Some stuff with white-green color went on tubing internal part. WTF is that?

tube_1.jpg


tube_2.jpg


How it could be cleaned? Any ideas?

I thought it would be enough to throw away that tubing and use good one too, but since I can clear that strange thing, tubing is fine.
 
Try running a string through the pipe, on the end of the string, tie s small barrel brush or piece of cloth and then pull it through. Repeate as necessary.
 
I am a musician and I might have a very good device for cleaning those tubes..... if you must know I play trumpet and there is about 6-8 feet of pipe on a trumpet. well you need to clean out your trumpet so you buy a little tool called a trumpet snake... any good music store that sells instruments would have them. they are about 3 feet long and have some stiff bristle brushes at the end. I think they sould work great for this application, and the good part is they only cost about $5 US
 
I get similar buildup on my ClearFlex using distilled water + water wetter, but I think this happens with any kind of tubing. I just get some liquid dish soap (like Dawn or Palmolive) and squirt some in the bathtub with a couple of inches of hot water and then let the tubing soak in it for an hour or so. Then rinse it REALLY good and it should be sparking clear again.

If you want to clean the tubing in an assembled system I have heard that flushing it with a solution of 50% water and 50% Simple Green works quite well to break down that icky buildup.
 
A *sol enema can do the trick too. It consists of 75% Pine-sol and 25% Lysol liquid cleansers. It would also be a good idea to use that brush thing before and after.
 
Hey if mods are around, need to rename this thread: ways to clean up the WC setup :D
 
How long does it take for the buildup to start? And can you notice it with the system running?
 
On my system, I noticed that the clearflex was starting to cloud after 3 or 4 months.
 
cgrant26 said:
On my system, I noticed that the clearflex was starting to cloud after 3 or 4 months.
Click to expand...

Were you running distilled water and HydrX too? I jsut filled my system with distilled water and Hydrx, and I'm using ClearFlex 60 as well. So I'm really curious about this..
 
Dont try to clean this stuff up. It is much easier (and cheaper) just to buy new tubing instead of a tubing snake and all that crap, and it is worth it in the end. You need to run pine-sol through your loop for a while to get the crap out of the radiator, pump, and waterblocks, because it is probably built up there too.

This looks organic to me....
 
Wow guys, thanks for amazing feedback and suggestions :)

cgrant26: that was of course what I did. I used to grab a piece of cotton wool, put some ethyl alcohol on it and pulled it through a small piece of bad tubing to see how it works. I must say it works great and since cotton wool has alcohol on it, it won't left small pieces of wool in tubing. It was easy to do on 10cm tubing cut, but I have external radiator and there's kinda lenghty tube to it -- around 30-40cm. So I need something relatively rigid and lenghty to pull cotton wool through. That could be some metal thing like wire, but it could result in scratching tubing.

Enigma: that's craziest idea I've ever heard of! :)

Blue Falcon:

I get similar buildup on my ClearFlex using distilled water + water wetter, but I think this happens with any kind of tubing.
Click to expand...
Any ideas what cause this buildup to appear?

If you want to clean the tubing in an assembled system I have heard that flushing it with a solution of 50% water and 50% Simple Green works quite well to break down that icky buildup.
Click to expand...
What is Simple Green works? I live outside US, and we do not have product named like that. But I believe we definitely have analog. So, what's that?

PsycoGeek:

Well, selecting between ClearFlex and Tygon always was something like selecting AMD and Intel :) I'd say Tygon is too rigid.

Maximus825:

How long does it take for the buildup to start? And can you notice it with the system running?
Click to expand...
I cannot remember exactly how much time passed, but I believe it was about 1 month. And what did you mean with "can you notice it with the system running"? Of course I can notice it, I posted pics.

killernoodle:

Dont try to clean this stuff up. It is much easier (and cheaper) just to buy new tubing instead of a tubing snake and all that crap, and it is worth it in the end. You need to run pine-sol through your loop for a while to get the crap out of the radiator, pump, and waterblocks, because it is probably built up there too.
Click to expand...
Yes, that's a problem. I can clean tubing, I can even clean MCW50-T waterblock (it disassemblies relatively easy), and I think I can disassemble MCW5002-PT to clean. But I cannot disassemble radiator, so even after cleaning everything, that buildup would spread around system again...

What is pine-sol exactly? I'm not familiar with that kind of things. I suppose "Pine" means kind of wood and "sol" is salt, huh? I know what is Lysol, though :)

I'm not sure why do you think it is organic. How anything could form while HydrX is there? Anyway, when I'll fill system next time after cleaning, I'm going to add few ml's of ethyl alcohol, so it would kill organic if HydrX can't. I'm just not sure yet how it will affect tubing. I suppose OK, since I cleaned tube with alcohol and nothing happened. And of course it couldn't cause anything bad to copper. So I think that would be OK.

I digged a little and found 2 bottles with distilled water. One was just distilled water, another one has HydrX in it. That second bottle with HydrX has the same water my system has, since I used that bottle while filling - I put "incoming" and "outgoing" tubes to it so all water went stir.

Now, guess what I see in "just distilled water" bottle? You're right, nothing. And here's what I see in second bottle:

bottle_1.jpg

bottle_2.jpg


Well, you might not see that on pics, but there's that buildup stuff at the bottom. I'm not sure how to describe it, but it looks like... well... like crap pile:

bottle_3.jpg


I still doubt its organic. It is not breathing (yet?) and I still managed somehow to be not eaten by that THING. Beware, you WC stuff may went into freaking monster one not-so-beautiful day and eat you!
 
i had some build-up when i put my first system together. i think it was due to the fact that i used a bucket that wasn't really clean (just washed my dog in it) and dropped a bleach bomb in there. crudded up the entire loop of tygon and sucked to clean, so i just bought new stuff. it got about as bad as yours after a month too so the result was pretty similar.

after that i got new tubing, rinsed out the rad/pump/wb really well and let them dry thoroughly. put it back together with cheap vinyl tubing from home depot, filled with distilled water, then added a shot of pool cleaner and it was fine for months.

based on the crud build-up, i'd say the stuff is organic. it's slimy when wet, just like any other algae that i've come across.
 
Devilpup said:
i had some build-up when i put my first system together. i think it was due to the fact that i used a bucket that wasn't really clean (just washed my dog in it) and dropped a bleach bomb in there. crudded up the entire loop of tygon and sucked to clean, so i just bought new stuff. it got about as bad as yours after a month too so the result was pretty similar.

after that i got new tubing, rinsed out the rad/pump/wb really well and let them dry thoroughly. put it back together with cheap vinyl tubing from home depot, filled with distilled water, then added a shot of pool cleaner and it was fine for months.

based on the crud build-up, i'd say the stuff is organic. it's slimy when wet, just like any other algae that i've come across.
Click to expand...

so how do you think, will adding a bit of ethylen alcohol kill everything and prevent that buildup to form?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top