Head treatment

[rgranger]

Please explain with links. This could be interesting. I can think of a few possibilites, but I'd like to hear where you are going with this, remembering that the concentrations are relatively low.

Not sure what you are asking….

 

[thinwater]

Not sure what you are asking….

You posted an advisory from Berkley. Do you have anything more, or is that all Google turned up?

While I think formaldehyde is a very poor choice, the science on that particular study is very, very weak. While it is possible to form the chemical in question under specific conditions, all of the tests combining dilute HCl and formaldahyde suggest that the carcinogenicity can be accounted for by formadahyde and is probably due to due to the formaldahyde alone. So they the alarm re. boat heads is probably unfounded.

• It will be dilute.
• You won't be exposed because you flushed the head many times before adding acid, I hope.
• You should not be using formaldahyde.
• HCl can be damaging to the head, so I wouldn't use that either. Raritan and others make good products based on phosphoric acid.

But yes, NO FORMALDAHYDE should be preached far and wide.

 

[rgranger]

Please explain with links. This could be interesting. I can think of a few possibilites, but I'd like to hear where you are going with this, remembering that the concentrations are relatively low.

The “it “ in this case was meant to be muriatic acid…. Not

 

[thinwater]

The “it “ in this case was meant to be muriatic acid…. Not

The acid as bought is now typically 10% (This has been done to reduce odor in the consumer market). This is diluted 10:1 for use (1% acid). You typically use about 2 quarts (0.6 ounces acid). There is no formaldahyde in the pipe because you flushed it several times first to avoid other side reactions and wasting acid. Thus the 0.6 ounces is mixed with the 2500 ounces in the holding tank (240 ppm acid), but some of the acid will be spent, so less than 200 ppm. The pH of the holding tank will likely be lowered to 4-5, but not very low.

You could of course use more acid, but the result will still be only tenths of a percent acid in the holding tank. Dilute.

 

[Calif. Ted]

I've been using Odorlos (liquid) for a couple decades now, there is no "head" odor on my boat. If the tank has formaldehyde in it you will take a while to get it flushed out.