While working on a sink drain, I discovered a small leak in a bottle of Clorox Bathroom Bleach Foamer has eaten a 2"x4" wood part of the inside bottom part of the vanity. Where you store such products. It is the culprit. No doubt about that. About 1/4" of the wood (pressboard of some type) is eaten through. It has not gone all the way through. I have cleaned it up as best I can with water.
But certainly some remains. I want to deactivate this bleach/base.
Bleach is a base. My thought is to neutralize the bleach base by wiping with a bit of vinegar, an acid. I’m aware that mixing bleach with Ammonia or other acids is a no no. But… I could lock the room down and put the fan on.
Odd, that this bleach has caused such damage. It’s not like it’s just a little wet and rotted. I got an Alien blood thing going on here.
I would get out yer trusty Dremel tool and cut a larger square out of the bottom (say, 2” all around the bleached zone) and throw that away, then get a piece of (e.g.) particle board and cut to fit the entire bottom, then slip into place.
When I do the first thing you recommend, I replace with pressure treated plywood. Salvaged from older buildings preferably as the outgassing is about done with.
The second option always brings men in black to my neighborhood skulking around. Then the neighbors look at me even funnier than normal for a while.
I’d pull the whole bottom out of that if possible and replace it. No telling how far the bleach has affected the glue holding the particle board together. You don’t need pressure, just get plywood or particle board (MDF) and coat it with urethane varnish, or just some contact paper,
If all you’re trying to do is stop the situation proceeding further, just remove the bleach, open the cabinet, and air out the room.
Household bleach dissipates into air and breaks down with light. You don’t want to breathe it while it’s doing this, but it’s not going to keep on eating your house unless more keeps being added.
(If there are other active ingredients involved besides sodium hypochlorite, that answer may be wrong. I don’t know what’s actually in that product.)
Uh yeah to cutting it out. But seems REALLY unnecessary. I certainly have to tools to do so. An oscillating saw would do best IMHO. I have one, but really, don’t want to fool around with this for an afternoon. Anyway, it’s just a small 2"x4" patch of wood that is effected. Just want to keep the bleach from causing future damage as it has soaked into that little area. Just want to neutralize it before it eats all the way through the bottom. That’s why I thought some acid to bring the PH closer to zero might prevent further damage. MAYBE 2oz of bleach leaked out of the bottle into the wood over a period of 6 months.
I would use pressure treated plywood. Just putting a thin coat over regular plywood or (shudder) MDF is not going to cut it if there is a serious leak. I once replaced the bottom of a cabinet with regular plywood, covered with Formica (even better than varnish or paper, right?). A few months later there was a slow leak from a connection in that cabinet, and the water dripped onto the Formica, ran over the edge and infiltrated the plywood edge. It swelled up and cracked and the plys delaminated. I really wish I’d used pressure treated wood there.
Yes, I read the OP. I was responding directly to #5. But if it were my cabinet I would patch the hole. The cabinet that I replaced the bottom in had limited water damage, probably comparable to yours. But if you don’t like my advice, feel free to ignore it.
I am really hoping that perhaps an acid like vinegar may help stop the base effect of chlorine. Looking closer, it does not look like particle board. I thought it was just a wood laminate over pressboard. I think, though, it’s a solid piece of wood. Going to have to inspect closer. It’s sort of drying so I should be able to pick at it a bit with a knife and see what type of wood it is.
I’ve never seen a reaction to wood like this. It’s a quality vanity.
Laminate over pressboard. I suspect the chlorine reacted to the glue in the pressboard. When I discovered it, it had clearly bubbled up at some point. Not buckled. But bubbled, like foam.
I will/would have to take drawer hangers out to cut in a patch. And I would not be able to cut it out, and slap something on top. It would have to be fit in like a puzzle piece or it would be in the way of the drawer. Since it’s not structural, and has not burned through, I would rather just stop the chlorine in it’s tracks by raising the PH of the affected area, and then letting it dry out.
I’ve done this on myself by putting vinegar on lye burns from concrete.
OK, from a chemical point of view, yes sodium hypochlorite is (mildly) basic, but ammonia is a very strong base, not an acid. When you mix bleach and ammonia, you will produce chloramine vapors, which are highly toxic. Mixing a strong acid with bleach will generate chlorine gas, still poisonous, but not as dangerous as the smell of chlorine gas will get most people to leave the area quickly. Both are bad news, though.
Left to its own devices, sodium hypochlorite will break down to produce elemental chlorine, which badly wants an electron, so bad that it will take it from just about anything. I suspect this is what is happening to your wood. The hydrocarbons that make up the wood are losing an electron to the chlorine, which is oxidizing the wood. Not quite like burning, but the effect is similar; the wood is decomposing. If it is not wood, but an “engineered material” (MDF, or the like), the chlorine may have a stronger [del]effect[/del] (or is that affect; heck, I’ll just use impact) impact on the binder than the wood component, it really just depends on the chemistry of the composite used.
Putting a weak acid on the bleach will speed up the decomposition of the sodium hypochlorite, making the level of chlorine higher (at least until the supply of hypochlorite is exhausted). It might produce some chlorine gas, but if it has already saturated in the wood, the chlorine gas will be just about as oxidizing as elemental chlorine, so you aren’t going to win using this strategy. You can try to flush any hypochlorite out of the wood with fresh water, otherwise all you can really do is just wait. The hypochlorite will break down and the damage will stop.
As for the damage that has happened (and may continue for a bit), you aren’t going to reverse it. As has been mentioned, cutting out and replacing the damaged material is about all you can do.
Old school.house wife here. Just air it out. If you feel the need to vinegar it. Do it. Won’t hurt nothing. You’re overthinking it. IMO.
I’ve cleaned lots of under cabinet spaces. Lots of junk get spilled under there. I keep aluminum oven trays under my kitchen sink, to put cleaners on.
Prevention, from now on.
And don’t holler at me, I’m an emotional ‘wrek’ today.
Thanks. A solid answer. I wasn’t planning on using ammonia. Thought that perhaps a wipe of vinegar might help to get the PH closer to zero. Counter act the damage that the chlorine is doing that is soaked in. I guess I was not clear. And that does not sound like a good strategy.
As it is not structural in any way, I’m not planning on replacing it. It’s not even a hole. I’ll flush it more with water, and wait. If it appears to continue to eat the material, I’ll then cut it out as you would gangrene.
Thanks Beck. It was an odd find. I was moving stuff out from under the sink to make room to pull the trap and fix a clog.
“What’s this? I say. Hmmmm. Something must have leaked. I started wiping it up, and instead of up, it went down into the wood. OhOh, I say.”
I had to inspect closely to find the offending bottle of cleaner. How it got punctured remains a mystery. Perhaps I pissed off Mr. Clean.
Apologies if I have been harsh in this thread. Rough winter and spring. Summer hasn’t even knocked on the door yet. Two feet of snow this week was hopefully springs last visit.
