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August 1, 2024. A move from DEI to DEA. Toilet Bowl Update

This posting is not about The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) but about Deliberative Engineering Assessment.


Thank You to the many who responded to my inquiry about my Toilet Bowl ring. Suggestions included using a pumice stone (one reader even had Bezos send me some) all the way to using muriatic acid. 

At this point (just like with homebrew ham gear that has gone awry) we first come up with a list of the possible scenarios to follow. (DEI part.) But critical to those possible solutions is the secondary impacts. Thus, our DEA is a risk assessment of the proposed solutions. How many times have we said let's just apply power only to see a mushroom cloud over the workbench and quickly following the smell of burnt parts. 

Scraping the bowl with pumice stone may clean the ring. However, will this scar the ceramic coating so that subsequent ring build up will appear as black mold. I would classify this as High Risk to several critical parts of your anatomy when seated at the bowl. The muriatic acid presents that same scaring problem but likely needs hazmat gear during the application including breathing apparatus and now that becomes a risk to life.

My DEA is telling me to get another piece of paper and to fully assess the risks of each of the proposed solutions. Suddenly the baking soda and vinegar appears the least risk as a starting place and the muriatic acid as the highest risk.

I will keep you posted. But we at least have a process to start our toilet bowl cleaning adventure.

TYGNYB

73's
Pete N6QW

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