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do you clean stained water bottles?

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Road Cycling “It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.” -- Ernest Hemingway

do you clean stained water bottles?

Old 03-29-14, 01:19 AM
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do you clean stained water bottles?

by stain, I mean probably some kind of fungus that's entrenched on the bottom of the bottle. I've tried soap, scrubber, vinegar, even detergent, with decent results on one, but no luck on the other one ( and I scrubbed hard). I wonder if the stain is just residue that's latched onto the material, which is probably something close to low density PE, and not really harmful. I'm just curious to see if others clean theirs, re-purpose them or just toss them.
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Old 03-29-14, 01:26 AM
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Full strength Clorox
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Old 03-29-14, 02:33 AM
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If undiluted bleach doesn't clean it, I would toss or re-purpose.

BTW, "even detergent"? What do you wash your bottles with before they get all stained?
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Old 03-29-14, 08:09 AM
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I use a warm 10% solution of chlorine bleach for maybe 20 minutes.
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Old 03-29-14, 12:52 PM
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Whatever dishwasher soap we use seems to have a little bleach in it as my bottles always come out squeaky clean.
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Old 03-29-14, 01:03 PM
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I've spend thousands of dollars on my bike, so when a bottle gets that funky, what's a few bucks on a new one?
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Old 03-29-14, 02:52 PM
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Try OxiClean and hot water. I found out how effective OxiClean was in my home brewing operation and it has carried over into everything else.
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Old 03-29-14, 06:36 PM
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Chlorine Bleach about 1 ounce per bottle.
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Old 03-29-14, 06:41 PM
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Prevention is the best cure. Bottles are cheap.
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Old 03-29-14, 06:50 PM
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Bleach does the trick for me.
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Old 03-29-14, 06:52 PM
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Do you have aluminium bottle cages, and is the funk actually on the outside, caused by the oxidisation of the alloy?
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Old 03-29-14, 07:04 PM
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Originally Posted by spectastic
by stain, I mean probably some kind of fungus that's entrenched on the bottom of the bottle. I've tried soap, scrubber, vinegar, even detergent, with decent results on one, but no luck on the other one ( and I scrubbed hard). I wonder if the stain is just residue that's latched onto the material, which is probably something close to low density PE, and not really harmful. I'm just curious to see if others clean theirs, re-purpose them or just toss them.
Fill it with water, put in less than a half cap full of bleach and let it sit for a few days. Too much bleach will damage the bottle.

If you're not really cheap, but a new bottle.

If you wash them after each use then dry them upside down, they don't get moldy.

Last edited by 2manybikes; 03-29-14 at 07:08 PM.
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Old 03-30-14, 05:39 AM
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Buy Camelbak, rinse well after each use with hot water and occasionally run through the dishwasher.
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Old 03-30-14, 05:55 AM
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A quarter inch or so of regular chlorine bleach in the bottom of the bottle, cap, shake, let sit for a few minutes, shake again, squeeze bleach (carefully) out of drinking spout into sink. Triple rinse with hot water, including rinsing the spout. The best preventative is to rinse bottles that contained any sort of sweetened sports drink ASAP and let air dry upside down. You still need to wash them once in a while, but rinsed and dried will at least keep the funk at bay.
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Old 03-30-14, 09:25 AM
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The Purist water bottles from specialized are pretty great at defending against the staining.
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Old 03-30-14, 09:38 AM
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Regularly washed water bottles (dishwasher or by hand every time) will not get stained.
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Old 03-30-14, 10:21 AM
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Originally Posted by RIRview
I've spend thousands of dollars on my bike, so when a bottle gets that funky, what's a few bucks on a new one?
+1

I also wash in dishwasher which may cause more wear but it is easy and clean/healthy.
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Old 03-30-14, 10:30 AM
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Originally Posted by zandoval
Full strength Clorox
^^this^^


clorox the **** out of them
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Old 03-30-14, 05:03 PM
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What about cleaning the valves on the camelback podium bottles?
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Old 03-30-14, 07:15 PM
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Originally Posted by lennyparis
What about cleaning the valves on the camelback podium bottles?
OxiClean and hot water in the bottle. The OxiClean will foam up and spew out of the valve there by cleaning it.
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Old 03-30-14, 07:41 PM
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Originally Posted by lennyparis
What about cleaning the valves on the camelback podium bottles?
Disassemble them. The clear rubber part pops off, and then there is a white circular plastic clip that holds the blue valve in. All 3 pieces can be removed (carefully) with a butter knife and scrubbed.
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