The Caretakers' Forum

Hope you are all well.

I'm battling with 40+ year old infants toilets and their smell.
I've scrubbed them like I think they've never been scrubbed before, sprayed everywhere with odour neutraliser and left over night and had the 40+ year old tiny bakelite toilet seats soaking in cleanfast overnight, this morning have scrubbed off all the calcified urine marks but it's left the seats looking a little dull.

Anyone have any sure fire tips for getting rid of the smell? We desperately need new cubicle dividers as I'm pretty sure that's where the majority of the smell is coming from as the wood chip is warped where the plastic trim has come off and it's obviously soaked up a lot of pee over the years but it's not within budget at the moment.
I'm paranoid if parents come in and smell it.

Obviously I clean the toilets daily and have done several deep cleans to rid the smell before but it never truly gets rid of it completely.

I'm thinking of ditching the chemicals and trying vinegar and baking soda, has anyone done this and it's worked?

i put some cheap clothes softner from tescos in a spray bottle spray once a week and then rub with mop then Bobs your Uncle

Try Zybax

Urine odour is a very common and difficult problem in school toilets. Up to now there has been no easy solution: however well you clean, the smell tends to linger. This is because splashes of urine penetrate deep beneath the surface of floors and walls via the grouting, cracks or pores, beyond the reach of ordinary cleaners. The typical acrid 'urine' smell comes not from the urine itself, but from the foul-smelling ammonia given off when urine is decomposed by naturally-occurring bacteria. viewtopic.php?t=40022

Try checking the pan connectors on the back or the toilet. We also had a particular smelly set, and like all nothing seemed to truly get rid of the smell.

When I looked 2 of the 4 connectors were “loose” so decided to remove the pan and fit new to all 4 toilets. Just though while we are removing 2, might as well do all.

Instantly they were 100% better…. Found that some of the rubber seals were starting to perish and basically letting the smell directly out of the foul drain. Of course no amount of chemical would have stopped this.

Also fitted new flush valves to a couple that weren’t great. Makes sense at the time as your already pretty much taking the whole system apart.

Was a bit of a fiddly job and seems quite excessive but has done away with the smell completely, so well worth checking

Thanks for replies everyone, a week on and toilets are still smelling fresh. I used a ridiculous amount of odour neutraliser and clean fast we now have 0 urine build up and no awful smell. Think I'll make it a regular thing to take the seats off for a good scrub of them and the fittings.

Wondering if anyone knows of a better company than consortium for the small u shaped toilet seats? Been waiting on one for weeks from them and they sent a £3.20 plastic tray in place of it and are arguing over a refund.