Cillit Bang Power Cleaner > Reviews (34)

Sitting in front of me, on the desk adjacent to the screen, in order to inspire me to write this review, I have a two tone violet and pink trigger release spray bottle.

The "big splash" label reads:

"Power CleanerCillit BANG Power Grime and Lime Cleaner"

Those are the manufacturers capitals incidentally not mine! The subscript below, shown under a picture of a bath, sink and shower respectively "Grime, Stains, Limescale.

This eye catching container is 95% full and has been that way for several months now.

When it comes to household cleaning, I tend to be a bit of a traditionalist, give me a tried and tested product or method for every time!

As in most households I suspect, certainly those of the chattering classes, unable to afford a housekeeper, the domestic chores are pretty much divided up between Mrs Richada and myself, largely on an unspoken basis.

We both know she dos not like gardening - "digging in the dirt" as she calls it, so we live in a bungalow with a small low maintenance

garden which for an hour or so per week in the summer, I actually enjoy tending in a therapeutic kind of way.

My wife enjoys trying various products; if something is new it tends to appear in the trolley at Asda. We have a comprehensively stocked cleaning cupboard then.

The Cillit BANG story started following Mrs Richarda viewing a daytime TV programme which was praising this product to the heights. She was so impressed with the claims that upon my return home told me that she had seen "just the thing" to clean the bathroom with.

Living here on the South Coast, high up on the downs our water is filtered through layers of chalk, not only is it very "hard" water but it also leaves a healthy deposit of limescale on all surfaces with which it comes into contact.

This is particularly the case with the shower where a fine spray of chalk dries like concrete all over the tiles in the bathroom. For some reason, and if any of you can explain why, I'd love to hear it; the grout between the tiles turns dirty orange when it reacts with the water.

Being born and bred in this area I am used to it and after around 25 years of cleaning, (one of the first "New Age Men!") I have a fair idea of what fluids, scrubbers and other suitable implements to apply to remove the dreaded limescale.

Arriving from a soft water (when available from the mains!) area Poland some years ago, my wife neither knew what limescale was or indeed that you needed to remove it in order to make any headway on bathroom cleaning whatsoever. For her it was more of an inconvenience in attempting to raise a lather when it came to personal hygiene and the cleaning of teeth……

…..Which very neatly introduces you to my bathroom cleaning habits - that's the bathroom "hardware" rather than my personal "software" incidentally!

In the winter, often on a Wednesday evening, Mrs Richada phones home to Poland, leaving me at a loss for some time. Never one to waste precious time, 'born to work' as she would tell you, it is my habit on occasion to take advantage of this spare time in order to wage war on the dreaded bathroom limescale.

My method, or rather more specifically my appearance whilst doing this make shock you, but I do have it on very good authority that some big name celebrities also share my habit.

Bathroom cleaning is carried out in the nude.

I hope that statement does not put you off of reading some of my other much more sensible reviews, but I would invite you to think about the practicality of it for a few moments.

Regrettably Richada has a tendency to be a pretty messy devil. If one person in a party of 8 gets up from the dinner table with food down his front, that'll be me. My clothes can collect red winestains whilst the bottle is still on the shelf in Tesco! I get moaned at for washing the car in light coloured clothes, splashes of black liquefied brake dust always finish up all over me. Now if we had a bathroom large enough to get the car into I'd have it cracked you see, but regrettably no. I do not wish to offend the neighbours and local school children by washing the car in the buff, even if the car is on our own private driveway at the time!

So here we are. Mrs R is on the phone to the parents, I'm clicking my heels. Go to the aforementioned well stocked kitchen cupboard remove half a dozen new "wonder products" in order to get to the tried and trusted Viakal. A little tuppence halfpenny plastic scrubber from the same cupboard, replace assorted "wonder products" and off I go. Take off clothes, in bedroom, make sure bathroom door is CLOSED, do not want Viakal splashed all over hall carpet, and Bob's your uncle (sorry Bill), 35 minutes later we have a sparkling clean bathroom, dripping Richada, use your own imagination here, and a nice clean shower to hose myself down with at the end of the exercise.

Into PJ's all ready for forty winks.

Oh that all cleaning could be so efficient.

Hold up, you requested a new category for Cillit BANG! So far I have read here about the dubious advantages of naked cleaning, (my wife thinks it hilarious EVERY TIME!) and the fact that with minimum effort Viakal can clean a whole, average sized bathroom top to bottom in the time it takes to "p h o n e …h o m e….."

Yes Cillit BANG! I am quite sure that if you have a TV then you have seen Barry Scott advertising this, the end to you worries in the bathroom. Oh yes Barry, come round here and tell me that!

Well I'd got to the shutting the door part, twist the pretty pink nozzle and squirt at limescale. From previous experience it always pays to start with the heaviest soiling first and work upwards, then the tiles and grouting at the bottom get a really good soaking allowing you to wash off the residue and with it, limescale quite easily. From previous experience I know that some products (Viakal) simply work and that others simply do not.

Here I am, standing in the bath, pretty pink foaming (it comes out of the nozzle in foam form) Cillit Bang rushing down the wall into the bath and over my feet, foaming out of every orifice in the grouting between the many dozen tiles. The grouting is turning redder and redder, I proceed to throw water from a washing up bowl over the tiles, the foam subsides leaving the limescale on them a feint reddish pink colour having removed not one single stain from it.

I wish I could explain the smell to you here but I'm struggling, even having just been out to the bathroom and sprayed some into the hand basin. The closest as I remember it, was from some terrible failed school chemistry lesson after which the classroom had to be evacuated on safety grounds……..

Whilst I was 'born to work', there is nothing worse for me than wasting my time, especially on something that you are supposed to be improving the look of. For me cleaning is a form of therapy, it is rewarding, however little a job, you can take pride in it when well done.

Naturally in the interests of experimental trial we also tried this "wonder cleaner" on several other surfaces, the plastic shower screen was died a gentle pink colour, the chalk merely picking up whatever die that they have used in this product. The kitchen sink proved an equal superior rival to the dreaded Cillit BANG.

All of which explains to you why 95% of this product remains in the bottle.

No, I don't think I'll attempt to flog what's left of it on eBay, maybe a local school might find it useful in their chemistry lab.

If I do not find a product useful, why on earth should I expect some poor sucker to take it off my hands anyway?

Cillit BANG?

You'd be better off banging your head against the bathroom tiles!