Maybe you meant sodium carbonate. Sodium carbonate (washing soda) isn't just a filler. It softens hard water, binding up the calcium and magnesium so that detergents are not inactivated by them. And it adjusts the pH to a level effective for cleaning. I may try Ecover just because I'm kind of compulsive about trying lots of cleaning products. But in real-world conditions of hard water that is not scalding hot, I'd expect better results from OxiClean. I get a 15-pound box of OxiClean at Costco for I think about $12. Ecover around $4-5/lb is a lot more expensive. I'd have to get equal cleaning power from 1/5 the amount by weight to break even, costwise.

Oh, I wish ours was a non-event snow wise. It keeps snowing and snowing. The guys just headed out with hopes the paved country road between us and the highway has been plowed since they got home awhile ago. Our son has an all wheel drive vehicle and he barely made it through only to get stuck in our neighborhood. Luckily a wonderful farmer, known to all as Grampa, and his son came along and pulled our son out and let hubby park at Grampa's place just up the highway from our turn off. Our county called all trucks in since it's blowing over the highways/roads as fast as they can clear them. It's advised that no one should be out unless it's an emergency. Hopefully they'll (hubby and son) make the two mile round trip without any trouble. It's been like this since just Christmas Eve. Reminds me of when I was kid and once it started snowing it kept snowing until Spring and then it thawed. Just wish everyone could work from home on days like this. Oh and we must have close to three feet of snow now if not more. It's quite beautiful though. I do hope you find what you're looking for. Moonshadow, what a day you had! You are braver than I am. Must be young. LOL.

Casey what happened exactly? I've only ordered one thing from them - an L-shaped curtain rod during our last renovation, and it was fine. But this time I'm considering them for a pedestal sink, toilet, sink faucet, clawfoot tub hardware and all the hinges for our interior doors. When was the last time you ordered from them? Was it the quality?

Here is a followup to my original posting. Installation of the plank flooring is rather easy but preparing the subfloor is anything but! We are very happy with the final results but getting there wasn’t easy. Some of the SUPERCore Xtreme, Cattanooga Hickory, has been down for more than a year. None of it shows any signs of wear, even when inspected carefully. We vacuum all of the floors in the house every week using 2 inexpensive eufy robo vacs and mop once a month. The color does not show the dirt easily. If you walk on it when it is wet after mopping, it often shows footprints when dry, during certain times of the day when the natural light is just right. I expect the floor to be looking good long after I’m gone. I think the SUPERCore Xtreme, Cattanooga Hickory, is an excellent product. It is really tough. It locks together easily if you follow the directions. Delivery was only one week late; very good considering the supply chain issues at that time. The planks had 5 distinct patterns. I was expecting 6. Bear in mind that the characteristic feature of a pattern, such as a unique knot, can appear on the left side or the right side of a plank and might appear at any location along the length of the plank. So there is a lot of variation among the planks. Before putting them down, I separated a few boxes into 5 different piles of planks, based on the pattern. I installed the flooring in our smallest bedroom first, by myself in November 2021. Waited for spring to resume work. I hired a helper in May 2022 for the remainder after a knee became very painful. My helper connected the planks together and marked the pieces to be cut. I selected the planks from the piles for him to put down and and made the cuts, so I could remain on my feet. I used an electrically powered table saw, jigsaw and a mitre saw to make the cuts. Discovered weeks later that I tore the lateral meniscus in my right knee, probably from getting up and down from the floor so much. Had surgery on the knee in November 2022. Not sure when I’ll start the last small bedroom. All rigid core plank flooring that locks together and floats on top of the sub floor requires a subfloor that is unusually flat. The floor does not have to be level. It does have to be flat. If the subfloor has significant peaks and valleys, (high spots and low spots) the relatively rigid planks will bridge over the low spots, leaving an air space between the top of the subfloor and the bottom of the plank. Stepping on a plank that is bridging over a low spot will cause a popping or snapping sound. You may find the popping and snapping sounds to be annoying. I have learned that most of these noises subside, almost completely, after several months. If the valley is too deep, your weight will stress the tongue and groove locking mechanism too much. Repeated stepping on such a spot will likely cause it to fail. Then the planks may move independently of one another and come apart. That would be a serious problem. Our one story home was built in 2000. It has a concrete subfloor. I have installed the SUPERCore Xtreme, Cattanooga Hickory in one small bedroom, a large bedroom/sitting room and a laundry room. In every room I had to flatten the subfloor before installing the plank flooring. I did the small bedroom first. After watching several Youtube videos, I decided to grind down the high spots instead of filling in the low spots. I bought all new gear to do the job, since I had 950 sq ft of flooring to install. That was a big mistake. Grinding down a concrete floor is an extremely slow, noisy, dirty, dusty, hazardous, and physically demanding job. Here is a photo of the floor in the small bedroom. In subsequent rooms I filled in the low spots with LevelQuik RS Self-Leveling Underlayment, made by Custom Building Products. Mixing and applying this product requires at least 2 people. It’s sold by The Home Depot and others. I did not cover the entire floor with the leveling compound. That would have required about 3 times as much leveling compound and would have raised those floors about ⅛ “ which I didn’t want to do. (Self-Leveling is a misnomer. The stuff is the consistency of thin pancake batter and requires some assistance and tooling to make a smooth flat surface. For the purpose of creating a flat subfloor for plank flooring in a home, I suggest that you add about 10% more water than the directions indicate. Doing so will make it flow better without adversely affecting its performance when cured.) Prior to applying the leveling compound, I applied Multi-Surface Bonding Primer (MBP) to the concrete floor to ensure a tight bond between the original concrete and the leveling compound. (MBP is also made by Custom Building Products.) If you use the MBP you can feather the leveling compound to zero, and don’t have to maintain a minimum thickness of ⅛” over the entire floor. Here are some photos of the floor in the large bedroom completed in June 2022. Finding the borders of the high and low spots is tedious. Next time I will probably pour water in the previously identified low spots of the floor. Then I’ll mark the boundaries of the “puddles” with a large permanent black felt tip maker. Then vac up the water, let dry, apply MBP, and finally the leveling compound. The floor in the laundry room between the garage and the kitchen gets a lot of abuse. It was installed in September 2022. As you can see, the color of the flooring is highly dependent upon the light. That's why it's important to look at samples in your home. Paige; The Flooret Modin Base Soho sample that I tested was more abrasive compared to the SUPERCore Xtreme, Cattanooga Hickory sample. I hope this update is useful for some of you who are considering rigid core vinyl plank flooring.