LOL Heard about this today also on the news thought how cool they could reuse it...instead of wasting...gotta be better then the sand they use here.....Stacy

Pat Sodium Carbonate is in most if not all powdered detergent, it softens water and is the most commonly used Builder in powders. I would think Pat powders will work In hard water however you may need to add a touch more. I'm not really educated in hard water issues, but this is what I've read.

It reminded me of Jonathan Adler..a very colorful guy in all senses..rather, him saying in one of his books he doesn't like neutrals-unless they're from nature, like clay, or yarn, or stone, or wood, or.. When in nature-whatever it might be-we're deeply touched by very different settings ..I don't know why but let's pretend that's because there's invisible hand of the Master that put it all together, and we don't know another worlds, not yet, so we are touched by ours. When in home-if one can get one seventieth of that Master's touch..it changes our general connotations. Because there's texture, variation, light, all this, yes-plus something made by hand, taking this natural things, clay and wood, etc, and working on them, and loving them while working. Simple things-yet they all get to sing. I know this because for example I also have variated terracotta tile in the bath-and it's less variated, just three colors..and it's textured custom too..and we were there when the guys from the shop were working on color and texture , working on samples, showing them to us..we waited with them, we were witnesses to that process, and you see the real excitement and passion that goes into creating and playing with things like that. (they liked the pallette themselves and made a sample of it for the store, and called it "April's". lol) And this excitement, passion and patience is what probably makes what was clay and wood shine under that light. It brings together what they are-natural materials-and what people with passion and patience wished them to be, and got them to be. So. That's why I love my grays and my browns.. Even though my house is pretty colorful-no one will call it neutral It's true, they remind me some scenes from my childhood which I percieve as happy. And all sorts of things. The juxtaposition. Of course I prefer certain grays and certain browns, that's normal. For example I love mostly very warm grays. And (surprize) mostly warm browns)) But also because some of them, I witnessed to be made, I knew them to be painstaikingly made, or I knew nobody made it, it was created like that- and I was just lucky to spot it, like a piece of gray marble with golden rusty streaks..and it makes it a bit more magical. Sense of discovery can come in many shapes. It can be quiet and subdued. And nothing we generaly like even maybe. Yet it still will be a sense of discovery. I would love to do truly neutral room one day, just like a challenge even. yet I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to pull it off..

Yeah - I actually wound up buying 2 different brands of enzyme drain cleaners, used them several times in ALL the drains. I plan on using it again. At first I used the ammonia method, it didn't work either. And yes I did a LOT of online research and did read some statements that it's not good to do the caulking but we needed an immediate fix and will look into getting the toilet checked out by a professional. We did a lot of the things I mentioned previously several times, not just once, man what a nightmare. DH runs like a deer when anything is mentioned about DIY plumbing, very shocked that he even did these 2 things. He's a journeyman electrician and knows his way around that and a few other things but he has a bad phobia about anything plumbing-related. The gnats were either fruit flies or drain gnats (not drain flies) but they look similar, I tend to lean to the drain gnats though, but they do like vinegar, and they also like Kombucha and beer, too. I used them all 3 in the homemade traps.