The Creek Line House

How to Clean Orange Water Stains

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Are you like us and struggle with these ugly, orange water stains on your tubs, showers and sinks?  Here’s our amazing solution to clean orange water stains without harsh chemicals.Are you like us and struggle with these ugly, orange water stains on your tubs, showers and sinks?  Here's our amazing solution to clean orange water stains without expensive water systems or harsh chemicals.

Does your bathtub ever look like this? We’re on well water here and we get some crazy orange stains on our sinks and bathtubs from time to time caused by excessive minerals like iron and magnesium in our water . There are all kinds of crazy chemical cleaners out there to clean orange water stains, but I’m pretty paranoid about that stuff.
My method is so crazy simple. I’m sharing it because I only figured it out after about a year of trying all different kinds of household cleaners and soaking and microfibre cloths and stuff with nothing really making any difference. I was pretty convinced that it was a permanent stain that would not come out.

Until…

How to clean orange water stains without harsh chemicals. Before.

These little green scrubbies from the dollar store or online for less than a fifty cents each!! I buy a pack and cut them all in half.  Each half lasts me for a few months.

All it takes is a little bit of water, some scrub scrub scrubbing, and….

How to clean orange water stains without harsh chemicals. After.

Really. It’s that easy.

I should note that if you have something funky going on with your water, it’s a good idea to get it tested.   Ours has been tested and it’s just good ol’ fashioned well water. Completely safe, but even with a big softener system in the basement, still a little bit orange.

*update* Another great tool for well owners that I discovered recently is a cleaner called Universal Stone. I’ve been using this on my tub or anywhere else that I have orange water stains and it works maybe even a little better than the green scrubbies if you’re looking for something that’s still safe and environmentally friendly, but with a little more oomph. 🙂

Avoid Expensive Alternatives

Best news, with this newly-discovered secret, we can avoid the major investment in a whole-home filter system – for now, it will surely be worth it at some point – and look to install inexpensive, under-counter filter systems on select highly visible or hard to clean areas in the meantime.  Areas such as the kitchen sink or the clothes washer now that we know how easily we can take care of the bathroom sinks and tubs.

But for now, not a big deal at all!

How to clean orange water stains without harsh chemicals. Amazing.

Try it. You’ll be amazed.

 

Are you like us and struggle with these ugly, orange water stains on your tubs, showers and sinks?  Here's our amazing solution to clean orange water stains without expensive water systems or harsh chemicals.How to clean those weird orange water stains that we get from well water. Gotta try this one out soon!

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Comments

  1. Kathryn says

    I’ll definitely have to try those! We have HORRENDOUSLY iron-y well water at our place– I have to wash all our whites with Iron-Out just to keep them from turning orange! 🙁 And of course the bathtub has always been pretty hopeless… but hopefully this will change that! 🙂

    Reply

  2. maggiegracecreates says

    Please use caution with this — those scrubbies are very abrasive and over time can damage the finish of the tub (especially the one piece fiber glass ones). this creates a vicious cycle — tub looks bad – scrub harder – more damage leads to more porous condition.

    one way to make this stain easier to deal with in a non abrasive manner — plain old car wax. clean the tub well — add the wax and buff off the haze. the wax keeps the stains from sticking as well to the surface. (do not wax the standing area of the tub – safety is foremost) but waxing the walls and sides is a great way to help this – about every three months in my house.

    another trick is to use the “rain-x” windshield stuff on your mirrors – they don’t fog up.

    have a wonderful day

    Reply

  5. Angela says

    I feel your pain girl! We have iron water too and a water softner. When we bought our farm house we didn’t realize the water was that bad. I washed my husband’s dress shirts and ruined every single one of them! It even turned my hair red! lol We built a new house and got the right type of softner for it but it still gets some red stains from time to time when the salt is low in the big barrel thing.

    I had read a blog about a week ago that used the rain x on her shower door and she said it keeps it clean from soap scum for a good month. I’m hoping to get my shower clean enough to give that a try! lol The toilet is a different story. I’m not touching those stains! lol

    Reply

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    Reply

  11. Jill Frank says

    I can’t use anything abrasive on my tub. I really like the idea of the car wax (from one of the comments)! Iron is a difficult stain to deal with – we have lots of it.

    Reply

  13. K. says

    I grew up in a house with horrible well water, I remember for years my mother struggled to remove the yellow stains from our tubs, toilets, and sinks. She eventually discovered a brand of cleaners called “The Works” available at Big Lots and some Dollar stores and never scrubbed again! She couldn’t believe it when she she first tried it.

    Reply

  14. cindy says

    I have the same problem, hadn’t tried the green scrubbie….but have used Bar Keeper’s Friend , in the liquid form, even just pouring some on the fiberglass shower stall, you can see the orange disappear before you wipe it…some scrubbing needed…but is white again !!!

    Reply

  15. Ashley A. says

    I have well water problems too, my main concern is our clothes. It has stained the plastic on the inside of my washer. And some of m clothes come out with big Orange stains. Anyone have a tip to get these out??

    Reply

  18. linda ellis says

    I have had our water tested we high concentration of iron as to our water smells like rotten eggs hot or cold .We do not drink it.We are researching inexpensive filters & where to go find them.but yes my whole tub gets this…..
    .

    Reply

  19. Teresa Peters says

    This is a lifesaving post! I really hate this yellow water stains in the bathroom and I have tried to clean them multiple times with no result. Thank you for sharing! I will definitely try your advice!

    Reply

  21. Nancy says

    We had well water at one time. It was good water,but left a yellow stain in dishwasher, etc and we ended up taking our whites to a laundromat. We had a filtering system for awhile but got tired of dealing with that. Someone suggested dropping a large bleach pellet onto the well. What do you know! It worked! Not completely, but enough. When ever the yellow started coming back we would drop in another bleach pellet. I got the pellets at cleaning supply business.

    Reply

  22. Jennifer says

    Wow thanks for the tip! I literally just showered with the light off so I wouldn’t notice the yellowish tiles on my shower walls! I’ve tried all the harsh chemicals with no luck until saw your idea and it worked like a charm! It was a TON of scrubbing but well worth it. I think I’ll probably use a good tile sealer now to hopefully give me a couple years before I need to do this project again. Thank you again what a simple solution!

    Reply

    • Courtenay says

      I use baby wipes for so many things! I can’t believe I never tried them for this! Thanks for the tip! 🙂

      Reply

  24. Amanda W says

    OMG! I have been scrubbing my sink for about 2 hours trying multiple things to get it off. I tried baking soda and vinegar solution, magic eraser, borax, CLR, and bleach. They were just strange little marks on the tip of the sink that looked like rust, which is why I tried CLR. I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed with each product to the point that I’m literally exhausted. I decided to come on here and look to see if I could find any suggestions and try again tomorrow. I came across this and was like “really? After all of that and it didn’t work, you want to tell me this green scrubby is supposed to take it off? So even though I was totally pooped, I decided if it was that simple I was going to give it a go. When I started scrubbing I literally said “YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!” It freaking worked. No joke! I didn’t, and still haven’t, read any of the comments to see what others have said, so I was a bit flabbergasted lol. If anyone else has this problem, I hope you look online and find this first instead of going through the same situation I did or the original post did for a year! Amazing what one little green scrubby can do…simply amazing! =)

    Reply

    • Courtenay says

      Yay! So glad it worked for you Amanda! I did pretty much the exact same routine that you did before I discovered the magical green scrubby too!

      Reply

  26. Bpollen says

    I tried the green scrubbies. It didn’t do anything other than general surface cleaning. I also used a nylon one for stick-free pans…of course that didn’t work. I scrubbed a long time in two toilets with baking soda, white vinegar, and those greenies. Nothing more than surface cleaning. I’ve got one of the toilets with a paper towel stuck to those orange stains & with hydrogen peroxide on it, and a paste of baking soda all over the inside of the bowl. Been that way since yesterday. I’ll try scrubbing soon with greenies again & see. I’ve sprayed the tank, which is orange, with vinegar and hydrogen peroxide & will scrub that, too, with a toilet brush. I guess that’s where the orange stains come from: the tank.

    I have a septic system so am not supposed to use bleach. But I may have to resort to a small amount of bleach, if I can’t resolve this another way. This is horrible. Wish I had never bought this house. I had no idea the water was bad like this.

    Reply

    • Courtenay says

      Try a pumice stone on the toilet! Obviously you’ll need one just for that purpose that you won’t use for anything else, but those have worked really well for me with no scratching. Good luck!

      Reply

      • Bpollen says

        Thanks. I did resort to the pumice stone (soaked in water beforehand), and it DID help a lot! I’ve since read, though, that the kind of pumice stone to use is not the one for the feet (which is what I used), but a softer one made for this purpose. Oops. It doesn’t seem to have done any damage, though. And good news is that after I cleaned the TANK, and the toilet bowl that had been sitting in baking soda and hydrogen peroxide 24 hrs or more….it looks pretty good. The tank cleaned up nicely, and the bowl looks bright white with just a very faint line of where the orange stains used to be.

        I think the trick is to clean the toilets regularly & thoroughly, so I catch this before the staining occurs. I’m also going to check out using just a tiny bit of car wax like the poster above suggested, just over that area that stains the worst.

        I’ve signed up to your site. Lots of good suggestions on this site. Thanks!

        Reply

  27. Kay says

    Bar keepers friend, the best rust remover ever. Just sprinkle it on with a little water let set a few minutes and wipes right off. No kidding it works.

    Reply

  28. JOHN AMBROSE says

    Lehman Hardware of Kidron OH has a mail order operation and catalog. They sell 2 magnetic strips in plastic, 1 inch by 4 inches.. for $9…….they create a magnetic field in toilet tanks that eliminates the brown stain in toilet tanks, I have used them 10 years…I have good water but use them anyway

    Reply

    • Courtenay says

      Haha, now that you mention it, my daughter told me the other day that she had scrubbed away a little section of the orange with a bath bomb (which contain citric acid) while she was in the bath! I have some plain citric acid as well, so I’ll have to try that on its own to see how it works!

      Reply

  31. Don Heile says

    My wife found out if you use Lysol Black label toilet cleaner if comes off easy too. Just rub it on with a sponge and wait like 5 minutes then spray it off . And your tub, Shower and sinks are white again.

    Reply

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