Believe me this is the best method I've tried everything. I have a really nice piece and it always looks brand new. I only clean every 3 days with the way I do it. I use a carbon filter which helps so much but that still will get dirty but barely. So every 3 days I see a little brown forming and I just pour grudge off in it and swish it around for 15 secs. I repeat again in a minute when the bubbles drop and then its perfectly clean. I have been reusing my grundge off for 7 months now. So every 3 days I spend 5 mins cleaning it and my bong stays clean 24/7.
I think your maintenance discipline is what keeps your piece clean, the grundge off is incidental. Cleaning is made easier by keeping up on it, and I think clean water has a saturation point, where after its too dirty it just won't filter as well as it was when it was clean, causing more build up. I'm like you, I clean my pieces every 2 or 3 days. But what I look at is the water, if I take a pull off the piece and the water has that frothy nasty stagnant bubble effect to it when its settling, then its time to change the water or clean the piece. I always just clean the piece. Carbon filters do wonders for filtration and really do keep your piece cleaner. Just make sure you change your carbon somewhat often for better results. I also heard rezblock works, haven't used it tho.
Yea but if I didn't use grudge off and only the carbon filter how would I be removing the stuff that gets past the carbon filter which is visible after 3 days. I change my water before every smoke session usually 2 times a day. Mind explaining how you can tell when to clean the piece by the water? Because I change my water every day at least twice. Oh nvm I get it. Well I assume both ways work but what do you use to clean your piece? Soap and water? Iso?
I guess I was a little cryptic. I mean that no one cleaning agent is better than good routine maintenance. If you stay up on changing water and cleaning often, it makes cleaning a lot easier. And what I meant is if you put clean water in a piece and take a pull off of it, the water returns back quickly. But if its dirty, the water is more viscous and it doesn't return as quickly, it stays like frothy. Its hard to explain. And I use all sorts of cleaning products. I think they all have their place. I like to run warm water thru my piece first, since I clean often the running water will remove a lot of build up. Then I crank up the temp to hot to loosen everything else up and to prepare the glass for the pbw soak. Then sometimes I like to take 91% and do a quick swish in the glass, this step is unnecessary in my routine but I do it sometimes anyway. Then I do a pbw soak. And rinse the shit out of it. Followed by a rinse of distilled water. I don't do this often but if I'm feeling super crazy and I really want that fucker to shine then ill do a overnight grundge off soak after that. I'm insane I know.. Grundge off is better than pbw in the sense that it doesn't rely off the heat of the water to clean, but imo it doesn't clean as well as pbw and it takes longer. With bowls, I have a stainless steel cup that I put the bowl in and do a pbw soak. It make all the build up just separate from the glass and come off. Then I take a qtip and swipe inside to retrieve the now loose build up, so I can save my bathtub from the rez stains. Point is you will always have to clean your piece. Its like doing the dishes or shaving, there's no gettin passed it so just get it done. But just like these day to day tasks, doing it routinely will make it a lot easier. And tbh, if I see a clean piece, I dgaf what you use to clean it with, I'm just happy to see that you take care of your shit and that a clean bong brings you as much joy as it does to me.
The grunge off makes cleaner so much easier it helps keep up a good cleaning schedule. I've been using bongs regularly since 1999. I used to hate cleaning days, and I used to just deal with the shitty taste and maybe clean every other week...gross. I would boil water, pour it in, pour it out, add iso and salt, shake like crazy, pour it out,repeat until clean (sometimes I'd wet a paper towel, stick it inside and use 2 magnets to wipe the inside of the bong. My hands would stink like resin, get all pruny from the iso, get all sticky from resin. With grunge off my schedule changed to cleaning EVERY DAY. End of day, dump out water, rinse, add grunge off, next morning, dump grunge off back into bottle to reuse, rinse with water....DONE. Perfectly clean with a little citrusy orange smell. it's like 3 minutes of actual work. If you smoke flower and are using iso and salt, I highly highly recommend trying a soaker like simple green or grunge off. If you prefer iso and salt, just go back to it, but nobody I know that made the switch went back to iso.
[quote name="mogwi411" post="19892928" timestamp="1398193449"] The grunge off makes cleaner so much easier it helps keep up a good cleaning schedule. I've been using bongs regularly since 1999. I used to hate cleaning days, and I used to just deal with the shitty taste and maybe clean every other week...gross. I would boil water, pour it in, pour it out, add iso and salt, shake like crazy, pour it out,repeat until clean (sometimes I'd wet a paper towel, stick it inside and use 2 magnets to wipe the inside of the bong. My hands would stink like resin, get all pruny from the iso, get all sticky from resin. With grunge off my schedule changed to cleaning EVERY DAY. End of day, dump out water, rinse, add grunge off, next morning, dump grunge off back into bottle to reuse, rinse with water....DONE. Perfectly clean with a little citrusy orange smell. it's like 3 minutes of actual work. If you smoke flower and are using iso and salt, I highly highly recommend trying a soaker like simple green or grunge off. If you prefer iso and salt, just go back to it, but nobody I know that made the switch went back to iso.[/quote Thanks for sharing. The point I was trying to make you said in your first sentence. "Keeps up a good cleaning schedule." That's what I was trying to drive home, that routine cleaning makes it so much easier and that the cleaning agent you choose isn't AS important as it would be if the piece was filthy.. that's all. I totally endorse your cleaning method. That's pretty much what I do, just with pbw. Before pbw, I tried gundge off on a piece that hadn't been cleaned in like 2 years.. (let a friend borrow it, there was a stain on the turbine that wouldn't come off) so I let I soak for several days and it didn't help. So my faith in grundge off diminished a little that day, but I understand that scenario I tested it in wasn't really practical. I have since used grundge off with good results, I just try not to limit my options
Something weird I noticed about grundge off after buying a new bottle is some bottles have a label on it that says " With oil cleaner", I'm going to look into that more. But yea all methods work, I just found grundge off to be far less of a hassle.
Yea I used to do it everyday as well. When you use a carbon filter it changes from everyday to every 3 days I would say because once I clean it and use my filter, after the first day it isn't dirty at all.
I haven't noticed that but its worth looking into. And yeah man I feel ya for sure, I was just trying to give you props for keeping your piece clean
Got a question: From some of the forum posts I realised one of the reason people use carbon filter / ash catcher is so their bong can stay clean for longer. I have never used an ash catcher nor carbon filter, but I have always used screens in my bowl to hold the weed so I never had ash go into the bong anyway. How is people not using this method or am I doing it wrong? My bong would get dirty from the moment I started to use it (after each clean). After few tokes I can see resin building up on my down pipe. But I think that's just because the amount of weed I smoke each day.
Zombie: You have a bowl with a single, giant hole in it I presume? As long as the screen is glass, I got no quarrels. But I would look into ben wilson bowls. They have built in screens with like 8 or 10 holes. I just bought 2 of them on 420 and even when they were brand new, I had virtually no suck thru, which is rare for a clean bowl. And yeah, when the water has material in it I find it gets dirtier faster, that's one reason why minimal suck thru is important. And yes me too, my pieces get dirty quick! A carbon filter helps with that immensly, and an ashcatcher helps keep the build up there instead of in the piece. I also heard REZBLOCK helps keep build up from getting on the glass. But there's no getting around routine maintenance.
Yeah grunge off is what I use if my bong starts building up resin, but honestly only the ash catcher really needs deep cleaning. I haven't tried REZBLOCK yet either judging from this post cranberry extract is literally the same compound as REZBLOCK http://fuckcombustion.com/threads/rezblock-cranberry-extract.8060/page-35
Ahhhhh! How have I never thought of getting one of those things! I always thought one of those old style dusters or a pipe cleaner would work but that seems perfect for scraping resin off the inside wall of my bong. *finger pyramid of evil contemplation*