Mixing household bleach with urine

[GraHal]

Hello Everyone

I have wooden floorboards (old type / real wood) which have had urine (probably pet) on them and which periodically appear wet / very wet on the surface in one area of 1sq metre or so.

I have eliminated water leaks as a source and so it almost certainly is hygroscopic salts attracting moisture in the air. The boards appear dry most times and are very wet looking when the air is humid.

Anyway hazard a guess at what the salt(s) are most likely to be and the best way to eliminate / neutralise / chemically turn the salts into something else so they aren't hygroscopic anymore?

I was thinking white vinegar?

Thank You
GraHal

 

[tech99]

Hello Everyone

I have wooden floorboards (old type / real wood) which have had urine (probably pet) on them and which periodically appear wet / very wet on the surface in one area of 1sq metre or so.

I have eliminated water leaks as a source and so it almost certainly is hygroscopic salts attracting moisture in the air. The boards appear dry most times and are very wet looking when the air is humid.

Anyway hazard a guess at what the salt(s) are most likely to be and the best way to eliminate / neutralise / chemically turn the salts into something else so they aren't hygroscopic anymore?

I was thinking white vinegar?

Thank You
GraHal

Probably a urea compound, and as it is organic, I suggest using an enzyme to break it down, maybe protease or a commercially available product designed for the purpose.

 

[GraHal]

Probably a urea compound, and as it is organic, I suggest using an enzyme to break it down, maybe protease or a commercially available product designed for the purpose.

Thanks tech99.

Anybody know what is the 'most hygroscopic' salt there is likely to be on the boards?

Strong chance bleach was put on it and so what about ammonium chloride salt?

If I heat the boards with a blow lamp to almost a charred look ... would ammonium chloride and / or any other hygroscopic salts be converted / decomposed into gases (chlorine and ammonia?) and so the salt will be gone and so the boards will not longer absorb moisture from the air??

Thank You

 

[Tribo]

What lowered any level of fear I would have of bleach was that a friend at work told me that one of her friends was about to be screened for drugs and so she drank a whole bunch of bleach to "clean out" her system, she then threw up and passed the drug test. My friend told me that she would not have done that and would have rather be accused of taking drugs than drink bleach. I have never done any drugs nor drunk alcohol or smoked, but I agreed with her.

Oh, my God.

One thing I know for sure is that I'll never bathe in bleach or use it to scrub my tongue again.

Yes.

 

[HamalachMichael]

Well first off I don't think urine has ammonia in it because urine is acidic. (Uric acid). The ammonia you smell from a cat's litter box is from the decomposition of the nitrogen rich by-products of metabolism. Correct so far?

Hi.

That urine is acidic and contains uric acid does not mean it does not contain ammonia in one form or another. Ammonia is a gas, therefore if any ammonia will be found in urine it will not be in the gaseous form as NH3, but it will most likely form a salt with another chemical substance such as uric acid in so forming ammonium acid urate. Bleach contains sodium hypochlorite and has a high pH and urine will contain some ammonium salt, mix these together and the ammonium ion will be deprotonated into ammonia which in turn will react with the hypochlorite ion to form chloramine gas. Below is the mechanism behind the creation of the ammonium acid urate salt from ammonia and uric acid.

Any corrections and further comments are welcome.

 

[epenguin]

Kind of a misconception in that (apart from the figures illustrating practically nothing happening) Uric acid is not the nitrogenous product of excretion in humans (and mammals), on the other hand it is a quite undesirable compound because it is insoluble - so deposits of it can cause gout, gouty forms of arthritis and some types of gallstones. It is instead the solid excretory N product in birds and reptiles, guano. This acidity of what little dissolves in water is why you don't want it on your car paintwork. The human waste product is instead urea (NH₂)₂CO - about the most water-soluble substance there is.

Why any organism need to excrete nitrogen-containing substances, which then become liming for nutrition, instead of recycling them, is something rarely explained.

 

[WaltWhite]

My dog had peed on my cement floor (caught it fresh) and some of it had hit a hanging canvas curtain (probably what he was aiming for) and I wanted to blast out the pee stain and smell before it set. Liberally poured on both the curtain and floor and the reaction began. Started to fizz which I found interesting but then visible fumes started rising which I got a quick whiff of before recoiling from the smell. I threw down a towel and felt the heat from the reaction. Anyway, I wanted to get to the bottom of I found this. Hope it helps.https://www.cuteness.com/article/happens-dog-urine-bleach-mixed

Despite the name of the website the author seems to have done their research. Article below on Chloramine gas exposure.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/8506487/

 

[Actual Chemist]

I love how everyone is an armchair chemist. The only one in this thread who has even come close to a correct answer is Richard (chem geek) and his answers seem to have been ignored. For all those claiming "chlorine was released" because it smelled like chlorine have obvious never smelled chlorine gas. Not everything that smells like "chlorine" is chlorine gas. The gas everyone is smelling is a mixture of various chloramines...which, shock horror,,,smell passingly like chlorine. Chloramine "smell" is the smell you have on your skin after swimming in a chlorinated pool. That smell is not chlorine from the pool, but is chloramines formed from the proteins of your skin...smh...Read chem geeks response(s) for the answer...all other posts are speculative at best.

 

[DrClaude]

On this note, time to put this 10 year old thread to sleep in a humane manner.

Thread closed.