Teach Soap

I would get your water tested. My parents rented a place when I was little that the water was cloudy like that and smelled a little off. After a few weeks, my brother who loved to experiment discovered the water would burn like a candle if you lit it. Needless to say, we started drinking bottled water while we lived there. I doubt it is that bad, but you never know what might be in it. Bottled water sounds like a cheap fix to save your oils though if it's a proven recipe, in my unexperienced opinion.

I would definitely recommend using distilled water! I think that would be an easy inexpensive fix. Water varies from place to place, distilled is a very cheap option that you know you will not have probs with.

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Melissa

Many thanks guys; I just checked back on it and it seems to be very much in the gel stage though I made it 17 hours ago and usually it's firmed up after that period of time. I can't see why the water would affect the soap so much though I had been planing on getting a water distiller at some point anyway so... I guess I'll try a smaller batch with distilled water to see if that is the problem.

How far away did you move? Across town or to a new region of the country? Could it be temp, humidity, etc effecting it?

200 metres down the road, I don't think those are factors really.

My better half seems to think that the citrus essential oils in the batches are slowing the process right down... though I'm not sure - I'm thinking the castor oil and the pomace olive oil would still speed the reaction.

Citrus oil will not speed up or slow down the saponification process. Castor wouldn't either. Pomace might speed things up though.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.