Is boiling soap water worse than regular boiling water?

[Norseman]

Basically I was wondering if it's worse to be sprayed with boiling soap water than boiling regular water; and / or if it'd spread out faster or get through clothes faster.

Yes it's a matter of pouring boiling water on the barbarians ;)

[LadyTevar]

Are you talking boiling water that just happens to have soap in it, or are you talking boiling the soap (potash, lard, etc)?

[Comrade Tortoise]

If it is a lye based soap, depending on concentration... Yeah... boiling Potassium Hydroxide solution... Yes, it is worse. it is worse because at a high enough concentration it is caustic.

[Shark Bait]

your average detergent no change, you cant increase the concentration enough to actually cause it to cause damage to the skin any better. Not only that because of the way soap works if you had it in higher concentrations you would lower the H bond strength so the water would boil at a lower temperature. Actually what is far worse is boiling viscous liquids like the classics oil, tar, pitch ect. if you can get super hi tech and have enough power and some manner to hold it how about liquid salt? Regular table salt fairly cheep and melts at roughly 973K forms a nice viscous liquid that will basically cause most fabrics to combust...

Edit: Salts dissolved in water will actually be better than regular water if you want something to be hotter and move through fabric faster than viscous liquids salts will raise the bp.

[Norseman]

Are you talking boiling water that just happens to have soap in it, or are you talking boiling the soap (potash, lard, etc)?

We're talking about boiling soapy water. Oil is right out, it's too expensive in the setting in question. Pitch and tar is also bad since the castle in question use a system a bit like this:

They poured the water into a depression in the floor. It was all part of a clever system; the depression itself had two holes in it leading to one of two covered canals running the length of the floor. One canal was angled slightly so water poured into it would run north, the other would sent the water going south. Along the wall were several small openings that let you look into the canals, and open or shut a hole in them. By opening the right hole any section of the wall could suddenly spray boiling hot water over the enemy.

But the salt water thing sounds like a good idea, but lye soap might (or might not) be cheaper. Please go on though, I find your answers very enlightening.

[LadyTevar]

Potash and lard are boiled together and then cooled to make soap. I think the potash contains the lye needed. There's another ingredient in it that kills the lye's acid, but I can't think of it right now. :(

Google Soap-making, you should get easy recipes. Remember, this is something that was being made over an open fire for centuries.

[Shark Bait]

Potash and lard are boiled together and then cooled to make soap. I think the potash contains the lye needed. There's another ingredient in it that kills the lye's acid, but I can't think of it right now. :(

Google Soap-making, you should get easy recipes. Remember, this is something that was being made over an open fire for centuries.

Its a chemical reaction where the lye interacts with the lard's hydrocarbon change and it saturates the lard so it absorbs the extra hydrogen and raises the number of Hydrogen bonds that it can form causing it to become solid at room temperature. This frees up a bunch of (OH)- molecules making it more basic, the problem is that if your going to go through the trouble of getting enough lard and potash to make lye soap you might as well just boil the lard or any other oil (and when I say oil I'm including vegetable oil, lamp oils and rendered animal oils) and use that. In that case salt water would probably be the easiest though even if you used a saturated brine solution you probably could not raise the Bp of the water more than 10 degrees Kelvin.