I received a bottle of foaming soap as a gift and had wondered if I could refill it, since it measures the proper amount for hand washing so well. A comment at Consumerist led me to an Instructable on exactly this question. Foaming soap costs more than regular liquid soap, but the difference is the container. And the secret is that the foaming soap you pay more for is regular liquid soap that has been watered down! Now I know what to do with all this "bath gel" my family got for Christmas. Link
I received a bottle of foaming soap as a gift and had wondered if I could refill it, since it measures the proper amount for hand washing so well. A comment at Consumerist led me to an Instructable on exactly this question. Foaming soap costs more than regular liquid soap, but the difference is the container. And the secret is that the foaming soap you pay more for is regular liquid soap that has been watered down! Now I know what to do with all this "bath gel" my family got for Christmas. Link
Also, when i noticed that my foam dispenser was not pumping well or hardly, i almost threw it away. But then i just decided to open up the bottle, remove the tube (it's easily removable) from the main 'mechanism' (for the luck of a better word), and wash it well. I think, in my case, the pumping was suffering not because of soap build-up, as i suspected originally, but because somehow the water got collected inside the pump and affected the pumping. At first i didn't know how to get rid of the water (i couldn't open the pump further), then i just turned the pump upside down and tried to pump it empty. It worked! The water came out and when put all part back together, my foam dispenser was good as new!
Define "strong enough". You're not actually supposed to strip the skin off your hands every time you wash them, you know.
The diluted foam is probably just as strong as using a bar of soap and water. Unless you like to lather up until your hands are buried in four-inch-thick suds.