Eco Queen.

[The Medway Handyman]

Got a call from a regular customer on my way home last night, washing machine pouring water all over the floor.

Diverted to go & have a look, since they are a good customer.

Lovely couple, but the lady is an extreme eco warrior.

Old washing machine apparently leaked badly, so they bought a brand new one - which did the same.

Pulled it out & checked the trap (this sort

full of limescale, so bad I had to break it out with a screwdriver blade. Never seen anything so bad.

Waste pipe ran behind a cupboard so I couldn't get to it & the clips holding the vertical pipe had come adrift, causing it to run uphill. I could see into the waste & that was half full of scale as well.

Half a bottle of One Shot later I got it all cleared & re fixed everything.

It turns out she 'makes' her own 'save the planet' washing powder - borax, soda & soap or something. Entirely natural & eco friendly apparently - none of those 'nasty' chemicals.

Obviously the cause of the scale blockage.

So, being eco friendly caused her to scrap the old washing machine unnecessarily, buy a new machine & add half a litre of sulphuric acid to the eco system.

They don't really think things through do they?

[Newshound]

ROFL

Bet you didn't go round on your bike either!

[Tim Streater]

Did you point out to her that what she is using - borax, soda, etc - are also nasty chemicals?

Something else to tell her.

[NT]

No. But I dont see how those would cause excess scaling.

NT

[The Natural Philosopher]

NO! Those are NICE chemicals.

Like all those organic enzyme washing powders that give you cancer, instead.

[Andrew Gabriel]

sort

>>> Absolutely full of limescale, so bad I had to break it out with a

Exactly my thought too. Her "eco" home made washing powder probably cleans nothing unless you do a boil wash - that would do it. Eco what?

[John Williamson]

sort

>>>>> Absolutely full of limescale, so bad I had to break it out with a

Which is why I run all the hot water systems here below 60C. It helps prevent scale deposition from the hard water, as the local Calcium Sulphate hardness has a solubility peak at about 65C. It seems to keep the shower head clear of scale, so I assume the rest of the system is the same.

[Tim Watts]

Which is a very interesting thing to say.

Since I fitted a decent "temporary" HW heater that has power regulation and upper temperature control, I find 45C is perfectly adequate for a hot tap. Even 40-42C is just about OK to fill a bath (with hot alone) and makes the hot tap comfortable for hand and disk washing.

I'll bear this in mind when I fit the thermal store which will have a 3 port blending valve (store will run *much* hotter).

[David WE Roberts]

Sure this is due to her eco washing, and not to a previous non-eco washer?

I spent a really unpleasant few minutes breaking washing powder sludge out of the U trap in an outside drain at a previous house. And this was certainly not an eco household. Although some of the food remanants inside the cupboards were definitely green.

All as nothing compared to the defrosted chest freezer with abot 6 inches of water in the bottom full of dead fermenting snails. Mmmm.....

[<me9]

Just right for legionella

Hope it hasn't a shower attached.

Put the mixing valve near the point of use, and be prepared to disinfect any pipe where warm water sits (above 20C and below 50C) regularly.

Grease solidifies below 60deg, so 60deg is about minimum for a kitchen sink.

[Tim Streater]

You shouldn't be putting fat down a kitchen sink. After getting two lots of fat cleared, I finally got SWMBO to comprehend this.

[John Rumm]

Usefully if washing your floppy in the sink ;-)

[Owain]

Maybe she doesn't boil-wash.

I suppose if the clothes are manky they conceal the stink of the composting toilet and the deodorant-free armpits.

Owain

[BartC]

Isn't that why we use washing up liquid? (To deal with grease (or thin films of it after rinsing away excess) without having to use scalding water.)

[Tim Watts]

From the mains with its dose of chlorine and water cleared through twice daily??? There must be all of 4m of 15mm pipe betwixt heater and furthest tap.

I did not say this was stored HW... There would be a thermal store, full of heating system water - the DHW runs from mains through a plate exchanger.

That would be a resonable reason to up it a bit. I've not tried shower-mixer valves on arbibrary temperatures, though I did assume it would not need to be much hotter than the target max temp.

That's clearly not the case - *most* of the grease we have clearly melts at around 40C as I've watched it. 60C IMO is *far* too hot for anything coming out of a tap - it's both a risk for children and fairly inconvenient from a usage POV - at least without a mixer tap. If I want extra heat, I'll pour a kettle down.

Cheers

Tim

[Tim Watts]

That too.

Even if it clears your local pipework, it's solidifying in the main 4" outside...

[Brian Gaff]

I think that often these blockages occur because people do not understand how their plumbing works.

I'm not totally sure why you need a trap in a washing machine waste pipe anyway, mine does not have one.

Brian

[Tim Watts]

Except that would use far more water and energy.

[charles]

and you don't ant that. I've had it - nasty.

[Bill Wright]

That's how the doctor explained it to me.

Bill