Kettle descalent

I live in a soft water area. The other day I took a peek inside my kettle and was disgusted. I ordered the below. ?2.27. Okay, I did give it a few blasting, but the insides of my kettle are now spotless.

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Reply to
Mr Pounder Esquire
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Were in North Essex - hardest water on the planet. We use Astonish All purpose descaler in our kettle - shifts scale in next to no time. Get 5 goes out of a 1 litre bottle - about £1 from Savers, QD stores, the range etc. All Astonish products are excellent value for money - and work!

Reply to
Andy Bennet

I got a tub of citric acid crystals for this (we deduced that that was what is in the descaler sachets). I'm pretty sure it's more economical, and it looks like it will last for years.

Reply to
Dan S. MacAbre

Yep pretty much the stuff that is in the Astonish descaler. Not sure if buying the crystals is any cheaper or worth the faff.

Reply to
Andy Bennet

I use citric acid crystals, too. I buy Kgs at a time, and it's not expensive. One advantage is that it's food grade, so I know it doesn't matter if I don't rinse it completely, apart from the drinks maybe tasting a bit odd. (I like lemon tea, anyway!)

Reply to
GB

I have used Astonish car shampoo in the past and have been quite pleased with the shine. Still, my five year cheap kettle is now spotless for ?2.27. I'm happy with that.

Reply to
Mr Pounder Esquire

On holiday a couple of years ago, I found the kettle badly furred up. My son didn't like the taste of tea made with the tap water, so I used bottled water and flakes of limescale came off in the water a number of times, so I decided to clean it out.

All I had to hand was vinegar. I put some in, boiled it, emptied it out, rinsed a number of times and ended up with a beuatifully clean element.

I don't know if something has changed since then, but we have been back a number of times and, up to three weeks ago, it has stayed clean.

SteveW

Reply to
Steve Walker

I have tried vinegar in the past on other kettles. It did not work very well. As this is a diy group I was trying to be helpful and I do not think that ?2.27 delivered is not being helpful.

Reply to
Mr Pounder Esquire

I have a can of oust which I bought from the hardware stall on our market some years ago. Use it on kettles and irons and still have some. That stall seems to just have sachets now.

Reply to
Old Codger

In the one case I have tried it it worked well - I haven't needed it otherwise as we live in an area with extremely soft water.

I was definitely not accusing you of not being helpful, merely suggesting an alternative that had worked for me, using materials that I had to hand at the time and that other people likely have in the cupboard.

SteveW

Reply to
Steve Walker

One of the best tools for minimising the deposition of scale in the first place is the ball of 'stainless steel wire wool'. They last essentially for ever. Every week or so, to wash off the scale that has formed on it, take it out of the kettle and crunch it up while rinsing it under running water - or, to avoid the bits of scale going into the drains, in a bowl of water which you then can tip out somewhere in the garden. Then put it back. This way, the kettle only needs a light de-scale every three or four months.

Reply to
Ian Jackson

We buy glacial acetic acid to dilute and use as clothes conditioner (don't know why - the missus likes it). I thought it would work in a kettle, but it didn't - even at fairly high concentrations. She's a chemist and suggested that citric acid would be more reactive, which I thought was surprising since it is found in citrous fruit, and now they coat kids' sweets in it to make them sour.

At 2.27, it is very helpful if you only need to do it once :-) I do ours about once a quarter. It takes about that long for a crusty deposit to become visible in the bottom of our kettle; and by that stage, I feel that the efficiency is being adversely affected.

Reply to
Dan S. MacAbre

And the wall of the kettle is half a mil thinner? :-) Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

I'd want to be sure that it didn't contain lead. Some 'free-cutting' stainless steels have lead to lubricate the tool, so a large surface area exposed to the water could be A Bad Thing.

As an aside, apparently there's some concern in the USA over lead in water that's been inside stainless steel taps overnight. I always run off a drop at first use - never know what might have crawled up there.

Reply to
PeterC

Plastic kettle everytime. Puts more watts into the water and not the room.

Reply to
Andy Bennet

coffee machine manufacturers seem to recommend (or sell own brand) descalers that are lactic acid rather than citric acid based, maybe they have to worry about the O-rings?

Reply to
Andy Burns

While stainless steel obviously contains various additional elements, I have no reason to believe that these 'wire wool' scale preventers contain lead. They have been available for decades, and are exceeding effective (certainly not snake oil). I would expect questions would be being asked if there was any suspicion that they were a health risk.

Reply to
Ian Jackson

Make sure you use a descaler that won't attack the device that's being descaled. I bought a product that was advertised as being suitable for kettles and coffee-makers (the sort which heat water and drip it onto a filter containing the coffee grounds). I used it at the correct concentration, for the correct time, and found that it had attacked the metal inlet tube where the incoming water is heated as it travels to the grounds. The first I knew was when it started to leak all over the worktop. I got a new coffee-maker from the makers of the descaler - and the admission that it had not been tested on that model.

I presume the heated pipe was aluminium or stainless steel. What weak acid (probably citric) to dissolve the scale would also dissolve metal?

Reply to
NY

lots of things are health risks.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

We have a kettle that allows us to select the water temperature, 90 degrees for making coffee, 70-80 degrees for herbal tea, etc. I persuaded myself that I can taste the difference. :)

Anyway, one side effect is that the kettle is far less prone to limescale than the old stainless steel one was. I don't know whether that's because it's plastic, because it's generally operating at a lower temperature, or both?

Reply to
GB

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