Why do modern electric kettles have a little strainer just behind the spout? Are the water supplies in some areas so awful that the water needs filtering? Surely not! Or do people make tea in their kettles, from loose tea leaves? Again, I doubt it. So what's their purpose?
So any scale that cracks off from the element doesn't make its way into your cuppa?
In our area we have very hard water. This results in lime scale deposits on the walls of the kettle. These deposits come loose and the filter/strainer is needed to stop pieces of lime scale getting into the tea pot, mug or whatever.
If you have soft water, thank your lucky stars.
Soft water tastes nasty though.
Philip
not when it's added to whisky
Hmm...yes, makes some sort of sense. Is it a common problem? Not living in a hard-water area, it's not something I've come across.
There's a map at
I've always lived in hard water areas so it's always been a fact of life. I had to clean out all the loose flakes again this morning.
Hard water makes better tea, though. IMHO.
In message , charles writes
I believe you're in a similar area to me. The water is so hard that you can nearly stand a spoon upright in it. It's a real killer for plumbing and appliances. I normally remove the spout filter, otherwise it would clog up after a few days of use. [The occasional bit of crunchy scale in your tea is probably good for you!]
I strongly recommend one of those balls of knitted stainless steel wire (normally < £2). They really do minimise the deposition of scale on the element and elsewhere. Every week or two, you simply hold the ball under a running tap, scrunch it, and it is restored to bright shiny new condition. Lasts for years and years.
According to an Edinburgh tea merchant, you need different tea for hard and soft water.
What may help is only boiling as much water as you need (some people are insufficiently anal to do this :-), and from time to time tipping out all the remaining water from the kettle and replacing with fresh.
The latter notion may help stop the lime getting so concentrated in the water that it starts depositing. We still have to descale ours occasionally.
My wife, who is the tea drinker of us, sincerely recommends the products of Butterworths. They make tea especially for hard water. No connection with them, just a satisfied customer. Tescos sell them, when they have stock, otherwise they ship overnight.
er unless there is significant evaporation of the water from the kettle the water is effectively just flowing through, the concentration of carbonates won't go up.
Water I have known:
Birmingham - Soft thank you Elan Valley. But visibly brown, thank you tens of miles of cast iron mains from the Elan Valley. Brown deposit in storeage tanks/cisterns. Scale wozzat?
St Albans - Very hard, chemical descaling of kettle required every three months or less. Stainless steel wire ball did help a bit. Scale all manner of greens and blues. Soap just formed scum.
Alston - Originally hardish, came from and adit on the fell side about 1/2 a mile away. About a 9 month descale for the kettle. Scale Pure Brilliant White. Bit of scum from soap but you could get a lather.
Several years ago they put in a new main from Burnhope reservoir, Water now soft and clean. Think I've cleaned the kettle out once or twice in the last 5 years.
Same here. Yes, we do empty it every time...and try to heat just enough water. The teenagers are a different matter...
We have two problems here. The first is very hard water which, like yours, is a nightmare to deal with. The second is it tastes so foul with the amount of chlorine that is added here, that tea is undrinkable anyway. Nearly all the first problem and all the latter were solved by adding a Brita tap with a filtered supply used just for drinks and cooking. The big in-line filters that come with the taps are miles better than the jug filters and last six months (two people here). We hardly ever have to descale the kettle (before it was every couple of weeks) and the water tastes it tastes really nice. If you usually buy any bottled water you don't need to any more - fill them from the Brita tap. The downside is that the filters aren't cheap (£42 from Amazon), but they work out as cheap as the jug filters (probably cheaper - we didn't used to count how often we used those) and we think they're worth every penny.
If you live in a hard water area, they stop great lumps of limescale ending up in your drink.
Is there any chlorine left after it is boiled? Can't say I've ever noticed it - but do smell it direct from the tap.
In message , Dave Liquorice writes
Living in the NE of Scotland DOES have advantages :-)
Our kettle is completely scale free, and has not been descaled since we moved here 12 years ago. Tea tastes fine, and I don't recall any getting used to it period. Soap produces far more lather, although takes longer to rinse your bits in the shower.
I do agree with one of those scrunchy things in the kettle, though. Worked very well when we lived in SE England.
It happens that Chris Hogg formulated :
We are in a soft water area and the element certainly scales up in time here.
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