De-scaling kettle

stikiuk

:T Thanks to all for your great advice :T

X X

johnnytee

My kettle is suffering from bad lime scale as our water is so hard. Any alternatives to those shop bought harmful chemicals. I was thinkig of using coca cola. If it can put a shine on your loose change, then maybe it would be good on lime scale. Any suggestions?

Gingernutmeg

I normally put some white vinegar in the kettle, making sure it's covering the element and boil it up a couple of times. It gets the limescale off brilliantly. Only thing is that you need to boil it with clean water a couple of times afterwards to get rid of the vinegary smell.

Penelope_Penguin

johnnytee wrote: »

My kettle is suffering from bad lime scale as our water is so hard. Any alternatives to those shop bought harmful chemicals. I was thinkig of using coca cola. If it can put a shine on your loose change, then maybe it would be good on lime scale. Any suggestions?

You need an acid to get rid of limescale, so caustic soda isn't the thing Cola will work as it has phosphoric acid as one of its ingredients (heaven only knows what that does to your insides :eek: ). And as gingernutmeg says, vinegar is the obvious Old Style descaler.

There's an older thread on cleaning your kettle. I'll link this one to it, once I have a cup of coffee by my elbow

Penny. x

Ben84

I make a strong soda crystal solution, boil this and leave it overnight. The limescale becomes soft and easily wipes away. Very bad kettles might need to be done again, but it has always worked well on our kettle and we live in a very hard water area.

I do rinse it well, but small traces of soda crystals are harmless. They can also be used for washing dishes, so I'm confident it's safe for cleaning items that contain food and drinking water.

castman

I was amazed by the price a colleague of mine paid for a bottle of kettle descaler £1.25, then hear her moan on about how long it was going to take to descale and the number of times she'd have to wash and boil her kettle before it was safe to drink the water without any trace of 'after-taste' from the descaler.

Had she paid attention during her science lessons she'd have known that acid was the best way to disolve limescale and the cheapest and most effective means of applying a non-toxic acid to a kettle comes in the form of a 20p lemon.

Cut one in half squeeze the juice into the kettle, swish it around every now and again for a few mins (depends how bad the kettle it) then, if necessary use one of the lemon halves as a scourer to rub off difficult chunks. Rinse with water and you can use immediately - safely - job done and kettle more efficiently boiling water again

wallbash

Will give the lemon a go :j

But normally find a 'chisel ' is the only way:D
Descaling is a monthly job ....and a kettle only lasts a couple of years

Poppycat

Oh use white vinegar diluted and heat kettle up and leave in for a while does the same thing

Kettle Descaler
Mix 1 part
VINEGAR
to 2 parts
WATER
. Boil in kettle and rinse well

Lotus-eater

My oh uses the vinegar as well, ugh, makes the kettle taste and smell horrible.

I will try this as well, we have the same problem as wallbash and our kettles never last very long, the last one 9 months. We did get our money back and are atm using a saucepan, easy to clean the scale off.

A slight problem with using lemons though...
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=967607

Poppycat

I find it okay as long as you rinse enough, on worse cases I have to boil a couple of times and leave about an hour, but I rarely do it dont have hard water here