General Chat

Has anyone any ideas how I can get rd of the limescale in my kettle without using any chemicals? I live in a hard water area and brought a new kettle about 6 weeks ago and already there is a build up of limescale. this keeps ending up in the tea. Don't want to use a chemical remover as it might taint the kettle and hubby will notice an difference in the taste of his tea, so thought a natural way might be better.

Can anyone help?

try bicarbanated soda and vinger
you may have to do it a few times

Lemons work quite well. You have to smear the limescale a bit and do a bit of boiling with cut up lemons but it does work.

Last thing,,boil kettle,add white vinegar,,,,,rinse well next morning and boil a couple of times,,
works for me,

have you ever tried putting a nice roundy smallish pebble in the kettle?
my dad used to do that I recall.

Bob

I'd agree with the white vinegar, although we just fill the kettle half water/half vinegar and boil it.

That's usually enough treatment for ours, then empty, rinse a number of times, fill, boil and empty.

Obviously if yours is badly scaled, then boiling and leaving over night might be best.

Hi Helen :) same area so get just as much lol...the white vinegar does it fine

xx

Yep, white vinegar does the trick and it's cheap. You can froth it up a little by heating it, which helps too. Rinse, boil rinse boil, then fill with cold water and a couple of teaspoons of bicarb and leave for a few minutes, rinse well and you're ready to go.

White vinegar does a lot of things, like the limescale on the end of your taps. Soak some kitchen paper in it, wrap it round the end of the tap, then cover it with cling film to stop it drying out, and leave overnight. By morning it should all be gone.

Marbles


honest it does work a couple of marbles in your kettle stops it furring up !

Agreed,vinigar every time,it also works on shower heads,or any build up in the bathroom.

Google Kim and Aggie for lots of household cleaning tips.

But,for gawds sake rinse your kettle out thoroughly after,otherwise your tea will taste vile.

Ohhh yes, I soaked my shower head in vinegar for 30 mins, then brushed it all off with an old toothbrush. Worked beautifully, and the shower runs freely now instead of spurting out sideways from some of the holes LOL

Hi

Best thing I've ever used for cleaning the kettle is Citric Acid.....it's brilliant!! No awful smell to it like vinegar, and as it can be used in cooking it's perfectly safe too. Just boil a kettle full of water, pour it in and leave for a little while (depending on how bad the scale is), empty out and rinse once with cold water and it's done. No nasty after taste either :-))

You can buy it in most chemists shops for less than a £1 for a packet. I live in a very hard water area and need to do mine weekly to keep it scale free :-((

Mary

I used to live in a very hard water area. Used to descale my kettle every month with chemical descalers.... never affected the taste of tea or coffee. Perhaps it was because the water tasted disgusting anyway that we didn't notice the difference. lol

Always used soda crystals in the washing machine aswell..... much cheaper than Calgon or similar.

Soda crystals in the wash aid the cleaning and stop staleness but they won't remove limescale because they're alkali.

Susan, we use a filter jug but the kettle still scales up, it's very hard water round here. We have one of those metal fur collectors which helps a bit to hang on to the limescale, you take them out often and work them between your fingers under the cold tap and the fur comes out, pop back into the kettle to collect more. I used white vinegar now and boil it up, much easier than the chemical stuff.

Lizx

Thanks everyone for all the tips, I'm going to go to town this morning so I'll look for the citric acid and get some white vinegar and try them, luckly enough I've got a bag of marbles in the house as the girls did hubby and myself a Xmas stocking each last year and they put some in as part of hubbys gift.

Citric Acid every time also works for irons and is far cheaper than those descaling products. It's safe as it's used in making Lemonade.