Beat limescale

Hello! It's been a while, but I have recently been moving house and haven't had free and easy access to the internet. I've moved close enough to my place of employment that I am now able to get to work on my bike. The traffic here is so bad that it takes twenty minutes by car but less than fifteen minutes by bike.

Anyway, that's not what I'm here to talk about. Today, I want to talk about limescale. Limescale is the white residue left by hard water when it evaporates. The white substance is calcium carbonate. It's in the water because it has been pumped from or filtered through natural underground reservoirs called aquifers. The calcium carbonate comes from the rocks underground.

Limescale isn't bad for health and it is quite safe to drink hard water. However, it can pose a number of problems in our homes, which can then have a negative effect on the environment.

• Limescale lingers on heating elements in hot water tanks and kettles making them less efficient at heating water
• Hard water reduces the frothiness of soap and we may use more shampoo and shower gels to get the desired effect
• Limescale makes soapy deposits on baths and sinks harder to remove and we therefore need special cleaning agents to get rid of them
• To get rid of limescale from kettles we need to use special limescale removing agents in our kettles and irons

There are ways to prevent limescale. I had a leaflet delivered to my door the other day advertising a product that prevents limescale coming into your house at the source - well, at the rising main anyway. It's called Scalewatcher but there are other products available, for example, this magnetic one from Ecoflow, which doesn't use electricity. I have no idea if these products work, but if you have had experience of them, please let us know.

To prevent limescale getting into your iron or kettle, why not use a Brita water filter? There's no need to keep it in the fridge if you're going to be heating the water up. A friend of mine keeps her water filter by the kettle and uses it for boiling water and cooking. Her kettle is limescale free and her pots and pans are gleaming! I wonder if she knows that if she collects her filters, she can return them to Brita who will recycle them.

caldini