de-scale a kettle

[miriam_e]

To remove calcium deposits from the inside of a kettle:

• half fill the kettle with normal tap water (don't be tempted to fill it higher because it will overflow)
• add 30ml of white vinegar (get the cheap industrial kind at the supermarket). I've seen various suggestions of 1 part vinegar to 4 parts water, 1 part to 2 parts, and equal parts! Eeek! So just chuck in about quarter of a glass of vinegar... should be fine. 30ml in my half full kettle is about 1 part vinegar to about 20 parts water and it worked really well. I certainly wouldn't do equal parts water-vinegar -- it might eat at the metal parts of the kettle too much.
• boil the mixture and allow to stand for 1 to 2 minutes, and then re-boil the mixture. Repeat this step 2 or 3 times as needed.
• empty the mixture and rinse well.

This works brilliantly! I repeated this whole procedure a couple of times this morning because the inside of my kettle was black with gunk and I couldn't see the water level through its side window. The inside of the kettle is now almost white (it is a white plastic kettle) and the water level is clearly visible through the side window.

Rather than pour the acidic mixture down the drain I shook it up while standing on my dirt driveway where nothing grows. As the stuff splashed out the top with each shake I got more of the top cleaned too. If you do this be careful. I got myself with boiling hot water a couple of times. Ouch.

I've also found suggestions to use lemon juice (cut a lemon into several small pieces and put in the kettle) or Coca-Cola (would have worked better a couple of decades ago before they stopped putting phosphoric acid in it, so now I guess it doesn't work any better than any other carbonated drink... and ordinary soda water -- not the colored, sweetened crap -- would probably work best because it wouldn't leave sugar and coloring and flavoring).