Stinky Limescale
Posted by Cottontimer on 03 Mar 2006 | Tagged as: London
Hard water is nasty not just because it decimated my skin. It also leaves deposits on everything it touches.
I’ve never had any experience with hard water before so all the products featured on TV and grocery store shelves to combat limescale are completely new to me. As I was doing a thorough cleaning of the house after moving in (professional cleaners make everything look clean when they’re really not), I noticed some pretty disgusting stuff.
- Brown stains on the bottom of the plastic dish rack.
- Gritty white layer on the bottom and lower half of the electric water kettle.
- Stinky to the point of nausea washing machine filter with some whitish gray flakes that break apart like chalk.
- Yellowish streaks at the back of the toilet bowls.
- Spots on handwashed dishes, but none on those washed by the dishwasher.
- Clogged showerheads
- White stains on taps
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Another gross thing I noticed before I unpacked my Brita water filter was the disgusting taste of coffee and tea made with tap water. And with tea, there’s an oily film on top that separates and clings to the sides of the cups. In fact, my favorite brand of English tea, Taylors of Harrogate Yorkshire Tea, even makes a version for hard water although I still prefer Yorkshire Gold, which is supposed to be good in both hard and soft water.
In any case, there are some health benefits to hard water including calcium and magnesium fortification. Some studies have also found that for every unit increase in water hardness, the risk of heart attack decreases by 1 per cent.
Perhaps I can put up with a some deposits around the house for the deposits made in my bones.
The Straight Dope has more on the difference between hard water and soft water.
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“disgusting taste of coffee and tea made with tap water. And with tea, there?s an oily film on top that separates and clings to the sides of the cups.”
ooh i get that too over here in davis. i made tea with tap water, which tasted gross. thankfully my roommate’s brita filter came, but there’s still that white film and i think it ruined my water filter. what i should do is buy water from safeway but it’s too far of walk to the grocery store, and a gallon of water is quite heavy to lug.
“In any case, there are some health benefits to hard water including calcium and magnesium fortification. Some studies have also found that for every unit increase in water hardness, the risk of heart attack decreases by 1 per cent.”
uh, whatever, it’s gross, tastes nasty, and it ruins my water boiler. heh.
not to mention, it’s really bad for your hair too. *fluffs hair*
btw, you are SO lucky to be in the land of tea. as a tea freak, i have to put up with ridiculous prices of good-quality tea in singapore.
You know, it’s crazy but I didn’t know that you could not get all that “disgusting stuff” - I assumed that everyone had to deal with these irritations. I’ve never lived somewhere where you didn’t get all these deposits and crusty bits in the kettle or on the draining board. Calgon and Scotch-pads have always been firmly rooted in my housecleaning.
Chopsticks are good for scraping off the really nasty kettle-scale, if it gets really bad (living with students means that the scale always builds up quite a lot as no-one takes responsability for it)!
I think you can get a…thingy…to put in your kettle and counteract it there if nowhere else. Try Lakeland (http://www.lakelandlimited.co.uk/). Or you can get one of these *really cool* kettles with a built-in filter - although if you have a brita you probably don’t need one. (But they are very cool.)
Ugh. I remember showers with the water softeners in London that prevented my hair from being too awful, but made the water feel greasy and screwed the water pressure.
We’re seriously discussing leaving the US for London if they fuck with Roe vs Wade and you’ve just reminded me that the one thing I don’t know if I can stand in England are the bathrooms.
Terrible showers, tiny rooms, bad ventilation, toilets that don’t flush… ugh. ugh ugh UGH.
If we move to London there will be some goddamn BATHROOM MODIFICATIONS.
put a quarter cup or more of vinegar into your tea kettle, add water, heat to boiling, let sit until cool, scrub scrub scrub, rinse. Depending on how bad the build-up is, you might have to repeat that a few times. Once you get it clean though, it’s easier to keep sparkly. Just be sure to rinse it out and use fresh tap water each time you boil a pot, and give it a good scrubbing a couple times a week.
Or alternatively, once you’ve gotten it clean, only use filtered water in it. 
I filter water for the taste, mainly when the city puts more chemical product in the water to off-set the river conditions. I don’t want to drink something that smells like a swimming pool.
Did you not have hard water in Saigon?
We live in Hanoi and definitely have hard water… all the same problems. It’s a first-time experience for us as well and it’s awful! It’s like we normally think of water as “clean” and yet our water actually feels like it ADDS dirt to the house!
Glad to see you are back to blogging!
laurina: I remember buying liters of Evian during freshman year of college even though I hated the taste of it because the dorm water was cloudy and much worse.
pei fen: I’d have to say that the prices here aren’t so affordable either but at least the selection is good.
Rosie: It’s amazing how we becme accustomed to something then the polar opposite is considered weird. hehe
Lisa: My kettle is about as low-tech as it can get. It’s stainless steel and doesn’t even have a whistle!
Krissy: Our shower stall is so tiny that we’re constantly banging our elbows into the door. Not fun.
Deb: The previous people were the ones who let the electric kettle accumulate build-up. I guess they weren’t particular about the taste of the water. Now I only use filtered water for most everything.
emma: Thanks for the welcome back although my internet connection is still so unstable that it makes me want to pull out my hair.
And, yes, I think the water in Saigon was on the hard side but it wasn’t to the level it is in London.
honestly, until you wrote this I thought I was just putting up with crappy city water in century-old house. However, could you be itching more than when you were in Saigon because the air is drier? I have a much harder time in winter than in summer, and I always thought it was because the furnace dried the air out so much, but it could also be a combination of dry furnace air and hard water. I really don’t have that many problems with it in summer.
Donna: It’s probably a combination of climate change and hard water. Also, I think I was allergic to something at the hotel where we stayed for almost two weeks. *scratch*