Stovetop kettles - how do you clean them out?

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Spikem

Feeling the Heat
Nov 2, 2008
251
Middleboro, MA, USA
I have a stovetop kettle I keep on top of my insert to provide moisture for the house. Works great.

My issue is that I want to clean out inside of it and there is a hard layer of brown crap in it. Sediment? I don't know. But it is VERY hard to clean out.

Any experienced members know how I can/should do this?
 
Limescale? If so leaving vinegar or lemon juice in it overnight to soak should make a big difference.
 
Available at fine retailers everywhere...

CLR.jpg
 
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The wife used to use CLR for stuff like that but switched to lemi-shine. Its used for dishwashers but works great for de-liming stuff.
 
Do you really need to clean it out?
Mine also gets rusty/sedimenty- I just give it a quick rinse every once in a while then fill it back up...
Click to expand...

If I don't, the sediment will just continue to build up, wouldn't it?
 
Spikem said:
If I don't, the sediment will just continue to build up, wouldn't it?
Click to expand...
Well I make sure there's room for water ;)
What I mean is that I find I can tolerate the inside of the kettle being less clean something I would eat out of.

Edit: I just realized that my kettle is probably less common than most in that I can easily take the lid off of it and fit my whole hand in there to remove chunks of crap when I need to...
 
I just realized that my kettle is probably less common than most in that I can easily take the lid off of it and fit my whole hand in there to remove chunks of crap when I need to...
Click to expand...

I can do the same with mine but the limescale is caked on to the extent that I cannot get it out. I was even trying to use a cold chisel to do so.
 
My solution: a water softener. I don't get any lime build-up in my steamer. If I did, I'd be more concerned about my hot water heater (or my very expensive coffee maker), than what's happening to my kettle!
 
Yup, you have hard water. I'd use vinegar to take the scale out if it bothers you too much.

Matt
 
Studies have been done, showing that running a water softener can actually reverse much of the hard water mineral build-up in your hot water heater. If true, I would expect that running your kettle/steamer on distilled water for a few weeks might just remove the build-up naturally, with zero effort. Of course, those deposits will end up scattered all over the room, as dust.

The problem I see with running hard water in a steamer or kettle, is that it makes a dusty mess of your house. Hard water put thru any sort of humidifier puts out calcium and lime, which settles on your furniture and floors as dust. At $0.73/gal., I'd seriously consider switching over to distilled water, or some other soft water source.
 
Distilled water should dissolve the deposits, as should soft water, but I don't see how they would become airborne. I'd expect them to stay in the kettle unless you poured the dissolved deposits out. All you are doing is making the soft water hard so the result will be the same as if you just evaporated the hard water and left the deposits in the first place. The dust is more likely dried skin and such.

Matt
 
Filling the kettle with vinegar and leaving it overnight cleaned most of the limescale.
 
EatenByLimestone said:
Distilled water should dissolve the deposits, as should soft water, but I don't see how they would become airborne. I'd expect them to stay in the kettle unless you poured the dissolved deposits out. All you are doing is making the soft water hard so the result will be the same as if you just evaporated the hard water and left the deposits in the first place. The dust is more likely dried skin and such.

Matt
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I dunno, Matt. Plenty of nightmarish stories from folks running hard water thru humidifiers, so I made the leap right to the steamer, but maybe a steamer is more likely to leave all the minerals in the pot?
 
Maybe the fan in a humidifier would have something to do with it? I know some "cool" vaporizers drip water over a fan. That would atomize the calcium and stuff in the water and send it to where it could land on furniture. The humidifiers I have soak the water into a piece of cloth and blow the air past it. This should leave the minerals in the humidifier. Maybe some others atomize it with a fan? It's also possible that people are using the humidifiers because their skin is dry and they are just shedding more of it.

The water coming out of a steamer is pure water vapor. If you condensed it you will get distilled water. That's why the crud is left in the bottom of the steamer. Now if you were heating something that was fermenting and then condensed it you could get whiskey! That could bring the hearth experience to a new level!

Matt
 
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I think Matt is onto something. I got lime buildup in the kettle but don't have any unusual problems from the wick humidifier making dust. If you think about it, boiling off the water should never carry away the minerals, or else how would distillation work?

In any case I ended up throwing out my steamer. The enamel started chipping and it got all rusty. And it was a nice well made one from John Wright... Oh well...
 
True on the boiling, Jeremy. I hadn't really thought that thru. However, to say that people's houses that go from not dusty to suddenly much more dusty, immediately after installing a humidifier on a hard water system, are suffering a sudden case of massive skin sloughing, seems like a stretch to me.
 
http://www.livestrong.com/article/32208-cool-mist-humidifier-work/

Cool Mist Impeller Humidifier
Cool mist impeller humidifiers use an electric motor that drives a small, rapidly spinning disc. The disc sprays water at high speed onto a diffuser. The diffuser then breaks the water into microscopic droplets that can then be disbursed into the air.
Impeller humidifiers are quiet and don't require filters. Distilled water should be used in these humidifiers to prevent water impurities from being deposited on surfaces around the humidifier. These deposits are caused by minerals in water and resemble a fine powder or dust. Distilled water is free of these chemicals and will not leave a residue.


They must have the impeller type. Maybe they should buy the cheap type! :D

Matt
 
hah... yeah! Although, I think even the "sponge" type will distribute dust, as it's carried from the water by the sponge and blown off the sponge with your furnace blower.
 
higginscl said:
The wife used to use CLR for stuff like that but switched to lemi-shine. Its used for dishwashers but works great for de-liming stuff.
Click to expand...

Agree - this stuff (Lemi-shine) is amazing & we used it to clean lots of different stuff before I put in a water softener. Dump some in with a little water over night and the buildup should be gone.
 
I put a little vinegar in my steamer and use soft water from my treated water system. Never have a build up.
A little white ring around steamer occasionally.
 
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