I've been cleaning mineral sediment our of our electrical (resistance) water heaters for years. Apparently, the minerals in our hard well water collect on the electrical heating elements, break off as the elements thermally expand, and then collect on the bottom of the tank. The pieces are even shaped the same diameter as the elements.
We bought a new energy and water efficient (and made in the USA) Bosch dishwasher about 2 years ago and have been really happy with it.
So I went to clean out our water heater around Christmas and found I couldn't remove the lower heating element without destroying it. I usually remove the drain valve and the heating element for the cleaning process. The unit was 20+ years old and I've been looking for an excuse to install a heat pump water heater so we bought one and took advantage of a sale at Lowe's and a 30% federal tax credit. We bought the GE GeoSpring HP water heater and one of the things I liked about it was that the heating (condenser) coil is wrapped around the metal tank externally so there was no contact with the water. Insulation covers the coil. The GeoSpring works great and the payoff period should be short based on our decreased electrical load (and "free" basement de-humidification).
Then we start noticing that our dishwasher doesn't seem to be cleaning the dishes. There's a nasty film growing on them and we think the dishwasher is to blame.
Then we realized that our problems started shortly after installing the new water heater. We suspect water temperature. No, that wasn't it. The water in the dishwasher is plenty hot and has its own inline water heater anyway. We tried different detergents with no luck either.
Then the realization hits -- our old water heater was basically acting as a water softener; duh right? I'd realized that before but I never connected hard water with dirty looking dishes. So we add some special sauce to the dishwasher every so often and all is well, the dishes come out sparkling, our power bill is less, and I'm not cleaning the gunk out of my water heaters every year.
Just thought I'd post in case anyone else has similar experiences.
PS: We run our the Geospring in the HP only mode. If we were to run it in hybrid mode where the electrical heating elements are used when loading is heavy, we'd probably still have sediment build up in the tank.
We bought a new energy and water efficient (and made in the USA) Bosch dishwasher about 2 years ago and have been really happy with it.
So I went to clean out our water heater around Christmas and found I couldn't remove the lower heating element without destroying it. I usually remove the drain valve and the heating element for the cleaning process. The unit was 20+ years old and I've been looking for an excuse to install a heat pump water heater so we bought one and took advantage of a sale at Lowe's and a 30% federal tax credit. We bought the GE GeoSpring HP water heater and one of the things I liked about it was that the heating (condenser) coil is wrapped around the metal tank externally so there was no contact with the water. Insulation covers the coil. The GeoSpring works great and the payoff period should be short based on our decreased electrical load (and "free" basement de-humidification).
Then we start noticing that our dishwasher doesn't seem to be cleaning the dishes. There's a nasty film growing on them and we think the dishwasher is to blame.
Then we realized that our problems started shortly after installing the new water heater. We suspect water temperature. No, that wasn't it. The water in the dishwasher is plenty hot and has its own inline water heater anyway. We tried different detergents with no luck either.
Then the realization hits -- our old water heater was basically acting as a water softener; duh right? I'd realized that before but I never connected hard water with dirty looking dishes. So we add some special sauce to the dishwasher every so often and all is well, the dishes come out sparkling, our power bill is less, and I'm not cleaning the gunk out of my water heaters every year.
Just thought I'd post in case anyone else has similar experiences.
PS: We run our the Geospring in the HP only mode. If we were to run it in hybrid mode where the electrical heating elements are used when loading is heavy, we'd probably still have sediment build up in the tank.