Nigel’s Road Test: Eco Kettle and Iron Descaler

Last night I was at a friends house, enjoying a cup of tea in the evening sun on the patio. It was a perfect summer evening, and so I was loathe to break the mood by mentioning that my tea had a layer of scum on it, and seemed to be full of little bits of white grit. With some trepidation, we looked inside the kettle (not an eco kettle, although my friend assures me that she assiduously sticks to a regime of only boiling as much water as she needs, so we’ll let her off the hook). Within the kettle was a snowy white wasteland The limescale had coated the whole of the inside, and there was a good few tablespoons worth of loose bits floating around.

I remembered that the folks over at Ecozone had sent me a sample of their Kettle & Iron Descaler to try, and so this seemed like a good opportunity to pit it against a tough challenge, a kettle which had never been descaled since the date of purchase 18 months ago, belonging to someone living in an exceptionally hard water area. Would the descaler be up to it?

Following the instructions, we half filled the kettle, and emptied a sachet of the descaler into the still-hot water. It immediately started fizzing away, and after half an hour we emptied it and rinsed out the residue. After 30 minutes there was a little limescale still remaining. The instructions advised that in severe cases, a second application might be necessary. However, this seemed like overkill given that there was only a tiny bit still sticking to the bottom, which we were able to just wipe off with a cloth.

For me, a key part of the eco philosophy is about taking care of the things you have so they work efficiently and last longer. A kettle that is full of limescale uses more energy and is at risk of breaking down, and will need replacing much earlier than one that has been cared for and maintained.

Best of all, the whole operation was over and done with in time to enjoy a perfect, limescale free, cup of tea and still have time to enjoy the last few rays of evening sun.

 Blogmemes  |   Del.icio.us  |   Digg  |   Furl  |   Google  |  Netscape  |   PlugIM  |   Reddit  |   Squidoo  |   StumbleUpon  |   Technorati  |   Yahoo My Web

This entry was written by Nigel and posted on Wednesday, July 14th, 2010 at 3:35 pm and filed under Eco products, Nigel's Eco Store. Bookmark the permalink. You can follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

---