General Household Tips

A lot of places you may work will be hard water areas. This means that the water has high calcium and or magnesium ions content and presents as lime scale. This lime scale builds up around taps, in the kettle, iron, washing machine and dishwasher. There are various methods to limit the damage done by the lime scale to appliances that use water.

Hard Water Map of UK and Ireland

Hard Water Map of UK and Ireland

Permission given by Dyna Pipe – see link on links page

Water softeners: not all houses will be fitted with one of these. They work with salt to soften the water which will need replacing from time to time. The cold tap in the kitchen usually is the only tap in the house which will NOT run through the water softening machine. So this is the tap to use for cooking and drinking water.

Taps: make sure that the area around the tap where water tends to spill, is kept dry

Kettle: some families use ‘scouring’ balls in the kettle. You could also boil the kettle with a quarter cup of vinegar then let it stand so that the vinegar softens the lime scale. Rinse well before making tea or coffee! There are also proprietary products that can be used to descale.

Iron: some families use distilled water which is difficult to come by or ‘ironing water’ which is bought at the local supermarket.  Neither of these is really necessary as irons have a self cleaning facility which leaves really scary brown marks on your pristine, white, newly ironed items!! Don’t panic. This is just the burnt lime scale that builds up inside the iron. You can either, brush it off in most cases or just wet and rub it off.