How to clean the water heater from scale at home

If you are one of those very rare eco­nom­ic men in our time, then you do not need to be told how to clean the boil­er from scale at home, you already know it! This arti­cle is for those who until now have not been too puz­zled by such prob­lems, but right now they decid­ed to save mon­ey on call­ing a spe­cial­ist.

But, bet­ter late than nev­er! There­fore, we high­ly approve of your zeal and will describe this sim­ple process in as much detail as pos­si­ble espe­cial­ly for you.

How to understand that the boiler needs cleaning?

First, you should know that pre­ven­tive clean­ing of the water heater should be car­ried out at least once a year. If you clean it every six months, then it’s even bet­ter for the device! And if he is bet­ter, then your pock­et, you know. After all, buy­ing a new heat­ing ele­ment or oth­er parts, as well as pay­ing for the work of a replace­ment spe­cial­ist, is very expen­sive.

Sec­ond­ly, there are var­i­ous meth­ods designed to improve the qual­i­ty of water and soft­en it, with the aim that the boil­er does not have to be cleaned so often. These include:

• Fil­ters for mechan­i­cal clean­ing at the inlet
• Ion or sorp­tion fil­ters
• Mag­net­ic water con­vert­ers
• Cation addi­tives and oth­er regents

But, even these prod­ucts do not puri­fy water by 100%, and it will still be nec­es­sary to clean mechan­i­cal­ly. True, less often.

But, if you sim­ply didn’t know this and the boil­er has been in oper­a­tion for a long time, then you prob­a­bly began to notice such signs that direct­ly indi­cate that an urgent “time” has come:

• You have noticed that elec­tric­i­ty con­sump­tion has increased marked­ly. Indeed, a lay­er of scale, only 1 mm increas­es light con­sump­tion by 10%, but an annu­al lay­er of 10 mm, by all 70%!
• You began to notice that the tank heats up very slow­ly. This is also due to the fact that a large “fur coat” has formed on the shade, which great­ly com­pli­cates heat trans­fer. In addi­tion, the boil­er in this case works much more inten­sive­ly than nec­es­sary, and there­by short­ens its oper­a­tional resource.
• Some nois­es and hiss­ing are heard from the boil­er.
• If there is a mag­ne­sium anode there, and it looks much thin­ner, then you need to clean it imme­di­ate­ly.

A few words about magnesium anodes

For some rea­son, many peo­ple believe that the mag­ne­sium anode is just a panacea. Say, if you put it, then clean­ing the boil­er with your own hands is no longer required. Such opin­ions can often be heard not only from the local Kuli­b­ins, but even from plumbers!

But, this opin­ion is very far from the truth. The mag­ne­sium anode is designed to pro­tect the tank from cor­ro­sion! And con­verts hard salt deposits into soft ones. That is, it will sim­ply be eas­i­er for you to clean them. But they will be formed, in any case.

How to disassemble and remove the boiler

It all depends on where you have it. If in the bath­room and its valves are locat­ed above the bath bowl itself, then it is not nec­es­sary to remove it. Pull out only the heat­ing ele­ment of the water heater. If in the toi­let above the tank or the kitchen, then you need to remove it.

There­fore, we will describe the process in full, includ­ing the with­draw­al:

1. Drain hot water through the faucet
2. Dis­con­nect­ing the device from the net­work
3. Turn off the cold water sup­ply
4. A tube is unscrewed in the hot water out­let, and a flex­i­ble hose is attached to this place. The end of it must be low­ered into a bath, buck­et or toi­let, depend­ing on the loca­tion of the boil­er.
5. Unscrew the cold water pipe. The drain will take about half an hour.
6. We remove the dec­o­ra­tive cap, for which the screws are first unscrewed, and then the indi­ca­tor ter­mi­nals.
7. We remove the ground­ing and wires. Here we can advise you to take a pic­ture of them first, so that lat­er, when col­lect­ing, you won’t con­fuse any­thing, and you can check the start­ing posi­tion.
8. Cov­er the tub with a large piece of cloth.
9. Now, ful­ly pre­pared for clean­ing the tank — remove and take it to the bath, pre­vi­ous­ly cov­ered. This will pro­tect it from scratch­es and chips. You need to put it up with cranes.
10. Loosen the clamp and remove the ther­mo­stat. If you notice that the rub­ber seals are cov­ered with a lay­er of scale, and because of this it does not come off, you need to gen­tly tap on them.

How and how to clean the heater from scale

The heat­ing ele­ment is so shag­gy and plas­tered over, and dirty par­ti­cles of plaque, rusty in col­or, fall out of the tank.

But, for­tu­nate­ly, the heat­ing ele­ment, unlike the kid­neys, is quite easy to clean. If the deposits on it are very dense, you can crush them with pli­ers and knock them down com­plete­ly. The rest can be scraped off with a knife.

And very small residues — some kind of acid. Or a solu­tion of cit­ric or acetic acid, dilut­ed with water. Soak the heat­ing ele­ment for a day or less, and then rinse very well. If you leave acid on the met­al, it will pro­voke the devel­op­ment of vio­lent cor­ro­sion.

Pro­por­tions: 2 bags of lemon per 2 liters of water. That is, it is a fair­ly strong solu­tion comes out.

By the way, do not for­get, on the sly, to change the mag­ne­sium anode. If you see that it has great­ly decreased in size, then it’s time.

How to clean a dry heating element

Dry heat­ing ele­ment is not met­al or cop­per, but sim­ply ceram­ic. His clean­ing is no dif­fer­ent from the usu­al. Just be care­ful. Nat­u­ral­ly, you should not knock on it with pli­ers.

How to wash the tank?

The tank is also very dirty. Shine a flash­light. If you see notice­able lay­ers of scale, mucus and oth­er non­sense, then you won’t be able to get by with the usu­al rins­ing from the hose.

There are var­i­ous clean­ing prod­ucts for clean­ing tanks on sale, it is best to use them. Can be washed with cit­ric acid, but the con­cen­tra­tion should be high­er. There­fore, most like­ly, the fin­ished prod­uct will be cheap­er.

It is not worth clean­ing it mechan­i­cal­ly, since the walls of the tank are very sus­cep­ti­ble to scratch­ing and the slight­est dam­age will lead to the devel­op­ment of rust. And the water, over time, will flow rusty …

Well, now you know how to clean the water heater from scale. And you can assume that you have earned as much as a plumber takes for such a ser­vice. After all, sav­ing is the same as earn­ing!

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