How and how to clean the iron from scale inside at home

How to clean the iron from scale? New mod­els are equipped with self-clean­ing; for oth­ers, a pen­cil, cit­ric acid and spe­cial clean­ers will do. Scale does not form if the iron is used cor­rect­ly. Increased water hard­ness leads to the for­ma­tion of lime scale in house­hold elec­tri­cal appli­ances — scale. An iron whose steam out­lets are clogged with scale will leave yel­low­ish marks on the fab­ric. Every house­wife should know how to descale the iron inside and out in order to pro­long its ser­vice life.

Self cleaning function

The lat­est mod­els of irons from well-known com­pa­nies are equipped with a self-clean­ing func­tion. The instruc­tions for using the appli­ance give clear instruc­tions on how it works:

1. The appli­ance is turned on to the max­i­mum tem­per­a­ture and wait until it heats up and turns off twice.
2. Then the iron is dis­con­nect­ed from the mains and press the self-clean­ing but­ton.
3. It is impor­tant to pre­pare a bowl or tray in advance into which the soft­ened limescale will drain. The sink is not suit­able for these pur­pos­es, since it will also have to be cleaned lat­er.
4. Hot steam under pres­sure removes all con­t­a­m­i­nants through the holes of the device into a sub­sti­tut­ed con­tain­er. For a more thor­ough clean­ing, you can shake the iron vig­or­ous­ly from time to time, being care­ful not to burn your­self.
5. After clean­ing is com­plet­ed, it is nec­es­sary to wait for the appli­ance to cool down, then wash and wipe its work­ing sur­face dry.

Before you start iron­ing, you should try the iron on an unnec­es­sary piece of fab­ric: if minor scale stains con­tin­ue to stand out, then you need to clean it again.

cleaning pencil

An inex­pen­sive tool — a clean­ing pen­cil will help the host­ess decide how to descale the iron from the out­side. The pen­cil will loosen lime deposits that have accu­mu­lat­ed around the steam out­lets. To clean, pour water into the tank, heat the device to max­i­mum tem­per­a­ture and turn it off. When its sole has cooled down a lit­tle, it is care­ful­ly rubbed with a pen­cil. After 5–10 min­utes, the iron is turned on again and an unnec­es­sary rag fold­ed in sev­er­al lay­ers is ironed with it, set­ting the inten­sive steam sup­ply mode. The pen­cil helps to remove scale that has accu­mu­lat­ed out­side in the holes on the work­ing sur­face of the appli­ance. Before clean­ing the room, it is nec­es­sary to open the win­dow, as lime deposits smell unpleas­ant.

Descale with citric acid

There is a pop­u­lar folk method on how to clean the iron from scale inside. You can remove lime deposits with cit­ric acid by dis­solv­ing it in a glass of water (25 g of acid is enough). The solu­tion is poured into a water tank and high heat is turned on. After 5 min­utes, the device is set to the max­i­mum steam emis­sion mode and turned off. A chem­i­cal reac­tion occurs between cit­ric acid and scale, and togeth­er with hot steam and water, dis­solved brown-yel­low scale with an unpleas­ant odor accu­mu­lat­ed inside the appli­ance comes out of the holes. If nec­es­sary, the pro­ce­dure is repeat­ed sev­er­al times. Then you can clean the sole with vine­gar, rinse the water tank, pour clean water into it and iron the old fab­ric fold­ed in sev­er­al lay­ers, wip­ing the iron with it. It is bet­ter to open the win­dow in the room while clean­ing. (See also: How can I clean the ket­tle from scale?)

Some folk crafts­men claim that you can clean the scale with Pep­si-Cola soda and sim­i­lar drinks, as they con­tain phos­phor­ic acid, which dis­solves organ­ic com­pounds.

We boil scale from the iron

If a lot of scale has accu­mu­lat­ed and the sed­i­ment is sol­id, you can use a potent agent — immerse the sole­plate in a hot solu­tion of cit­ric acid or a spe­cial scale pow­der for house­hold elec­tri­cal appli­ances. To do this, per­form the fol­low­ing steps:

1. 2 wood­en bars are placed in a deep bak­ing sheet;
2. put an iron on the bars;
3. pour pow­der from plaque onto a bak­ing sheet, cal­cu­lat­ing its amount by the vol­ume of water nec­es­sary to immerse the device in the solu­tion along the sole;
4. cit­ric acid is put in an amount of 5–6 tbsp. l. per liter of water;
5. pour boil­ing water into a bak­ing sheet so that it cov­ers the sole of the iron;
6. leave the iron in a hot solu­tion for 1 hour;
7. to more effec­tive­ly remove limescale, you can place a bak­ing sheet with a house­hold appli­ance on the stove and heat over low heat for an hour.

Factory descalers

The prob­lem of how to clean the iron from scale is not dif­fi­cult to solve with the help of prod­ucts spe­cial­ly devel­oped by man­u­fac­tur­ers of house­hold appli­ances that are sold in stores along with house­hold appli­ances. On the advice of a sales assis­tant, you can pur­chase a good import­ed prod­uct with clean­ing addi­tives and use it reg­u­lar­ly. Then lime deposits will not accu­mu­late on the device — nei­ther inside nor out­side, and there will be no prob­lem of things dam­aged by lime stains. The work­ing sur­face of the device will not need to be cleaned. You just need to care­ful­ly read the instruc­tions and use the prod­uct cor­rect­ly. The dis­ad­van­tage of fac­to­ry scale sol­vents is their high cost and the need to con­stant­ly buy these prod­ucts. Some­times they cause an aller­gic reac­tion in adults, chil­dren and pets. (See also: How and how to clean a cof­fee machine at home?)

Conclusion

You can deal with scale in dif­fer­ent ways. Some mod­els are equipped with a use­ful self-clean­ing func­tion. If there is no such func­tion in the iron, you can clean the plaque from the out­side with a pen­cil, and inside with a solu­tion of cit­ric acid or sparkling water. In the pres­ence of hard lime deposits, gen­tly immers­ing the sole­plate of the appli­ance in a hot solu­tion of clean­ing agent or cit­ric acid for a long time will help. You can, with­out wait­ing for the for­ma­tion of plaque, imme­di­ate­ly after buy­ing an elec­tri­cal appli­ance, reg­u­lar­ly use a spe­cial descaler, fol­low­ing the instruc­tions for use.

It is impor­tant to remem­ber that scale for­ma­tion can be eas­i­ly avoid­ed if not raw, but dis­tilled (in extreme cas­es, boiled) water is poured into the water tank in the iron, com­plete­ly drained after iron­ing and cool­ing the device and always stored in an upright posi­tion. These sim­ple tips will allow the host­ess to for­get about the prob­lem and no longer won­der how to descale the iron inside at home.

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