How to clean the washing machine with citric acid from scale

A large num­ber of break­downs of wash­ing machines hap­pen due to hard water. For the same rea­son, the wash­ing process becomes inef­fi­cient. The salts in the water set­tle on the heat­ing ele­ment and oth­er parts of the equip­ment, which leads to the for­ma­tion of mul­ti­lay­er scale. Many experts strong­ly advise to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly clean the auto­mat­ic machine. The rem­e­dy for such pre­ven­tion is the usu­al cit­ric acid. In this arti­cle, we will tell you how much cit­ric acid to pour in, and how to clean the wash­ing machine with cit­ric acid from scale?

Cleaning steps with citric acid

For the descal­ing pro­ce­dure, you only need a small piece of dry cloth and cit­ric acid pow­der. All actions can be expressed in the fol­low­ing list:

1. First you need to inspect the drum so that it is emp­ty. Most fab­rics become dis­col­ored under the action of the agent.
2. Approx­i­mate­ly 90–100g of cit­ric acid should be poured into the pow­der tray. The amount of lemons poured should cor­re­spond to the vol­ume of the drum. If you need to clean equip­ment with a capac­i­ty of up to 4 kg, then up to 50–60 g of lemon will be enough. It is also allowed to pour cit­ric acid into the drum itself.
3. Next, you need to decide on the mode. It must con­tain the process of rins­ing, spin­ning. If the scale has formed in a small amount, it is enough to heat the water to 60°C, oth­er­wise the water must be heat­ed to 90°C.
4. When the drum is emp­ty and closed, and the pow­der con­tain­er is filled with lemon, the wash­ing mode starts.
5. After the process is com­plet­ed, it is imper­a­tive to inspect the places under the drum cuff. There may be traces of scale. They should sim­ply be thor­ough­ly wiped with a dry cloth.
6. In con­clu­sion, it is nec­es­sary to clean the drain fil­ter, dry the pow­der con­tain­er.

When the wash cycle is run­ning, you can see scale frag­ments that have fall­en off under the influ­ence of acid. This means that the tool has ful­ly coped with its task.

Expe­ri­enced crafts­men argue that such pre­ven­tive main­te­nance of equip­ment should be per­formed at least three times dur­ing the year. If the water has a high hard­ness, then after every 30 wash­es it is nec­es­sary to clean the machine. With weak water hard­ness, the clean­ing pro­ce­dure will be suf­fi­cient twice a year.

Why clean your washing machine with citric acid?

It is not dif­fi­cult to fol­low step-by-step instruc­tions on how to clean a wash­ing machine with cit­ric acid. The ques­tion aris­es: why is this nec­es­sary? Most often, water that is sup­plied through pipes has a high per­cent­age of salts and impu­ri­ties. At the moment of heat­ing, the salt con­tained in the water set­tles on the sur­face of the heat­ing ele­ment, scale appears. The same thing hap­pens with dish­wash­ers and elec­tric ket­tles.

If the appli­ance is not descaled in time, this will increase the time for heat­ing the water. Con­se­quent­ly, the con­sump­tion of elec­tric­i­ty will increase. It is also pos­si­ble that the heat­ing ele­ment has burned out. For this rea­son, the pre­ven­tion of a wash­ing machine should be car­ried out in a time­ly and effi­cient man­ner.

With the help of cit­ric acid, you can effec­tive­ly descale the heat­ing ele­ment and the drum of the wash­ing machine. As the water heats up, the acid reacts with the scale and breaks it down. Scale flakes fall off the parts of the equip­ment and are washed off with water.

Advantages and disadvantages of citric acid

There is no doubt about the pos­i­tive effect of using lemon­grass. The scale actu­al­ly dis­ap­pears. How­ev­er, is there any neg­a­tive impact of this rem­e­dy?

To answer the ques­tion posed — how much to pour, and can cit­ric acid for a wash­ing machine cope with scale? Any tool is ben­e­fi­cial if used in the right amount. If you clean the machine with a lot of lemons, while set­ting the mode with the max­i­mum tem­per­a­ture of water heat­ing, the effect will be dev­as­tat­ing. Ele­ments made of plas­tic or rub­ber, when inter­act­ing with acid and hot water, will begin to deform. Plaque will also break off, only togeth­er with the sur­face of plas­tic and rub­ber ele­ments.

Impor­tant:

Do not neglect the tem­per­a­ture of the water and lemon juice. The tool will effec­tive­ly clean plaque in warm water, hot water only increas­es the inten­si­ty of the process. A tem­per­a­ture of 60°C is enough to acti­vate the process of split­ting salt deposits.

Many house­wives who care­ful­ly take care of their house­hold appli­ances advise using lemon juice to clean the wash­er. The rea­son is that this mix­ture is avail­able to almost every­one. In addi­tion, cit­ric acid is harm­less to the body, does not pro­voke an aller­gic reac­tion, and is quick­ly washed out with water.

It is unlike­ly that there will be those who bring water to a boil in their wash­er. Yes, and many things have a tem­per­a­ture lim­it of up to 40 ° C. There­fore, the effect will not improve if more cit­ric acid is added. A pos­i­tive effect is achieved by a bal­anced use of the prod­uct.

Ways to care for equipment

Is it pos­si­ble to clean the wash­ing machine with oth­er equal­ly effec­tive means? The answer is pos­i­tive. Spe­cial­ized depart­ments of stores are over­whelmed with a large assort­ment of sim­i­lar prod­ucts. The use of such prod­ucts is car­ried out with strict adher­ence to the rules pre­scribed in the instruc­tions for the prod­uct.

Famil­iar­iza­tion with the rules of use should not be neglect­ed. Espe­cial­ly when the pre­ven­tion of the wash­ing machine was car­ried out for a very long time. Because an excess amount of deter­gent can cause seri­ous mal­func­tions of indi­vid­ual units or the entire wash­ing machine.

If you decide to clean your wash­ing machine with fresh­ly squeezed lemon juice instead of cit­ric acid, the result will be low, since the acid con­cen­tra­tion in fresh lemon juice is quite low. It is also not rec­om­mend­ed to use vine­gar instead of lemon, as it can pro­voke the oxi­da­tion of some ele­ments of the tech­nique. For some house­wives, it’s no secret that you can clean your wash­ing machine with Coca-Cola. To clean the wash­ing machine with Coca-Cola, you need to pour about 3 liters into the drum, set the tem­per­a­ture to 60 ° C and start the wash­ing process. See also: how to clean a wash­ing machine with bak­ing soda.

Time­ly pre­ven­tion of the wash­ing machine will help pre­vent the accu­mu­la­tion of large salt deposits. To do this, it is enough to know the sim­ple rules for car­ing for a wash­ing machine.

1. To reduce the hard­ness of water, it is bet­ter to use soft­en­ers for water.
2. The amount of pow­der must be strict­ly lim­it­ed in accor­dance with the stan­dards indi­cat­ed on the pack­ag­ing of the prod­uct. Pow­ders for auto­mat­ic wash­ing already con­tain ele­ments that soft­en the water.
3. It is bet­ter not to wash things that are too worn and shab­by, as torn threads and pieces of mat­ter set­tle on the details.
4. Wash clothes at a tem­per­a­ture not exceed­ing 75 ° C.
5. When the wash­ing process is over, dry the drum and the pow­der com­part­ment and dry them so that mold and an unpleas­ant smell do not form in the wash­ing machine. Read also the arti­cle on how to get rid of mold in the wash­ing machine.

The rules for clean­ing a wash­ing machine with cit­ric acid are quite sim­ple. There are many videos on this sub­ject. You just need to put the nec­es­sary amount of white pow­der into the com­part­ment, start the process, the machine will do every­thing by itself. It is enough just to han­dle the equip­ment well so as not to wor­ry about a large amount of scale. Now you know how to clean the wash­ing machine with cit­ric acid from scale.

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