They won't see us waving from such great heights

[venta]

A question for those of a scientific turn of mind.

I live in Oxford which, as many of you know, is a hard water area. Our kettle needs regular de-scaling, as it quickly fills up with concrete-y white deposits. I'm sure the iron would too, if we ever used it.

Recently, the shower has been communicating to me that it needs de-scaling; it does this by running extremely hot. This isn't as daft as it sounds: scale lowers the water throughput, and thus the shower is heating much less water than it thinks it is, the net result being that it heats it too much (at least, that's my understanding).

It's always a fight to dismantle the showerhead, but when one does the deposits found therein always turn out to be a virulent shade of jade-green. Why ? Is it in fact not scale, but some mysterious by-product of a disintegrating copper water tank ?

And for those who are not of a scientific turn of mind: what do they call cider in America ?

Comments

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

It sounds from your description that you have an electric shower of some description. Certainly the Triton ones I have had adjust the temperature by adjusting the _flow_ through the boiler as you surmise. However, it may be that the main limescale problems are not in the shower head but in the boiler itself. Our first one (which lasted 15 years or so, lest the following makes you think I killed it) had a copper tank inside it which could be carefully disconnected and removed, and then immersed in a bowl of descaler (I say it "could" - there was nothing in the manual to encourage this!) I had to do this about once a year to keep it working. The newer shower we have has a different boiler inside it and is outwardly some kind of black plastic (presumably metal inside that) and hasn't needed descaling in this way (yet, at least).

[venta.livejournal.com]

Any of what you say could be correct, but removing the shower head and excavating the jade-green cack does make the observable symptoms go away.