25 February 2014
This morning I went to check the steriliser and it didn’t look like much had happened, despite leaving two packs of Boots descaler in the steriliser over night.
After doing some research I found that vinegar was almost a perfect method of descaling. Awesome, I just happened to have some budget Asda distilled malt vinegar hanging around.
The instructions I found were quite simple
fill a kettle with some vinegar
boil until it bubbles a little
pour the warm vinegar into the steriliser until it covers the element
leave it for thirty minutes or so
This works brilliantly, far better than the Boots descaler. You get the added bonus of cleaning the kettle at the same time this way.
The steriliser we bought yesterday was diabolical. I don’t think the previous owner had ever descaled it. Shameful. We’re not 100% through the scale yet but we’re getting close.
One of the typical symptoms of a failing steriliser is when it cannot run for the normal 5-8 minutes required. When we bought this it would hardly run for two minutes without turning off. It was immediately obvious when we took the lid off that there was not sufficient steam in there to sterilise. So two goes with the vinegar it was looking positive, the steriliser could last eight minutes so I thought I’d give it a second go without anything in to just clean any flaky bits of limescale off. So I head out into the garden for two minutes so I can feed the chickens.
Thirty three minutes later after I have dug some compost out of the bin for the chickens to feast on some worms I remember that the steriliser would have finished some time ago.