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Is it a dusty room?
The whole apartment looks pretty clean, but the base of the kettle looked a little funky. Only realised it after drinking a cup of water
Do you know if it's a hard water area? It may just be calcium.
When you say "funky", was it a little furry and white? If so, that's probably calcium deposits (aka "limescale").
Wow I just learned of Hard Water vs Soft Water. I googled and yeah its a moderately hard Water area. So I assume this is normal (or at least nothing to be alarmed about)?
Yup, completely normal. I have hard water and my kettles get calcium buildup after a handful of uses. Soak with white vinegar to remove the buildup. Or if you're like me and forget until last second, boil 50/50 vinegar/water and deal with the vinegar smell, lol.
Ahh thank you! Kinda freaked out seeing so much weird stuff on the water's surface. Out of curiosity would regular consumption of such water have any adverse effects?
Hard water is fine.
I'm guessing your UK, but in America it's a lot worse and most people need salt exchangers.
Just think of it as "mineral water".
But I think other people talking about residual fat are probably right. If you have hard water, you'll notice a white chalky substance on faucets and stuff, or if you leave a glass of water out to evaporate, it'll leave behind the minerals.
I'm from Singapore, and fortunately the tap water is clean enough that I basically drink straight from the tap.
Damn that's an experiment I'll be trying for my stay here! Pretty cool to learn about these stuff
Hard water is still safe to drink.
The issue is it leaves residue in pipes, on faucets, and the biggest issue is inside hot water heaters because it hurts efficiency.
If you're renting you've got zero to worry about.
If you want to get rid of accumulation on dishes/faucets just wipe it down with vinegar and that breaks it down
Very good to know! Just trying to avoid potential stomach upsets while overseas. I'll be gone in a week or so, so not concerned about the other stuff :P
Scaleaway Household Descaler for £1.35 will (dis)solve the problem in less than one hour. I'm never going back to using vinegar, this stuff works much better. ;)
Yo it came back. It looks like this
This looks like a specific kind of... fungus?...aging?. I can't find an English word for it, but it looks like the black spots you get in clothes when you leave them in a wet pile for too long. In Dutch, is called "spocht".
the black spots you get in clothes when you leave them in a wet pile for too long
We call that mold or mildew.
I wiped them off with my finger the first time, it looks like chalky white powder.
The next batch of water we boiled looked fine. The batch afterward had this residue again
a lot of the reviews for the kettle I bought on amazon had reviews that complained about this stuff, but we buy filtered water in those refillable 5 gallon jugs and havent had an issue, we have hard water out the tap so i try to avoid using that for cooking, but also I wouldnt trust a used kettle, Id imagine its like the hotel coffee makers where people probably poop in it