Stove Kettle/Pot Humidifiers and Hard Water

Post Reply
 
User avatar
Sunny Boy
Member
Posts: 25547
Joined: Mon. Nov. 11, 2013 1:40 pm
Location: Central NY
Hand Fed Coal Boiler: Anthracite Industrial, domestic hot water heater
Baseburners & Antiques: Glenwood range 208, # 6 base heater, 2 Modern Oak 118.
Coal Size/Type: Nuts !
Other Heating: Oil &electric plenum furnace

Post by Sunny Boy » Wed. Oct. 12, 2016 12:10 pm

For those that use a kettle of pot on top of their stoves to add humidity and have hard water like we do here.....

I have three 2-1/2 quart stainless steel tea kettles. One for each stove when I get the second stove going, and the third is to swap out for cleaning mineral deposits. There has always been one on the range 24/7 during the 9 months it's running. We have hard water that builds up mineral deposits in the kettle. That insulating layer of minerals not only makes it take longer to heat the water, it also makes the kettle very noisy as the water gets near the boiling point.

I used to use CLR and Lime Away to dissolve the deposits. The CLR removed them better than the Lime Away , but it also started to cause a problem in that when put back into use, the insides of the kettle started to rust (yes, some alloys of stainless steels can rust). That got worse after each cleaning using CLR.

Melissa showed me an on-line article about many uses of white vinegar for kitchen and bathroom cleaning. One of which was removing hard water deposits from inside automatic dish washers and the white clouding of dishware. I tried it in the dish washer and all the whitish clouding of our clear glassware was gone by just adding a quart of white vinegar to the hot water of the dish washer's rinse cycle.

Next was the tea kettles.

Not only did the white vinegar do an excellent job of dissolving all of the mineral deposits inside the kettles, it did so faster than the CLR. And now after many cleanings using just white vinegar there is no rust appearing when the kettle is put back to use, like it did with the CLR after about as many cleanings.

Plus, I get to reuse the vinegar more times than I could from the CLR. By carefully pouring the used vinegar into an empty gallon milk container, the mineral clumps stay in the kettle to be rinsed out with water. After a few uses the CLR turns Jelly-like and becomes useless.

When done cleaning, the vinegar is much easier to rinse out than the CLR is.

Another plus is that I can buy two gallons of white vinegar for what one pint of CLR costs.

Thought you'd like to know.

Paul

 
User avatar
warminmn
Member
Posts: 8108
Joined: Tue. Feb. 08, 2011 5:59 pm
Location: Land of 11,842 lakes
Hand Fed Coal Stove: Chubby Junior, Efel Nestor Martin, Riteway 37
Coal Size/Type: nut and stove anthracite, lignite
Other Heating: Wood and wear a wool shirt

Post by warminmn » Wed. Oct. 12, 2016 1:07 pm

Vinegar is amazing stuff and should be used a lot more instead of all the chemicals for cleaning things. Bathtubs and sinks with baking soda, anywhere lime builds. I use it once a year to clean my gravity water filter too. Good stuff.

 
grumpy
Member
Posts: 12263
Joined: Sat. Jan. 02, 2010 12:28 am

Post by grumpy » Wed. Oct. 12, 2016 1:12 pm

I used RO water when I did this but stopped because it made a mess of my stove...

 
User avatar
Sunny Boy
Member
Posts: 25547
Joined: Mon. Nov. 11, 2013 1:40 pm
Location: Central NY
Hand Fed Coal Boiler: Anthracite Industrial, domestic hot water heater
Baseburners & Antiques: Glenwood range 208, # 6 base heater, 2 Modern Oak 118.
Coal Size/Type: Nuts !
Other Heating: Oil &electric plenum furnace

Post by Sunny Boy » Wed. Oct. 12, 2016 1:20 pm

I agree. White vinegar has taken over the jobs that I used many store-bought kitchen and bathroom cleaners for. And at a fraction of the cost.

I found that the only cleaner that vinegar can't replace well is bleach. While vinegar can remove slight amounts of mold, it doesn't touch tough mold stains the way bleach can.

Paul

 
User avatar
Sunny Boy
Member
Posts: 25547
Joined: Mon. Nov. 11, 2013 1:40 pm
Location: Central NY
Hand Fed Coal Boiler: Anthracite Industrial, domestic hot water heater
Baseburners & Antiques: Glenwood range 208, # 6 base heater, 2 Modern Oak 118.
Coal Size/Type: Nuts !
Other Heating: Oil &electric plenum furnace

Post by Sunny Boy » Wed. Oct. 12, 2016 1:21 pm

grumpy wrote:I used RO water when I did this but stopped because it made a mess of my stove...
What's RO water ?

Paul


 
User avatar
coaledsweat
Site Moderator
Posts: 13763
Joined: Fri. Oct. 27, 2006 2:05 pm
Location: Guilford, Connecticut
Stoker Coal Boiler: Axeman Anderson 260M
Coal Size/Type: Pea

Post by coaledsweat » Wed. Oct. 12, 2016 2:24 pm

Reverse osmosis, it is a membrane with pores in the 100 MW range, since water has a MW of 18, it is for the most part free of contaminants. It is one method used that can turn seawater into drinking water.

 
User avatar
Sunny Boy
Member
Posts: 25547
Joined: Mon. Nov. 11, 2013 1:40 pm
Location: Central NY
Hand Fed Coal Boiler: Anthracite Industrial, domestic hot water heater
Baseburners & Antiques: Glenwood range 208, # 6 base heater, 2 Modern Oak 118.
Coal Size/Type: Nuts !
Other Heating: Oil &electric plenum furnace

Post by Sunny Boy » Wed. Oct. 12, 2016 2:54 pm

Thanks CW.

Guess I'm more of a coal guy than I knew. I was wondering how "RO" could be any way connected with charcoal filters - only type I've ever used and all I could think of. :D

Paul

 
User avatar
coaledsweat
Site Moderator
Posts: 13763
Joined: Fri. Oct. 27, 2006 2:05 pm
Location: Guilford, Connecticut
Stoker Coal Boiler: Axeman Anderson 260M
Coal Size/Type: Pea

Post by coaledsweat » Wed. Oct. 12, 2016 5:17 pm

Charcoal and better yet, activated carbon (read anthracite coal) does its stuff differently than a membrane. Membranes remove contaminants by seperating water from them by molecular size. The carbon filters absorb the contaminants regardless of their size. It just likes them. :lol:

 
User avatar
Sunny Boy
Member
Posts: 25547
Joined: Mon. Nov. 11, 2013 1:40 pm
Location: Central NY
Hand Fed Coal Boiler: Anthracite Industrial, domestic hot water heater
Baseburners & Antiques: Glenwood range 208, # 6 base heater, 2 Modern Oak 118.
Coal Size/Type: Nuts !
Other Heating: Oil &electric plenum furnace

Post by Sunny Boy » Wed. Oct. 12, 2016 5:22 pm

coaledsweat wrote:Charcoal and better yet, activated carbon (read anthracite coal) does its stuff differently than a membrane. Membranes remove contaminants by seperating water from them by molecular size. The carbon filters absorb the contaminants regardless of their size. It just likes them. :lol:
Yup.
Next time a tree hugger complains about coal being dirty and polluting, if you wanna see their eyes bug out........ tell them that coal is what their bottled water filters are made out of. :D

Paul

 
User avatar
nortcan
Member
Posts: 3146
Joined: Sat. Feb. 20, 2010 3:32 pm
Location: Qc Canada

Post by nortcan » Wed. Oct. 12, 2016 6:37 pm

When evaporating water you can see some parameters contained in the raw water.
Removing the hardness, iron...deposits from some appliances with acidic products is ok but it only solves a small part of the problems. The water heater, the dish washer and all the things working with water have to work with the same hard water. Just for the water heater it takes about 1\3 more energy to heat the water when having just 1/8 inch of limestone deposit on the element, it takes a lot more soaps and cleaning products (2 X and more...) to get a so-so result with hard water. Many skin problems come from hard water, and because you should use more than 2 X more soap, the soap residues can irritate the skin in many cases, generally speaking. And many peoples don't know that cleaning products are a lot of money in the monthly budget.
Having the hardness Qty in GPG (grain per gallon) can tell if the hardness is acceptable or have to be remove with a water softener. The harder is the water the faster is the $$$ recovery.
An RO systm. can't work properly if the water is more than 10 GPG and shouldn't have more than 0.3 PPM (part per million) of iron.
For desalinating water with an RO, it's an other situation.
Just a few facts about water.


 
User avatar
nortcan
Member
Posts: 3146
Joined: Sat. Feb. 20, 2010 3:32 pm
Location: Qc Canada

Post by nortcan » Wed. Oct. 12, 2016 6:46 pm

Sunny Boy wrote:
coaledsweat wrote:Charcoal and better yet, activated carbon (read anthracite coal) does its stuff differently than a membrane. Membranes remove contaminants by seperating water from them by molecular size. The carbon filters absorb the contaminants regardless of their size. It just likes them. :lol:
Yup.
Next time a tree hugger complains about coal being dirty and polluting, if you wanna see their eyes bug out........ tell them that coal is what their bottled water filters are made out of. :D

Paul
Drinking water is generally filtered with coconut shells carbon to improve the taste...
City water is often filtered with anthracite for removing some sediments but not for the taste.
Instead of buying bottled water, peoples would be better to improve the water they already have in their home, they pay for spring water while they have the spring right in the home :D

 
User avatar
coaledsweat
Site Moderator
Posts: 13763
Joined: Fri. Oct. 27, 2006 2:05 pm
Location: Guilford, Connecticut
Stoker Coal Boiler: Axeman Anderson 260M
Coal Size/Type: Pea

Post by coaledsweat » Wed. Oct. 12, 2016 6:53 pm

ROs are very sensitive to iron, even a little can blind it. The presence of iron requires a pre treatment to remove it prior to the RO.

 
CapeCoaler
Member
Posts: 6515
Joined: Sun. Feb. 10, 2008 3:48 pm
Location: Cape Cod, MA
Stoker Coal Boiler: want AA130
Hand Fed Coal Stove: DS Machine BS#4, Harman MKII, Hitzer 503,...
Coal Size/Type: Pea/Nut/Stove

Post by CapeCoaler » Wed. Oct. 12, 2016 7:08 pm

Hydrogen Peroxide is a very good mold killer...
You can buy the stronger stuff , 35%, on line and dilute down to what you need...
http://blackmold.awardspace.com/kill-remove-mold.html#hydrogenperoxide
http://removemoldguide.com/do-it-yourself/how-to-get-rid-of-mold/

 
User avatar
nortcan
Member
Posts: 3146
Joined: Sat. Feb. 20, 2010 3:32 pm
Location: Qc Canada

Post by nortcan » Wed. Oct. 12, 2016 7:17 pm

coaledsweat wrote:ROs are very sensitive to iron, even a little can blind it. The presence of iron requires a pre treatment to remove it prior to the RO.
That is exact and peoples would have a lot of benefits if removing iron and hardness if present.
Plus when having ferrous iron, a water softer can usually remove both the iron and hardness at the same time.

Post Reply

Return to “Hand Fired Coal Stoves & Furnaces Using Anthracite”