Hot Water Tank Hard Water Deposits

[meatheadmerlin]

I just changed the element in a hot water tank and fished out a good pile of hard water deposits from inside.
I'm pretty sure that they are mostly calcium deposits as this water is known to kill coffe makers quick.
No noticeable sand, sulfur, or iron in this well water supply.

I was wondering if there was a way to use these deposits, perhaps as a pH adjuster, like you would use lime.
Maybe grinding them and calcining them might make them suitable to neutralize acidic waste solutions?

Does anyone know if this would be feasible, or am I way off base here?

 

[heliman4141]

Hello,
Im a Plumber & see that a lot when changing out waterheaters & when flushing them.
Yes, its lime & possibly calcium & you could do what your thinking about, tho a bag of clean lime is pretty cheap & easy to store in a 5gallon bucket with a lid. Doub't its worth the effort to use it IMHO unless you only have a small amount of wastewater.
For one thing when you take a waterheater to a recycle station they pay you for its total weight so you want all that crud inside to stay to add weight to the appliance, they don't ask or care about it.
Well water in my area is heavily saturated with iron & our city water which I have is saturated very badly with lime. So bad I won't drink it or give it to my pets so we drink/cook with reverse osmosis water from the grocers machine at .30 a gallon.
If you only have 1 5 gallon of waste or less to treat then yea, I can see why you might want to use it just to save a stop at the store for a bag of lime.

Dave

 

[Geo]

A couple of containers of CLR and wait for about an hour and flush well.

 

[ncgoldpanner]

Buy some citric acid (in the US this is a good source: www.dudadiesel.com
It is cheap, biodegradable, dry powder, has lots of uses and very safe to use. Add 1 or 2 pounds thru the heater element or anode port, add 2 or 3 gallons of water and allow to react for 2 hours. Flush with water. It will complex both iron and calcium deposits into solution.

CLR is just a citric acid solution with a surfactant added.

 

[Lou]

Citric acid works well, so does sulfamic, oxalic and glycoloic

 

[goldenchild]

But he doesn't want to get rid of it :lol: He wants to harvest it.

 

[jason_recliner]

Buy some citric acid (in the US this is a good source: http://www.dudadiesel.com
It is cheap, biodegradable, dry powder, has lots of uses and very safe to use. Add 1 or 2 pounds thru the heater element or anode port, add 2 or 3 gallons of water and allow to react for 2 hours. Flush with water. It will complex both iron and calcium deposits into solution.

CLR is just a citric acid solution with a surfactant added.

Seven and a half years. That's one heck of a wait before your first post. 8)