GL5 Forum

hi, does anyone have experience of de-furring a boiler? I was silly enough while visiting a friend to use the local water, which is very, very hard.

I now have a white coating of presumably calcium carbonate all over my tubes, well the boilers' anyway, I'm not sure what his tea does to me!

I am aware of a product called Kilrock-K, which we use in the domestic kettle, but wary of using it in a boiler, although I can't see much difference in principle.

regards Brian.

For a silver soldered copper boiler a solution of vinegar is quite effective. It is also good for cleaning injector cones and filter type coffee pots. It is best used hot and a commercial 10% acetic acid vinegar from Tesco or other supermarket should do the trick.

How a steel boiler will react I am not sure.

Dave T.

On the odd ocation that a de scale has been needed on my copper boilers a product by the name of OUST has been used it is a household kettle discalent . And to my knollage has not produced any problems.

I have used Kil-rock from Robert Dyas serveral times and find it very effective.

I use it warm and fill the boiler via the safety valve to the very top. Leave it for 30 mins and drain off some of the water to allow it to be steamed. Once up to pressure drop fire and blow down.

The boiler seldom primes afterwards. I do this once a year perhaps once every two years depending on use of loco.

I also run a solution through the tanks and pipe work.

Most commercial descalers are solutions of citric acid and should be harmless in copper boilers. Used hot the limescale will be dissolved fairly quickly unless there is a very heavy coating. In that case the trick is to keep the boiler full of the descaler (which will be much more dilute than you would have in your kettle after following the instructions) and maintain the temperature with a gas torch until you are satisfied the effervessence has stopped, at which point the now green solution can be dumped.
Beware!! Don't allow the solution to cool in the boiler as the dissolved salts will precipitate and you will have a devil of a job to flush the crystals out, especially as they will not dissolve even if you warm the stuff up again.
Make sure you wash the boiler out with hot water afterwards. I repeat until there is no colour in the water when dumped. Even then the first steaming can be quite lively.

Eddyg

Three drops of Fernox into your tender using an eye dropper every time you fill with water will slowly clean boiler and keep injector cones clean. Now then Malcombe Gregory is starting to make superb injectors with bronze steam cones that do not suffer from Zinc errosion like brass ones do and I have seen them working and brought two .his Email is acapes8@aol.com.Support our members and I have no interest in them just a satisfied customer. So there you go Sorry so many of you could not be bothered to visit my 10 days of steam in September. Do you really want tracks to be shut down as to maintain a track and have few visitors come is disheartening.I cancel all activities to support track opendays and will try for one last year to have opendays then I will cover it in soil and plant grass seed! Use it or loose it Brent