Different Ways on How to Descale a Hot Water Dispenser

Last Updated on January 5, 2023

Having a hot water dispenser in your home truly makes life easier. Especially during a busy day, you no longer have to wait for the water to boil in your kettle so you can enjoy your morning coffee. What’s more, it is available in different designs and styles to surely find something that will fit the theme of your home.

However, if you have a hot water dispenser, you should know how to maintain it. This is to make sure it will have excellent performance for a very long time.

Knowing how to descale your hot water dispenser is advisable if you want things to continue to work correctly. Though you may find it a slightly tedious task, the good news is that you do have several options available to you when it comes to dealing with your hot water dispenser.

Who Needs to Descale Their Hot Water Dispenser?

We should all look at doing this as a form of maintenance, but some people have more of a problem with their water dispensers than others.

The main issue is the type of water in your area, as not every water cup in the UK will be the same.

Instead, you may have hard water in the area in which you live, and that’s going to lead to a need for descaling more often than a soft water area. The type of water you have depends on where you live and your water supply. It’s not harmful in the quantities you get, but you still want to be cleaning this up regularly.

Descaling will deal with any limescale present in your dispenser, and it is a prevalent issue in areas with hard water. You can do so with a specific descaler product, but we will get into that later on.

Why You Need to Descale Your Hot Water Dispenser

But first, why do you even need to do this to your water dispenser?

Well, thanks to limescale in the water and other chemicals, it can lead to residue building up in your water dispenser. This, in turn, can then lead to it malfunctioning if you’ve failed to deal with the issue early enough and the limescale has built up.

So, how do you deal with this problem? Well, there are a few simple steps you need to follow.

Descaling With Tablets

Here are the steps to follow if you are going to descale your hot water dispenser with a product in tablet form:

Step 1: Fill the Water Dispenser With Water

Firstly, fill the tank of your water dispenser with clean water and make sure you do so until it has reached its maximum capacity. After that, the press starts, and you will have to wait for it to do its thing.

Let the water boil. Once it has done so, empty the water back out of the water dispenser and into an empty bowl or bucket.

Step 2: Add the Descale Product to the Water in the Cup

If you are using a descaling product in tablet form, add this to the water in the cup and dissolve it. Once you have done this, add the water, complete with descaling product, back into the water dispenser’s water tank.

After you have done this, you need to hit the start button and wait once again for the water dispenser to boil the water. Get yourself comfortable, as this is a process you will be doing many times to get rid of the calcium and salt built up inside the dispenser.

Step 3: Rinse and Repeat

This is where it gets boring, but you need to repeat using the descaling solution and adding it back to your hot water dispenser several times. This will allow the product to get to work on removing the limescale, as some of it can be stubborn and will take some time to get it to dissolve.

Step 4: Clean the Water Dispenser in the Sink

After you have repeated the process five times, or more depending on how severe the problem is, you then need to finally drain your water dispenser of hot water and prepare to clean it. You can do this by washing it in your sink.

You will need to rinse the dispenser thoroughly, but don’t stress too much, as you will be doing something else to help get everything clean.

Step 5: Fill Your Water Dispenser With Clean Water

Finally, refill the water dispenser with freshwater, press the start button and wait. Let it boil, then empty the dispenser and repeat this process five times, or until you feel it’s clean enough to be used.

Always make sure you are filling it with clean water, and remember that you are trying to rinse the entire dispenser out to remove the potential residue from the descaling tablet. Therefore, you must use clean water.

When you feel like it’s been thoroughly rinsed, your hot water dispenser is good to go!

Descaling With DIY Solutions

If you want to descale your hot water dispenser but don’t have any descale tablets to hand or prefer to use something more natural, you can also use citric acid or white vinegar.

So, if you are using vinegar or citric acid, then these are the steps you should follow.

Step 1: Get the Quantities Correct

It would help if you got the correct quantities when using vinegar or citric acid.

For citric acid-based solutions, do not use more than 25ml with 500ml of water. For white vinegar, it’s a 1:1 ratio, so a cup of vinegar to a cup of water.

Step 2: Add the Mixture to the Dispenser

No matter if using white vinegar or citric acid, what you need to do now is to pour the mixture into the dispenser and then let it sit for 1 hour. This will give the solution time to get to work. Make life easier for yourself by remembering to close the lid and then walk away.

Step 3: After an Hour

After the hour, you need to press the start button to kick the water tank into action. Let the water be dispensed into a cup or bucket, but don’t throw it away. Instead, put the solution back into the tank and repeat the process five times.

Step 4: Clean the Water Tank

Once you’ve completed several cycles of dispensing and refilling, you then need to remove the water tank and clean it before use. As before, you can do this in your sink.

Step 5: Fill the Tank With Clean Water

Fill the tank to the highest water level and let it boil. Press the start button, and allow it to dispense into a cup. Do this several times to get the inside surfaces of the tank clean. This is also to remove all traces of the solution.

Step 6: Start Using It

Once you are satisfied that the solution has been removed, you will be free to use your hot water dispenser to get some nice, clean water.

Enjoy Your Clean Hot Water Dispenser

If you have a water dispenser, you'll want to clean it regularly.

Experts recommend cleaning the cooler with every change of the bottle, or every six weeks, whichever arrives first.
Keeping the water clean is the most important part of maintaining your dispenser. pic.twitter.com/dLjnA1Rxit

— Midea Electronics (@MideaNigeria) February 17, 2019

And that’s it! That is all you need to do when it comes to trying to descale a hot water dispenser. It is not that difficult, and the only annoying part is having to operate it so often to get the solution to work and then wait for the water to come out.

If you do live in an area where there is hard water, then treating your water dispenser in this way is essential. If not, you run the risk of having to replace the hot water dispenser, and who wants to do that all the time?

Let us know how you get on or if you have any other tips and tricks on how to clean and descale a hot water dispenser.