My sister and brother-in-law were visiting us in Paris this past week and all was going well until late one night, the macerating toilet in the guest bath just went kaput. Our good-natured guests decamped to a hotel down the block (the only other toilet in the apartment is in our bedroom, making late-night bathroom runs a potential British farce) and we called a plumber. What we learned was this: the notorious calcium in the Paris water supply had built up over time in the motor of the toilet causing it to just give up.
Now, I thought the water in Chicago was hard — every week I'd have to combat the pink rings around the drains from all of the excess iron — but it is nothing compared to Paris water. Paris water suffers from an excess of calcium to such a degree that literally every single bathroom cleaner in the store advertises itself as "anti-calcaire" — clearly, this is a major problem for everyone.
What is difficult to find is a natural cleanser or pipe cleaner that's meant to deal specifically with calcium deposits. So, I put the question to you: is there a natural way to clean calcium deposits out of your pipes? Do any of you live in Paris and have experience with this particular problem? Let me know!
Image: Online Water Softeners
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Acetic acid, citric acid, hydrochloric acid... those would be totally natural chemicals.
I've found rubbing the faucets once a week with a lemon wedge works wonders.
"I've found rubbing the faucets once a week with a lemon wedge works wonders."
That would be the citric acid in the lemon working wonders...
I often mix baking soda and vinegar and pour it down my drains. Not sure if this will work for calcium, but it seems to help my drain problems.
I've used white vinegar to clean calcium deposits off showerheads; I haven't tried it, but I suspect that pouring a cup or so down the drain on a regular basis would do the trick.
As folks above have said, though, anything acidic should work.
that picture is so disgusting
Pour a cup of baking soda down the drain followed by a cup of vinegar. We have very hard water in England as well. I do this once a month and have no problems.
Vinegar and baking soda... vinegar works because it contains acetic acid. Baking soda itself does not dissolve calcium deposits.
My french plumber once told us we should regularly flush a whole load of salt down the loo. My french was worse at the time so I'm not sure if this was a hard water thing or what!
boiled vinegar, but it smells horribly!
I agree that a water softener will be the most effective, natural (just uses salt), and best long term solution.
if you own, or are on good terms with the landlord, why not install a water softening system?
I've started using sugar free kool aid to descale the humidifier in my house. It's really cheap, and its first ingredient is citric acid.
Might be hard to find in Paree, though.
Paris' water is such a new degree of hard water that we've debated calling it something else entirely. Unfortunately diamond water just sounds too flashy for something so frustrating.
Baking soda (bicarbonate de soude) and white vinegar down the drain regularly does help, and they're both cheap & easy to find (if you're having trouble finding baking soda, it is sometimes in the cleaning aisle at grocery stores, although Monoprix has it next to the salt).
If drains get really bad or if it seems that whatever buildup is not being handled by the baking soda/vinegar then I pour a bit of washing soda (cristaux de soude - found in some small hardward stores and possibly the cleaning supply section of BHV).
For those of you suggesting water softening systems for the whole building, you obviously don't live in Paris. 1) it would likely take 2 yrs for the syndic to agree to have it installed and 2) that would only happen if the it were all paid for by the person proposing it - at what would likely be 5x the cost of having it done in the US. Having it installed just for the apartment is unlikely due to lack of space (water heaters are often visible either in the kitchen or bathroom as there's no space to hide them away for example), unless you're in a more modern building. Of course, you just never know until you try. You can find water softening equipment at Leroy Merlin or Castorama if you want to check it out.
Hard water really, really sucks!
You REALLY need a water softener.
We've got extremely hard (well) water, and that hard water has destroyed every sink, faucet, toilet (and a lot of the pipes/plumbing) in our place.
We got a very good quality water softener (WaterMax) and after making sure our hard water issues really were resolved, then we replaced all those fixtures (and a lot of the pipe/plumbing).
Next up is to get a whole-house reverse-osmosis system to replace the under-sink one we have in the kitchen.
water softener is the only way. i tried everything here in Santa Barbara but there is nothing else that worked.