KitchenCraftLe'Xpress Kettle Descaler Ball, Stainless Steel Wire Limescale Remover

I live in an extremely hard water area...my house is rented by a firm with 'Limestone' in the title so you can imagine the amount of scale we have! I purchased my new kettle as I previously had an instant hot water device (sorry can't say more than that in case I break the law or something regarding advertising) and within 2 days I had scale building up in the bottom of the kettle. I remember my mum having a little metal ball sitting in the bottom of her kettle years ago and she also lived in a hard water area, with little or no scale in her kettle. As soon as I received the little ball of metal, popped it in my kettle and I can honestly say, almost instantly the scale started disappearing from bottom of kettle. It is like a magnet to the stuff...amazing!! I just rinse it out when it starts to look a bit white and pop it back in and it starts doing its magic again. Highly recommended!!

This little device helps reduces the rate of build up of limescale fur inside the kettle as its stainless steel mesh provides a large surface area for the scale to deposit on instead. Limescale will still build on the kettle walls, albeit not as quickly. So all the limescale you see collected on this fur collector would have been on the inside of the kettle. Every few days you have to wash the scale collector under a tap while crushing it between the fingers to remove all the scale it's collected so that it can start collecting scale again. Although reducing the buildup rate, it can't eliminate scale forming on the kettle and can't remove it from the kettle walls (you need a chemical descaler for that). I also try and avoid reboiling old water in the kettle as it concentrates the minerals within it.My old 60s/70s stainless steel mesh scale protectors were much larger than this one and were far more robust with thicker wire, and they seemed effective in our hard water area. Still this one works in the same fashion and you can use more than one (I now use three in our kettle, one new and two from the old kettle - they work more effectively and are easier to descale if you crush one mesh against another under the tap). This wire mesh unit is 3cm x 2.5cm diameter, and as it's very cheap and doesn't involve nasty chemicals, it's difficult to be too critical so 4*. Even in very hard water areas they last a few years before they need replacing. Our blister packed Le'Xpress Kettle Fur Collectors arrived promptly from Millstones.As an aside, drinking and cooking with hard water (e.g. water with 'higher' calcium and magnesium levels) is still thought to be good for the heart, so using these mesh kettle protectors in hard water areas is probably better for us than using water softener filter units. Hard water also conveys some benefits to health by reducing the solubility of potentially toxic metal ions such as lead and copper. So at least there is an upside to that reduced amount of limescale still left on the kettle walls.

Got this to keep the lime-scale build-up on our kettle to a manageable level. Works well. Periodically clean out the kettle with so Formic Acid and the steel mesh also gets a cleaning. Then simply run it under some water and roll it in your hands like you are making a ball and all the lime-scale embedded in the ball washes out.Really handy "device" and keeps our kettle relatively clean. It will never be 100% lime-scale free due to the really hard water in our area!

I tried to descale my kettle with white vinegar first, which didn't do much. It's a new kettle and see-through, with only the start of limescale, but I wanted to look at options to prevent build-up going forward.This seemed cost-effective and also one I can keep a regular eye on, with a glass kettle. I've had it in there about a month now, washed it first, and I can't see any limescale being collected on the ball, but I also can't see a build-up on the kettle.So the jury is still out, but it was definitely worth a try for the price and has not proved ineffective yet.If I remember, I will update this in a few months' time.

Have to give this a positive review! At first I thought it a waste of money, BUT you need to unravel it and then carefully push it back into a long tube. Then bend it so each ends meet and mesh together. You should now have a donut shaped object.Put this in kettle and every 2 weeks pull out and either spend a bit of time squishing it about so the scale breaks off, or wash with descaling liquid.A plus of having an object like thin in the kettle is as the water boils it shakes it about and the mesh knocks off small bits on the element.Fantastic little thing once fully unwrapped

Received thank you

I can't believe I paid over £6 for 1piece

Our kettle seems to create quite a bit of limescale, and the filter was in a poor state and required replacing.So I started took a look at trying to reduce the build up of limescale.I had worked in an office environment that used one of these kettle protectors, and it looked as if it did a good job of collecting the limescale whilst boiling the water, so I decided to purchase one for home.It seems to work reasonably well at collecting the limescale - as expected.It is worth noting that it will require removal from the kettle maybe once every few days or so, rinsing under the tap and giving it a bit of a squeeze, squash and general manipulation to remove the limescale build up from the mesh.Small price to pay for something that saves you;- electricity, as the kettle will boil water faster due to elements not being caked in limescale- money, not needing to buy a new kettle as the elements over heat and break the kettle- money, not needing to replace the kettle filter clogged up in limescale as often