Why does my fixed shower head produce little hot water after descaling with white vinegar?

Deep · 12 Oct 2020 at 10:10

I live in a real hard water area and after about a year my shower head gets full of limescale.

I remove it and put it into a box filled with white vinegar. I leave it overnight and this dissolves a lot of the limescale but when I refit the shower head there is a lot less hot water. The pressure is better but the temperature isn't as hot as previous.

I have to whack it on full temp for it to start coming out properly.

I thought the vinegar trick would solve all this.

What am I doing wrong?

b0rn2sk8 · 12 Oct 2020 at 11:22

The hot/cold water is normally mixed well before it reaches the shower head so de-scaling that shouldn’t effect temperature, only flow.

Are you sure you don’t have an issue elsewhere? Is it an electric, mixer, thermostatic mixer? Boiler working correctly?

haaammit · 12 Oct 2020 at 12:30

If it's an electric shower the temperature is controlled by the flow rate through the heating part. If you're descaling the shower head this will increase the flow, reducing the amount of time the water gets heated by the heating part.

james.miller · 12 Oct 2020 at 12:33

haaammit said:
If it's an electric shower the temperature is controlled by the flow rate through the heating part. If you're descaling the shower head this will increase the flow, reducing the amount of time the water gets heated by the heating part.

What he said.