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In my apartment, the showers+taps lose pressure every few days. When I remove the tap/showerhead filter, I see a lot of white flakes (see pictures below). I remove those, and the tap/shower is great... until a few days later. I don't know whether this happens only with hot water, or at cold-only taps too.

General Background

My area (Israel) has hard water. The apartment is in a newly-built (~2016) high-rise.

Apartment water history

I bought the apartment 2nd-hand, and found a gas water heater and a never-been-used tanked electric water heater (not connected to power). I took out the (leaking) gas heater and got the electric heater working. I also installed a whole-apartment water filter, but just a mechanical one against rust and sand.

First few months all was great. Then water pressure slowly degraded in all taps/showers, until eventually I got the whole-apartment filter cleaned up - it was full of sand and mud. The filter techie also showed me how to clean the tap/shower filters, which at the time had some rust captured in them.

Since then, the tap/shower filters have been clogging with white limescale, as described above.

Blocked tap filter Blocked shower head

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    Put a pail under water tank and open bottom drain. Imagine you will need to open pipe with a wire or something to let water out. Might need to repeat often afterwards.
    – crip659
    Commented Jan 21, 2021 at 15:42
  • You'll either need to keep cleaning things out, or add a water softener to your mix.
    – Ecnerwal
    Commented Jan 21, 2021 at 16:22
  • Draining some water out of hot water tanks usually recommended 6 to 12 times a years.
    – crip659
    Commented Jan 21, 2021 at 17:54
  • After cleaning of tank, would run water though pipes with the tap filters off for a bit.
    – crip659
    Commented Jan 21, 2021 at 21:16
  • @crip659: Is this a one-time thing, or would I have to do it every X months? Where do these limescale flakes form?
    – Jonathan
    Commented Jan 22, 2021 at 9:31

1 Answer 1

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I did nothing (except unclogging the taps). This has stopped by itself after a few months - there's still some limescale buildup, but not enough to clog every few days. Maybe there was some kind of limescale buildup in the electric water heated that has now depleted? I don't know...

Update 2024-02-08: The boiler overheated and shorted due to limescale buildup... Boiler with limescale buildup

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  • It's possible that with insufficient incoming water (caused by the blocked input filter) limescale was building up on the heater faster than it normally would, and washing into the rest of the system. That's a lot of limescale, and it didn't form where you found it but somewhere upstream, from where it flaked off
    – Chris H
    Commented Jan 21, 2022 at 14:59
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    The main input filter still blocks, and requires replacing every ~6 months. I just had this done, but there was no limescale buildup.
    – Jonathan
    Commented Jan 23, 2022 at 8:52
  • Keeping on top of the input filter is probably enough to prevent the heater overheating, which will give more limescale than running normally. You may still be getting a slow buildup, but you know how to keep it under control and what to do if you do start seeing limescale
    – Chris H
    Commented Jan 23, 2022 at 8:55

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