Paul.
Moderator
- Messages
- 7,052
- Location
- Northampton. UK
Little job today that comes up from time to time, this is a non working water heater from an item of food machinery, its a stainless cylinder about 10" dia and 4' long with an immersion heater in each end so not that heavy and should be easy to move, this one took two of us to get out of the customers car and even then we struggled to do it.
First job is to get the heater elements out, so clamped to the bench, socket heated with the TIG to help free it off, coupled with a bit of mandatory abuse of the big stillson and out they came, still made me grunt though,
I think the heater elements might be past their best, they can't have been working for years
Then set to and clean out the limescale, I have a tool that I made for this, its just a simple metal rake come scraper that is poked through the hole and used to smash up the solidified scale and pull it out, no easy way to do this just hard work, four hours later and you can see why it was so heavy, makes that bit of scale in the bottom of the kettle look like nothing now doesn't it. weighed it as I bagged it up and just over 80kg.
First job is to get the heater elements out, so clamped to the bench, socket heated with the TIG to help free it off, coupled with a bit of mandatory abuse of the big stillson and out they came, still made me grunt though,
I think the heater elements might be past their best, they can't have been working for years
Then set to and clean out the limescale, I have a tool that I made for this, its just a simple metal rake come scraper that is poked through the hole and used to smash up the solidified scale and pull it out, no easy way to do this just hard work, four hours later and you can see why it was so heavy, makes that bit of scale in the bottom of the kettle look like nothing now doesn't it. weighed it as I bagged it up and just over 80kg.