How Often Should You Descale?
Shorter answer than most guides give: it depends on your water, not on your machine.
What limescale actually is
Tap water carries dissolved calcium and magnesium. When it is heated those minerals come out of solution and stick to the hottest surface in the machine — the heating element and the boiler wall. That coating insulates the element, so the machine takes longer to reach temperature, draws more power, runs louder, and eventually brews cooler than it should.
How often
Water hardness is the whole variable. As a rough guide, based on grains per gallon (gpg):
Soft water (0–3 gpg): Every 4–6 months
Moderately hard (3–7 gpg): Every 2–3 months
Hard (7–10 gpg): Every 6–8 weeks
Very hard (10+ gpg): Every 4–6 weeks
Your local water utility publishes an annual water quality report with the hardness figure in it. A cheap test strip will also tell you. Either beats guessing.
About that descale light
Most machines with a descale indicator are counting brew cycles or litres, not measuring scale. On soft water the light comes on well before the machine needs it; on very hard water it can come on far too late. Treat it as a reminder, not a measurement.
Descaling is not cleaning
These are two different jobs and a lot of machines get only one of them:
Descaler: An acid. Removes mineral scale from the boiler and element. Symptoms: slow, loud, brews cooler, flashing descale light.
Brew-path cleaner: Alkaline. Removes coffee oil from the brew head, portafilter and grounds path. Symptoms: bitter or stale taste from a machine that runs fine.
Milk-system cleaner: Alkaline, formulated for protein and fat. For steam wands and milk lines. Nothing else does this job.
Can you use vinegar instead?
You can, and it does remove some scale. Two real catches. First, several manufacturers state that vinegar voids the machine warranty, because acetic acid attacks certain seals, gaskets and aluminium parts — check your manual before you reach for it. Second, the smell takes a lot of rinsing to clear. A purpose-made descaler is citric or lactic acid, buffered to be gentler on seals, and rinses out in one or two cycles.
A water filter reduces how often you descale — it does not replace it
A reservoir filter cuts the mineral load going in, which stretches the interval. It does not remove scale that is already in the boiler, and no filter takes out enough mineral to mean you never descale again. Some machines — Saeco with AquaClean is the well-known one — are designed to defer descaling for a stated number of tanks while a fresh filter is fitted; that is a manufacturer feature, and their stated limit is the one to follow.
Safety
Descaler is an acid. Do not mix it with any other cleaning product, keep it away from children, and run the number of rinse cycles the machine manual specifies before you brew again.
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