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Hard, chalky deposit of calcium carbonate

Limescale is a hard, chalky deposit, consisting mainly of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). It often builds up inside kettles, boilers, and pipework, especially that for hot water. It is also often found as a similar deposit on the inner surfaces of old pipes and other surfaces where hard water has flowed. Limescale also forms as travertine or tufa in hard water springs. The colour varies from off white through a range of greys and pink or reddish browns, depending on the other minerals present. Iron compounds give the reddish browns. In addition to being unsightly and hard to clean, limescale can seriously damage or impair the operation of various plumbing and heating components. Descaling agents are commonly used to remove limescale. Prevention of fouling by scale build up relies on the technologies of water softening or other water treatment.

The Roman Eifel Aqueduct was completed around 80 AD and broken and largely destroyed by Germanic tribes in 260. By the Middle Ages the limestone like limescale accretions from the inside of the aqueduct were particularly desirable as a building material, called "Eifel marble" in an area with little natural stone. In the course of operation of the aqueduct, many sections had a layer as thick as The material had a consistency similar to brown marble and was easily removable from the aqueduct. Upon polishing, it showed veins, and it could also be used like a stone board when cut flat. This artificial stone found use throughout the Rhineland and was very popular for columns, window frames, and even altars. Use of "Eifel marble" can be seen as far east as Paderborn and Hildesheim, where it was used in the cathedrals. Roskilde Cathedral in Denmark is the northernmost location of its use, where several gravestones are made of it. Trade to the west took it to England as a high status export material in the 11th and 12th centuries, where it was made into columns for a number of Norman English Cathedrals. The impressive polished brown stone was known for many years as 'Onyx Marble'. Its origin and nature was a mystery to people studying the stonework at Canterbury Cathedral, until its source was identified in 2011. It is used there as columns supporting the cloister roof, alternating with columns of Purbeck Marble. These large cathedral cloisters needed several hundred such columns around an open quadrangle, which must have been supplied by a well organized extraction and transport operation. The Eifel deposits, now called Calcareous sinter or calc sinter (since it is neither onyx nor marble), have also been identified at Rochester and in the now lost Romanesque cloister at Norwich as well as the Infirmary Cloisters, Chapter House windows, and Treasury doorway at Canterbury.

Soap scum forms when calcium cations from hard water combine with soap, which would dissolve in soft water. This precipitates out in a thin film on the interior surfaces of baths, sinks, and drainage pipes.