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Yeah, in my old house our water heater made those sounds, and yeah, it was calcium build-up. Since it didn't have an access door, the only way to remove it was to replace the water heater. So we lived with the cracking sounds.


I used a 25 liter tank and a submersible pump to clean the heater. When the capacity of the heater got low enough to bother me, I would disconnect it, and connect up this tank instead. I would fill it with a bottle of CLR (Calcium Lime Rust remover) and water and let it run through the heater until it looked like milk (I'd even let the heater heat it). Connect it back up and rinse the CLR out with the shower and it's good for another three years.

Of course, these tank style water heaters we use in in the USA are crap. I brought an inline (demand, instant, whatever) water heater back from Taiwan with me and now I never run out of hot water. This is the kind used everywhere else on the planet...