Bottled Water and Descalling Espresso Machine

That’s what I wanted to hear - thanks

LMSC Thx mate. Bizzare, the excel on my local disk shows 50 mg/l.

The excel is correct on the screenshot, you’re just not looking at the right thing. The remineralisation page will show the correct amount of Sodium bicarb (or anything else) to add to get the desired alkalinity.

I have a built in tds meter on my output

Rob1 Oh I see. I will check the other sheet.

Cuprajake Please share if you can. I am not sure if it can be inserted into Rob’s excel.

Thx

Did anyone get to the bottom of is it better to add Potassium Bicarbonate or Sodium Bicarbonate to Ashbeck?

If so how much was needed to be added to a 5 litre bottle. I have attempted to use the linked spread sheet but I am just not getting it!

LMSC Test both the GH — hardness and KH — Alkalinity
Please take 20 ml water for each test
1 drop at a time, shake and proceed further. You stop when you get green for GH and yellow for KH
Multiply the number of drops using the table
Divide the result by 4 to get the 5 ml reading.
The result will be X mg/l
Plug that on Rob’s excel and post it here.
For alkalinity, you need at least 40 mg/l, which you can get by adding 50 mg/l of sodium bicarbonate.

OK, so I’ve just taken two 20ml samples. For hardness (GH) the water started to turn a very weak green after 1 drop and then a bit stronger after the 2nd and gets to a more solid green at about 4 drops. The same was true for the KH test to turn the water yellow but perhaps 5 drops to get to the more solid yellow.

Looking at the chart, the ppm level for 4 drops is 71.6, so if I’ve understood when you say “multiply the number of drops using the table” correctly, I should multiply that by 4 and then divide this again by 4 to give me the 5ml reading, which would be 71.6 for hardness?

Using the same method and 5 drops of the KH solution is 89.5 × 5 drops = 447 divided by 4 = 111.8 alkalinity

I’ve plugged these into the relevant section of the table.

I think the table is giving you the 4 drop measure at 71.6, which should be divided by 4 to get the 5ml result.

Cool - this makes sense. I wasn’t sure about the multiplying stage (I guess not all kits have charts, but might give a formula to work out instead. The table now looks like this:

So this is the state of the zero water in terms of hardness and alkalinity. I now need to work out what I need to add in terms of remineralising to bring it to boiler safe levels.

dutchy101

Right, firstly that doesn’t show you need 48.8mg Sodium Bicarb, it shows you need 48.8mg/l Bicarbonate.

The table below that shows how much sodium bicarb (or another source of bicarbonates to add).

E.G The Molar mass of Sodium Bicarb = Molar mass of Sodum + Molar mass of Bicarbonate (1 of each)…..the molar masses are listed on the spreadsheet.

The amount of bicarbonate you want to add is = to the bicarbonate required for alkalinity. The amount of sodium you get will be automatically calculated to the right hand side of the table based on this.

Underneath you define whether or not you’re making a concentrate. Since you’re not you follow the instructions for that, from memory you change “the amount of concentrate to use” under “ml” to 1, “to be added to” to 0 the “amount of concentrate to make” to whatever quantity of water you are remineralising directly. This makes the dilution cell read “1” which is to say no dilution is taking place and you then define the quantity of water you’re dealing with….if you want to break the spreadsheet for future use you can just edit the red dilution cell to 1.

So the amount of Sodium bicarb you need to add is defined by the bicarbonate you need to add to get the alkalinity with the addition of the sodium you will also add by default to get that alkalinity.

Use the same process for whatever other source of Bicarb you might use and whatever source of hardness you use, as you’ve decided you want to add hardness. You have many sources of Mesgnesium to choose from, most people go for Sulfate or chloride but I don’t like either and wouldn’t want chloride in steel boilers.

All this technical stuff has completely baffled me, I have done a drop test but now need someone to interpret the answers.

Could someone please tell me which one has the least scaling potential in the two tests,

My tap water KH 17.9 and GH 53.7, or Ashbeck/Volvic mix KH 53.7 and GH 71.6

Ian

Eyedee

Depends on temperature but the tap water won’t scale at brew boiler temps the mix will.

KH is alkalinity, GH is hardness…

Are you testing on a 5ml sample or 20ml? 5ml is not accurate enough.

Thanks Rob, Interesting about the tap water having lower scale potential, when the machine went into BB for some faults rectifying recently they said the boilers were clean.
I have tested the 5 ml sample but will do 20ml tomorrow and see if there is much difference but I’m inclined to revert to tap water with a monthly service boiler flush and do an annual descale.

Ian

So my 20ml test tubes and sodium bicarbonate have arrived and I put 250mg of sodium bicarbonate into my 5l of zero water on Friday.

Just done a 20ml KH test which took 8 drops to turn the water yellow which gives a 35.8mg /l for alkalinity. Would this be close enough or should I add a tiny smidge more?

GH turned green after 2 drops so hardness is 8.95 mg/l. Do I need to worry about adding anything for more hardness?