Bottled Water and Descalling Espresso Machine

“Rob1”#p4483 You can test water that doesn’t initially scale and then track it daily to the point it is about to start scaling at your max temp, but you can’t just draw water off randomly and check to see if scale is going to form on the next use. You would have no way of knowing if you’d caught it at the moment it is just about to start or if it has been scaling for a month.

Thanks Rob! I understand your rational! Random or infrequent test doesn’t help answer when so that one can flush, refill and start with a clean slate again. Daily test gives an advantage, although it is too much of a faff and an over kill.

Rob1 You would have no way of knowing if you’d caught it at the moment it is just about to start or if it has been scaling for a month. It does sound like you understand that.

One doubt though:

I keep wondering which one of the below is correct ?

• If scaling has formed, would you not expect, when the water is drawn next time, the test result show the hardness corresponding to the scaling level? OR
• The scaling has formed, now it has stopped scaling and the hardness won’t show in the drawn water, perhaps it will show no scales. This is the risk of irregular testing !

Rob1 I don’t think it’s really useful to obsess over the service boiler for the majority of people out there

True.

Thx for your time and clarifying. It’s an interesting and a useful learning! 😂

Waitforme Should it be Sodium or Potassium Bicarbonate I add to Ashbeck to raise the Alkalinity ?

If it’s added then is it likely that the brew boiler won’t scale at normal temps ?

I would use potassium bicarbonate to keep Sodium at 10mg/l but it’s up to you.

You can use the spreadsheet in my signature to calculate how much to add to 5 litres or whatever you want (the relevant instructions are to the right hand side of the cells on the example page…it’s not as complicated as it seems, just edit one cell at a time. That way you can lift alkalinity to whatever you want with whatever quantity of Ashbeck you have, scales willing. 0.2g Sodium Bicarb will get you to appro 50mg/l Alkalinity but Potassium Bicarb will be a bit different.

Grif was under the impression that would be corrosive….I can’t remember where I got that idea, presumably its not right?

It is corrosive, this is also a true statement for water that doesn’t form scale. However, the water is distilled directly into a sealed container and stored in a sealed container so has limited contact with gasses to dissolve (which is one of the main things to cause corrosion). Other than that the boilers are 316l steel which is fine for storing distilled water…..and additionally, it doesn’t stay pure for very long. I wouldn’t do it with Brass/Copper though.

Cuprajake i use my pavlis water, which is potassium bicarb,

should i still be flushing the steam boiler?

Yes but not as often. You’ll get sediment when solubility is exceeded (will take a very long time), other than that you’re just looking at increasing alkalinity which isn’t bad. I did read 316l steel is susceptible to some discolouration or very low level corrosion from potassium bicarbonate, not sure why but the same wasn’t true for sodium bicarb. This is room temp testing and it appears to be Potassium bicarb without water i.e. just powder sitting on the metal so 99.9% certain it’s nothing at all to worry about.

dutchy101 I have just cracked open the API drop test kit. Apologies in advance if this is a stupid question, but I presume I’m supposed to be looking at GH as opposed to KH?

Using the GH test kit, one drop turned the water in the tube green. If I understand correctly, with this testing kit, for boiler safe water I need to get to having to put 3 drops into the water in order to bring it to 53.7 or thereabouts (stage 3) on the conversion chart?

What would be the best way to harden the water? should I mix with some more tap water or should I be using something else?

Does the alkalinity take care of itself with the GH test, or do I need to do something else as well?

Apologies for the questions, just want to make sure I’ve got this right before putting in into a brand new Minima haha

• 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.