Bottled Water and Descalling Espresso Machine

LMSC There isn’t really much need for a spreadsheet when discussing bottled water for boilers. Use Waitrose Essentials Lockhills. If you can’t find it/it’s too inconvenient to source, use Volvic.

MWJB Waitforme Ashbeck is about 20mg/l alkalinity, you want 40-50mg/l. Let’s call it 45mg/l for arguments sake.

Sodium bicarbonate added to water gives a result of about 60% as alkalinity.

So divide 25 (20mg/l you already have, plus what you need to hit 45mg/l) by 60 and you get 40mg/l of sodium bicarbonate, multiply this by 5l and you add 200mg to 5l of Ashbeck. Use 0.01g scales to measure this out.

Topped up the machine this morning with Ashbeck + 0.2gm added to the Ashbeck 5l container.

I was amazed at how little 0.2gm actually is, I was thinking it’d be about a teaspoonful at least 😲

Just seen Lakeland are doing this Zero Water Filter for a pretty decent price. If I’ve understood correctly using this with Waitrose Lockhills water should be fine as water for a Minima without the need to add anything else (whilst I wait for my Skuma RO unit)?

https://www.lakeland.co.uk/26312/ZeroWater-5-Stage-Water-Filter-Jug-with-Free-TDS-Meter-2.8L?src=gfeed&gclid=CjwKCAiAz--OBhBIEiwAG1rIOpP4iA1ah4gNAjOUDw9RMhiqdALO6jlyCQ8mBKOtJOUAZ1dqpAFeJBoC3kkQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

yes

Legend - thanks mate. That makes life very easy

I wouldn’t use a Zero jug & Lockhills. It makes more sense to use the Zero jug with harder water, like your tap water, then mx to get around 50mg/l alkalinity.

^^ or that.

Do people generally use strips for testing their water or are there digital readers that anyone could recommend?

dutchy101 Do people generally use strips for testing their water or are there digital readers that anyone could recommend?

I believe Rob likes to look at a strip! 🤔

dutchy101 drop kit!

According to my water company, my water has 116 mg/l of calcium and total hardness of 290 mg/l.

I will receive a TDS testing reader with the Zero jug. I currently use a britta water filter in my fridge for drinking water.

Would there be any reason not to run my tap water through the Britta and then through the Zero?

dutchy101 there are no test strips, nor digital readers for alkalinity that a worth investigating. You need a KH/alkalinity drop kit, or a water authority report.

LMSC No, this is what I have been doing on/off for a while. If you want to aim 40mg/l rather than 50, that’s fine. Zero jug comes with a cheap TDS meter and you are advised to change filters when the meter detects 6ppm…used to take me 3-4 months at about a litre per day (you are supposed to change filters every 2 months for jug filters generally).

Zerowater is literally that, 0ppm TDS (or <6ppm at worst). You wouldn’t put that in a boiler.

dutchy101 Your hardness is 290ppm as CaCO3 because that is 116*2.5 (that is the factor that converts calcium hardness as ion to CaCO3). Evidently you have no magnesium in your water.

There is no point Brita filtering your tap water prior to putting it in the Zero jug. Buy a bigger Zero jug that you think you need, because it is slow to filter.

MWJB Have also been testing them on the boilers ? Thx

So Ive just seen a drop kit suggested by Rob in another thread that I’ll be purchasing and I’ll try managing the water using this and ther zero whilst I await deluvery of the Skuma.

Thanks to everyone for their help - this is a new area to me but something I need to get my head around before I take delivery of a Minima