Jcheney
Decent summary. I’m not trying to say it will be a huge issue, just stating facts and pointing out that care should be taken. It’s up to people to decide if they are happy to have scale build up, and descale, or try to avoid it entirely.
With my old machine, I used Volvic for years without issues and I happily continued using the service boiler without even thinking about the minerals being left being when steaming until I pulled out a TDS meter and saw it was off the charts due to all of the permanent hardness building up - e.g. Sodium, Potassium etc. I never had an issue with the machine but know I made a mistake and one I now avoid.
Scale can cause a lot of problems, especially on heating elements, and when it breaks off in chunks and floats off into solenoids and narrow tubes. I believe that’s why avoiding scale (and descaling) is best avoided as when you descale you’re going to be dislodging chunks of the stuff.
If you remineralise distilled with only sodium or potassium bicarbonate then you can avoid the issue but risk corrosion - but that really may not be an issue at all with alkalinity around 50mg/l, not for a very very long time anyway.
Jcheney If I understand Rob’s thoughts, pretty much all users that steam probably need to de-scale far more often than they do.
Very likely, especially if using pretty much any bottled water simply because they’re not going to want to throw that away. Any water that contains hardness and alkalinity from carbonate will mean you need to descale or throw lots of water away. However, as I said, I used Volvic for years without issue so you can get lucky.