After reading the old claris thread I can say I'm thoroughly confused! I called the company to see if they would recommend the product for my water and the guy said yes but I sensed hesitation in his voice. On top of that there doesn't seem to be much information on the claris ultra floating around aside from the product pamphlet. It seems fairly hard to find stateside.

With the API test kit my water showed:
KH 71.6
GH 107.4-125.3 (hard to tell exactly when it changed color)

I do have copper boilers, so I mentioned that to the rep and he said it was only an issue if you had chloride levels above ~90ppm. According to my municipal water study the water here can vary from 40ppm all the way to 150ppm, I guess I wouldn't know unless I send my water off for a sample?

I was really trying to spend my money wisely which is why I'm posting for help. I want to keep my machine healthy but not kill the way the espresso tastes in the process, and reading the information around the claris and similar coffee specific filters would leave one to believe the espresso will taste better in the end vs. just throwing a softener and carbon filter on and calling it a day.

That said, I'm about to just order a system like this:
https://www.chriscoffee.com/Commercial- ... ftsysg.htm

Thanks

Interesting. It looks like your water is bordering on ideal in terms of carbonate hardness (just a touch too high, 20-30 ppm or so) and mineral hardness (~100 ppm is fine, slightly lower is "safer" in a steam boiler).

The chloride is a potentially major concern. I spoke with some Everpure representatives briefly last week about the issue, and they sent me some documents about the danger of using Claris (Ultra) on water with a high "acid risk," i.e. water with high levels of chloride in it. It appears that the softening method of Claris, which primarily removes carbonates, tends to potentially significantly acidify water with modest or high levels of chloride. If your municipal water MAY be above their recommended chloride level, you should be very careful-definitely get good pH testing strips if you go ahead with it. You may be OK running Claris "wide open" at the "6" setting (where a maximum of of non-softened water is blended), but even this may reduce the carbonate level too much.

I'm currently corresponding with them about posting some more details from a presentation they sent me-I will post the information on the original Claris thread when I get the OK from them.

The guys I talked to recommended a blended RO system as an alternative when chloride levels are high. This is the best option if your water tastes pretty good when filtered with a good carbon filter. It's definitely not the most economical (likely 2x the cost of the ChrisCoffee softening/filtration system). If you want to play it cheap and safe, the Chris Coffee system should work very well.

If you haven't read Jim Schulman's Insanely Long Water FAQ, do so.

As the scaling tables show, at your GH and KH levels there will be some scale production. However, the rate is relatively low. The amount of accumulation will depend on how much water you run through your machine.

If you want to completely eliminated scaling, then get the CC system. I have one and it works very well. It's also very inexpensive to recharge. I replaced an older Claris system because the pH of the output water measured somewhat low and I was concerned about the long-term effects.

A cation system will remove all of the hardness but it will leave the alkalinity as-is. While there seems to consensus that a minimum mineral content is necessary for proper extraction, as far as I know it's not been determined whether that mineral content must be carbonate hardness or if a certain level of alkalinity is sufficient. My guess is that it's the latter because thousands of shops have used cation softeners for decades and we would certainly know by now if those systems consistently under-extracted. However, some claim to be able to taste the sodium that gets substituted for the calcium by cation systems. I can't.