another_jim wrote:Lake Michigan water runs around 120 mg/L hardness & 150 mg/L TDS. This is pretty close to perfect for coffee, and I find the taste slightly but quite distinctly better than the same water softened.

So if you can afford to descale your machine two to four times a year, I recommend using the water straight.

Thanks, Jim. I've been through your water FAQ several times and get a little more out of it each time before my head starts spinning but this gets right to things for my situation.

BTW, I tested my tap water with the Aquarium Pharmaceuticals kit and it comes out as 125mg/L (KH test) and 179mg/L (GH test). I also found a recent water analysis for Chicago which reports similar numbers.

For the South water treatment plan:
Hardness: 125mg/L (as CaCO3)
Alkalinity: 99mg/L (as CaCO3)
pH: 7.70
LI: -.31
TDS: 171mg/L

A2chromepeacock wrote:
p.s. love the insane water FAQ...thanks!

Can someone supply link to "insane water FAQ", please? Sorry if I missed it.


Thanks!

Rybolt wrote:Can someone supply link to "insane water FAQ", please? Sorry if I missed it.

Jim Schulman's Insanely Long Water FAQ

another_jim wrote:Lake Michigan water runs around 120 mg/L hardness & 150 mg/L TDS. This is pretty close to perfect for coffee, and I find the taste slightly but quite distinctly better than the same water softened.

So if you can afford to descale your machine two to four times a year, I recommend using the water straight.

Hi Jim and HBers,
My city reports on avg. of 86ppm (around 5 grain hardness), after they soften via zeolite ion exchange.

I did a test at the tap with the Jungle test kit from Petco. I got 75ppm(around 4.36 grains hardness)

My questions:

1. Should I retest with better kit ( I would do this for sure if my test differed from my city report) ?
2. I probably shouldn't soften this water, if it is determined to only be 4.5-5 grains hardness, correct ?
3. The Jungle kit also reported pH 8.4 and alkalinity of 300+ppm, so does that mean I'll probably roughly be on a 4/year descaling practice ? Are these levels somewhat normal?

Thanks.

Rybolt wrote: My city reports on avg. of 86ppm (around 5 grain hardness), after they soften via zeolite ion exchange.

-- I did a test at the tap with the Jungle test kit from Petco. I got 75ppm(around 4.36 grains hardness)
-- The Jungle kit also reported pH 8.4 and alkalinity of 300+ppm, so does that mean I'll probably roughly be on a 4/year descaling practice ? Are these levels somewhat normal?

The tests and the water can vary +/- 20%.

For natural water, the alkalinity will be roughly 60% to 100% the hardness. However, softening lowers the hardness and leaves the alkalinity intact. Softening is expensive, and the city wouldn't get the budget to do it unless the water was so hard that they are saving everyone the expense of an individual whole house softener. If the water started out at 400 ppm hardness, it would be in that range.