I'd like to put in a word for not plumbing in. To my mind, with a machine that does not do line pressure preinfusion, the only good reason for plumbing-in at home disappears. Plumbing-in puts you in the water treatment business, with all the testing and filtration maintenance that goes with it. Plus you always have the risk that a valve will fail when you are not home, and water will flood everywhere. These are common enough occurrences for people to recommend leak alarms under your valves.

The Mini tank is large, and I doubt you will have to refill it very often. My advice assumes you have access to good quality bottled drinking water. In L.A. homes 5-gallon, recyclable bottles in dispensers are very common with free delivery.

Marshall raises a really good point. That's exactly why I was not at all concerned about the availability of the plumb in kit and took the plunge when the machine first came out.

Also since I have to add minerals back to my water which is very soft it's actually easier to just to use the reservoir. I just filter my tap water with a Brita pitcher to get rid of the chlorine and then add some potassium bicarbonate to make a boiler safe water with 100 ppm. I keep a pitcher ready and can easily top up the reservoir as needed.

What about the convenience of not having to fill the tank? I also like that the water is supplied via a line with a softener and filter, so I don't have to worry about getting water that's too hard and causes scale buildup. I already have the plumbed line and filter/softener in place, so I could just hook up the machine to the existing line. Seems like it would be simpler than having to track down and purchase bottled water with the right chemical makeup every week or two.

Marshall wrote:I'd like to put in a word for not plumbing in. To my mind, with a machine that does not do line pressure preinfusion, the only good reason for plumbing-in at home disappears. Plumbing-in puts you in the water treatment business, with all the testing and filtration maintenance that goes with it. Plus you always have the risk that a valve will fail when you are not home, and water will flood everywhere. These are common enough occurrences for people to recommend leak alarms under your valves.

The Mini tank is large, and I doubt you will have to refill it very often. My advice assumes you have access to good quality bottled drinking water. In L.A. homes 5-gallon, recyclable bottles in dispensers are very common with free delivery.

I've been using Contrace trace minerals adding to the water from my under-sink RO system but unfortunately but personally I like the RO as it is better. It tastes sweeter. The trace minerals seems to produced a balanced flavor, but I'm so used to that slightly sweet "bite" I get out of the RO and distilled water. My RO system does not produce pure water, it has a TDS of about 50ppm (~20 with fresh filters).

Beezer wrote:What about the convenience of not having to fill the tank? I also like that the water is supplied via a line with a softener and filter, so I don't have to worry about getting water that's too hard and causes scale buildup. I already have the plumbed line and filter/softener in place, so I could just hook up the machine to the existing line. Seems like it would be simpler than having to track down and purchase bottled water with the right chemical makeup every week or two.

The big LM tank, will probably need less frequent refills than you think. Finding the right home delivery water in California is pretty easy. But, if your line and filter are already in place, that would simplify things for you.

Marshall wrote:The big LM tank, will probably need less frequent refills than you think.

FYI, the Mini's reservoir is misstated at 3.5L. It's actually 2L at the Max Fill line (2.1 to be exact) and 1.75L of that is available above the water sensor, so I wouldn't call that particularly big. Still, I think it's more than enough for most people for three or four individual sessions.

Yes, I noticed the same thing back in this post.

LM have since changed the spec from 3.5 liters to 3 liters on their website, but I think that is still an overestimate. Good to get a more precise estimate based on your measurements.

Whether the size of the reservoir is a limitation probably depends on how many shots you pull and how much backflushing and screen flushing you do.

Ken, BTW, the fleur de lis on the knob unscrews, so you can position it precisely upright by simply rotating it counter clockwise to untighten it. It may be a little tricky but I layed a towel over it to protect it and rotated it by gripping the protrusions with the fingernails on my thumb and middle finger.

I wrapped a bit of teflon tape on it so it was easier to take off the next time, and provided a more snug fit, since I couldn't tightening it all the way if I wanted the logo upright.

Marshall wrote:Plus you always have the risk that a valve will fail when you are not home, and water will flood everywhere. These are common enough occurrences for people to recommend leak alarms under your valves.

Around the world people have been plumbing in dishwashers and fridges for decades, and I'm not sure the scenario you describe above is terribly common.

I recently plumbed in my Profitec, not for pre-infusion, but to eliminate the regular chore of refilling the tank, and to seamlessly integrate the scale-prevention via an inline filter.

Also once your machine is plumbed, you are encouraged to maintain your cleaning rituals as you can purge, portafilter wiggle and backflush as much as you want without running down your tank water. Good machine hygiene uses a fair bit of water.

I'd say call up LM home, I am sure they would be willing to hook you with the plumb in kit when it becomes available.
They've been great at supporting the early adopters, be it the GS/3 or the commercial machines.