How to read my water kit & solutions

[Rerona]

Aloha, so I recently purchased a Expobar Brewtus IV, but it only has a plumb-in option. So I'm looking into solutions... I live in Hawaii so some of the options such as Clive Homeland & BWT Bestmax filters have some additional headway cost in terms of finding a supplier and shipping cost (typically around +$30-$100 from what I see on some coffee shop sites & amazon). I am wondering if there is any other options that may be more common or easily available that I can look at. I am also pretty lost when it comes to reading this water kit read out. I think based off this, it's somewhere between soft-hard?

If there is no decent solutions, I am prepared to do the flojet + 5g tank + thirdwave water, but I also live in a pretty small studio so I am saving it as a last resort. RO + remin also seems very expensive to possibly have to change like 3 filters + mineral tank. And if reading the water kit is difficult, I feel like figuring out recipes and such is gonna overwhelm me more.

PS: cross-post with reddit but reply I got there recommended I come here for answers. Thank you and I appreciate any help.

[homeburrero]

I am also pretty lost when it comes to reading this water kit read out. I think based off this, it's somewhere between soft-hard?

Those test strips are known to be very imprecise. In your case it's giving you a reasonable indication that your alkalinity may be in the 20 - 100 mg/L ballpark and your total hardness in the 50 - 150 mg/L ballpark. It's probably a little scale prone, but not problematic in that respect if you're willing to watch for scale and periodically descale when necessary. To get better GH and KH numbers for scale estimates you can use drop titration kits. Hach kits are excellent, but most people get by with the cheaper API fishcare GH & KH kits - available online and at most pet stores.

But I think your biggest worry by far, given that you're in Honolulu, is the chloride content of your water. You can get drop kits for that from Hach, or get the numbers for that from your water authority. You can start here: https://www.boardofwatersupply.com/wate ... search-ccr , and use your address to get a report that should provide ppm numbers for chloride at your location. The random address that I checked had a chloride ppm range of 79 - 120 ppm. That's a lot, and the recommended solution to address that is to use an RO system.

If it were me I think I'd go the flojet-like solution along the lines of: Espresso Cart - Goodbye Plumbed In

I think you can find 5 gallon refills of RO at grocery store kiosks there*, and the water recipe chore is really not at all difficult. You could do TWW, but an even easier option would be the simple and popular rpavlis recipe - just drop about 1.9 grams of potassium bicarbonate, or about 1.6 grams of sodium bicarbonate into a 5 gallons of RO or otherwise purified water and you're done. Scale free, healthy alkalinity, and no corrosive salts.

* Check the local Whole Foods - they may have refill stations that provide de-ionized at the same price as plain RO. Or find a store with a Tropical Island Water refill station. I think that one is just RO and not de-ionized - - you could check the water with an inexpensive TDS meter to make sure it's up to snuff.

[Rerona (original poster)]

Thanks for the detailed information! With the address input, it seems like chloride is 79-160 ( I can go with the flojet option I guess and eventually upgrade to a RO + remin solution. I guess it ain't all bad since I live right by Ala Moana, there is a few grocery markets close by. Main reason I was putting off the flojet option is due to limited space in a 390 sqft studio.

I think for the eventual RO system I may have to pay for professional help though, I tried checking local costco/home depot for RO setups but didn't find much. Are any of the top searches on amazon shipped by amazon on RO any good? Like the iSPRING RCC7 or APEC ROES-50?