Thanks Fred! Great information there and the numbers are interesting. Compared to a typical WAC resin they appear to be getting an impressive reduction in total hardness without the expected comparable reduction in alkalinity. As expected (and advertised) the hardness reduction is mostly from calcium (i.e. your Ca hardness dropped from 69 to 16, and Mg hardness dropped from 43 to 18.)

If you want to drop the alkalinity, reduce your bypass setting to 2 (3 gives 30-35 %, 2 gives 20-25 %, 1 gives 10-15 % bypass, 0)...

What's your guess if my water PPM is 245 and I set my Bestmax at 1 what do you think my hardness will go down to??

Robert - in order to make any guess, one would need to know your water's hardness and alkalinity numbers. As mentioned previously your TDS reading is not useful.

Your location says Pacific Palisades, so I'll guess that your water is Western Los Angeles, from the Aqueduct Filtration Plant. If you look up an analysis for that source (https://www.ladwp.com/cs/idcplg?IdcServ ... stReleased) you will find some values:

expected TDS meter reading (estimated from conductance) = 180 - 390 ppm
total alkalinity (KH) = 88 - 111 mg/L CaCO3 equivalent
total hardness (GH) = 109 - 138 mg/L CaCO3 equivalent
calcium hardness (calculated) = 70 - 88 mg/L CaCO3 equivalent

Assuming those numbers, BWT would recommend setting your bypass to 3, and based on Fred's performance at that setting you would end up with a total hardness in the 30 - 50 mg/L ballpark, calcium hardness would be low enough that it would not scale, and your alkalinity should be reasonably high, maybe 50 - 80 mg/L based on Fred's experience.

That LA water report also says you would have a chloride level of 62 - 90 mg/L, and your Bestmax filter would do nothing to reduce that. That's a bit high, so it's good that this filter seems to keep your alkalinity high -- that should help alleviate corrosion concerns.

Of course, if you aren't on that Western Los Angeles aqueduct source none of this applies to you. And to know best you should get a GH and KH kit and test your water as Fred did. Also I assume that you are NOT already using some sort of whole house softener.

Thank for the detail info. I'm only using the Bestmax Premium set at 1 and the taste of the espresso is just ok. I might try the 2 setting to see if the flavor is better. As noted in my other posts I want to make sure of no scaling and great shots. Thanks again and yes I'm going to get a better hardness test kit and see what I come up with.