Hi all, I'm a recent espresso machine guy, trying to make sure I have an adequate water situation. I have a Profitek machine from WLL, and they seem to use BWT as their water filter vendor of choice, so I bought a test kit and a pitcher/filter as that seemed to be the likely remedy for all ails (kidding).

My BWT test kit shows TH=1 drop = 17.9ppm, and CH=2 drops = 35.8ppm. I was guessing our tap water was soft from looking at our county's reports (Northern California foothills), but this seems *really* soft, assuming I'm interpreting and understanding the results correctly. We don't have a water softener on the house, if that's a question. FWIW, I also tested the Crystal Geyser water I've been using while waiting for the test kit, and got TH=2, CH=3.

The WLL web site and videos don't say anything I can find on what to do if your water is soft, only how to deal with hard water. I suppose the two questions are: Is this water safe to use in my machine or will it be eating away at the guts? and Will this pitcher and filter (the BWT Penguin) be of any value?

Thanks for any input!
Dave

DM wrote:I suppose the two questions are: Is this water safe to use in my machine or will it be eating away at the guts? and Will this pitcher and filter (the BWT Penguin) be of any value?

That water is very soft but should be safe to use after filtering with a simple charcoal or carbon block filter to adsorb chlorine, off-tastes, and odors. The BWT pitcher filter will do for that, as would a refrigerator filter if you have that.

There are areas that have water comparable to yours in hardness and alkalinity (Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, etc) that do fine with simple charcoal filtration, including in specialty coffee shops. As for your Crystal Geyser, I suspect your bottle must have been from the Mt. Shasta plant (Weed CA) which has a total hardness of 27-39 mg/L as CaCO3 and an alkalinity of 46-59 mg/L as CaCO3. Those numbers are consistent with a TH of 1 - 3 drops and a CH of 2 - 4 drops on your test kit. (Note that a drop titration kit that says CH or KH is actually a simple alkalinity titration.)

homeburrero wrote:That water is very soft but should be safe to use after filtering with a simple charcoal or carbon block filter to adsorb chlorine, off-tastes, and odors. The BWT pitcher filter will do for that, as would a refrigerator filter if you have that.

Thanks very much Pat, that gets me going in the right direction.

Dave