Hi all, I posted this report in a diff thread regarding wwl and Clive water treatment plumb ins. But thought it may be better to do so here so it get seen a little more. I've included my latest report from the city. I have also done a water hardness strip test at the house and it shows about 70-85ish hardness. The strip may not be accurate though. I don't have much of the traditional hardness symptoms like cloudy dishes, shower door glass buildup, etc. I have seen some small calcium buildup under one of my faucets. Any help you could provide regarding advice would be greatly appreciated.


Ken

https://www.cdaid.org/files/Water/2018W ... Report.pdf

That water report is not very complete, but does say that your total hardness varies between 85 mg/L and 170 mg/L, averaging 127 mg/L (CaCO3 equivalent) . That's enough to tell you that you will want to soften that water.

To make a good choice between the WLL bestmax (decarbonizing filter) and the Clive homeland (a conventional softener) it would be good to know your aklalinity, and ideally your chloride ion concentration. You may be able to get that with a call or email to the water utility. Note that chloride is not the same thing as chlorine, and that alkalinity has to do with more than pH. (It's a measure of acid buffering capacity, and is sometimes referred to as KH or 'carbonate hardness'.)

Not knowing anything but what you have in that report I think I'd go with the Homeland. It will reduce your hardness to very low non-scaling levels and will not reduce your alkalinity. (Sometimes you want to keep your alkalinity for machine health reasons.) It's also cheaper, and is more conventional and straightforward than the BWT bestmax filters.

If you know that your alkalinity is high (as in above 100 mg/L CaCO3 equivalent) and that your chloride is low (below 30 mg/L) there is an argument that the BWT, or a similar adjustable decarbonizing filter, might give you better water - i.e., closer to what conventional wisdom thinks is ideal for coffee extraction.

Thanks for the reply Pat, I appreciate the feedback. I will request the info you suggested from the utility. Now I'm have to decide if I want to hire a plumber to crawl under my house to run the water line or do it myself, lol.

Plinyyounger - I live in Spokane and we're on the same aquifer. Chlorides are not an issue, practically all the TDS in your water is calcium hardness. If you are plumbing in, I would suggest an automatic softener and use Potassium for regeneration; this would be both practical and more economical than a cartridge-based solution. You can either size one up for your whole house and run a separate line to your espresso machine (since generally these are plumbed to the water heater). Or get a smaller unit that you can fit in a cabinet, like a WaterBoss from Home Depot.

The other option is an RO with blending. I use RO.

That water report is an average from 12 different sample sites, it's a little deceptive as the water in CDA is known to be as hard as 15GPG in many parts of town.

Thanks for the info, it is very helpful!