I recently picked up a new Lelit Bianca, and want to make the right choice for the long term health of my new machine. I would love to plumb my new machine, but water in the San Jose, CA area can get quite hard during certain months of the year. I have my eye on the BWT Bestmax filtering package. However, I've gathered from this forum that chloride can be a problem, and our recent water report shows the chloride in our tap water is about 100 mg/L (see the PWTP column in the report).

Am I right that the BWT filter is a nonstarter given the high levels of chloride in our water? If so, is there a good alternative that won't break the bank? (As I understand, BWT filters are about $100/year which is reasonable to me.)

Alternatively, I have been using Crystal Geyser water from Shasta. The most recent report looks like this will be a non-scaling, non-corrosive water. If I did the calculations correctly, I calculate the Langelier Index as -0.1 based on pH = 7.3, calcium hardness = 15 mg/L as CaCO3, alkalinity = 50 mg/L as CaCO3, TDS = 120 mg/L, and a steam boiler temperature of 125 C. Am I correct in thinking that this water will be good for the life of my machine (assuming the numbers don't change too much)?

elkayem wrote:Am I right that the BWT filter is a nonstarter given the high levels of chloride in our water?

It would be a poor choice in my opinion. 100 mg/L of chloride is really high, so even if it was at a seasonal peak in that December analysis sample it's safe to say that it's a problem. For a number reference, La Marzocco recommends keeping chloride below 30 mg/L and Synesso recommends keeping it below 5-15 mg/L.

And the use of weak acid cation (WAC) decarbonizing resins as used in the BWT bestmax and many other filters is especially discouraged here because those resins reduce the alkalinity along with the hardness, and tend to acidify the water, exacerbating the chloride corrosion risk.

elkayem wrote:If so, is there a good alternative that won't break the bank?

Unfortunately the usual advice for plumbing-in to that tap water is to use reverse osmosis with a remineralization cartridge. That has a much higher up front cost and more complex maintenance and installation.

elkayem wrote:Alternatively, I have been using Crystal Geyser water from Shasta.

Excellent choice. That Weed/Mt Shasta Crystal Geyser would be perfectly healthy for the machine and should make tasty espresso. Your LSI calculation on that is spot on, and I think you don't necessarily need to use the LeLit in-tank softener.

R Pavlis water is also low hassle and low cost.

Thank you Pat. You have confirmed my understanding that the BWT filter would not be a good choice for my situation. Too bad, because it is fairly compact and we don't have a large amount of space under our kitchen counter for an RO + mineralization system. Some day we might add RO to the whole house (we have limescale everywhere) but for now I'll stick with the Crystal Geyser water. The CG water tastes great, and probably costs me the same as a yearly BWT filter.

You anticipated my next question, which was whether there is any need for me to use the in-tank filter for my Bianca. I assumed no so have left it in it's sealed package for now. My only remaining thought is on the increased mineral concentration in the steam boiler. I do let some water out of the hot water wand each time I steam, but maybe not enough since the TDS measurement climbed from 40 to 60 (as measured by my cheap TDS sensor from eBay) in only one month of use. Interestingly, the pH also shot quite a bit, from 6.9 to 9.2. That would seem not to bode well for scaling in the steam boiler, so I'm keeping an eye on that.

elkayem wrote:I do let some water out of the hot water wand each time I steam, but maybe not enough since the TDS measurement climbed from 40 to 60 (as measured by my cheap TDS sensor from eBay) in only one month of use.

You are right to consider the effect of boiler concentrating due to steaming. Looks like your water tap purging routine is reasonable - some info related to calculating that can be found here: Using hot water tap to manage steam boiler water concentration


The pH increase is also normal. The water in the bottle appears to be a little high in dissolved CO2, giving it that low pH. After sitting in an open container it it would lose CO2 to the atmosphere and creep up to the 8.1 ballpark, then when heated inside the boiler would go higher yet. For doing an LSI estimate based just on the water's alkalinity level, some experts advocate using the Puckorius pHeq, which for an alkalinity of 50 mg/L CaCO3 equivalent would be 7.0. It would be prudent to watch for steam boiler scale, maybe by occasionally pulling and inspecting the water probe, but I don't think you'll see a problem.

That Mt Shasta water has both low sulfate and low calcium, so you don't expect calcium sulfate deposits, which can be hard to descale, so it's safer than most water in terms of scale risk from over-concentration in a steam boiler. If you're still worried about that you could consider using the 'rpavlis' recipe that Sideshow spoke of: 100 mg of potassium bicarbonate per liter of distilled water. It's easy to make; it has zero calcium, magnesium, sulfate, and silica that might possibly produce deposits; it has zero potentially corrosive chloride or sulfate; and it has good 50 mg/L alkalinity.


P.S.
Be aware that there is some recent discussion related to temperature stability problems with the latest LeLit PID machines and some suggestion that recipe water like rpavlis may be related to that issue, but that is yet to be determined and seems pretty unlikely to me.

Thanks! I was certainly curious about the "rpavlis" water I have seen discussed in these pages. I was immediately put on guard when I saw this thread which cautioned against home water recipes. I know it is still an ongoing investigation to determine root cause for the PID faults that some folks are experiencing, but I think I'll stick to my Crystal Geyser until the matter is resolved.

Hi all,

When you guys mention using Crystal Geyser water are you ordering a 5 gallon jug or just buying a whole bunch of water bottles?
Water bottles to me sound very wasteful but I'm wondering if you are receiving the water in a way that I'm not aware of which doesn't require so much waste.

Interesting about the PID issues. I wasn't aware of that thread, so thanks for highlighting it.

To the extent that anecdotal evidence is useful, I've been using rpavlis water exclusively for over a year now, and I've had no performance issues, PID or otherwise. I'm not a scientist, but from my research (I know more than most but less than some about water chemistry), I can't see any reason why potassium bicarbonate would cause the described PID failures. Perhaps people's distilled water isn't reliably distilled, i.e. as close to pure water as is practically possible in a retail setting. I periodically check the distilled water that I use with my TDS meter. I just checked it before writing this post and got a reading of 1, which is what I typically get. I occasionally get zero. I'm satisfied with that.

Alternatively, there could be a problem with the additives. If you're relying on a packet or prepared recipes from a commercial source, your water will be no better than the quality of the source of your additives. I simply food grade potassium bicarbonate to the water described above. And I use a milligram scale and a liter container, so my measurements are monkey proof.

This is a long way to say that I suspect that the culprit for the PID failures are likely uncontrolled variables in people's home water recipes. Still, it's good to know about the issue, and I'll see what comes out of the discussion. It's not enough to nudge me off my current water solution at the moment, however. It's just so economical, easy, effective, and comparatively safe. But my mind is always open to new evidence.

learntheharvway wrote:Hi all,

When you guys mention using Crystal Geyser water are you ordering a 5 gallon jug or just buying a whole bunch of water bottles?
Water bottles to me sound very wasteful but I'm wondering if you are receiving the water in a way that I'm not aware of which doesn't require so much waste.

Are you imagining that I'm using a bunch of those 16 oz water bottles to fill up the water tank? No, I get 1 gallon jugs from the supermarket. They last about a week to 10 days. Wasteful? Yes, but no more wasteful than the plastic milk jugs I end up tossing in the recycle bin every week.

Sideshow wrote:Interesting about the PID issues. I wasn't aware of that thread, so thanks for highlighting it.

To the extent that anecdotal evidence is useful, I've been using rpavlis water exclusively for over a year now, and I've had no performance issues, PID or otherwise. I'm not a scientist, but from my research (I know more than most but less than some about water chemistry), I can't see any reason why potassium bicarbonate would cause the described PID failures. Perhaps people's distilled water isn't reliably distilled, i.e. as close to pure water as is practically possible in a retail setting. I periodically check the distilled water that I use with my TDS meter. I just checked it before writing this post and got a reading of 1, which is what I typically get. I occasionally get zero. I'm satisfied with that.

Alternatively, there could be a problem with the additives. If you're relying on a packet or prepared recipes from a commercial source, your water will be no better than the quality of the source of your additives. I simply food grade potassium bicarbonate to the water described above. And I use a milligram scale and a liter container, so my measurements are monkey proof.

This is a long way to say that I suspect that the culprit for the PID failures are likely uncontrolled variables in people's home water recipes. Still, it's good to know about the issue, and I'll see what comes out of the discussion. It's not enough to nudge me off my current water solution at the moment, however. It's just so economical, easy, effective, and comparatively safe. But my mind is always open to new evidence.

If the rpavlis formula has been working well for you with no ill side effects, then I would think you are in the clear. The evidence that certain home water formulas are a factor with this issue seems more than anecdotal though. Jim at 1st-line states in one of his posts that 90% of his customers reporting this issue (reported for a number of different makes/models of machines I should add) also told him that they are using one of these water formulas. I would guess the number of people using these formulas is low, so that suggests a correlation. It sounds like a live issue, and I'll be very interested to hear what the root cause is when it gets figured out.