Recomendation for water adjustment

Water analysis, treatment, and mineral recipes for optimum taste and equipment health.
Knightey-
Posts: 17
Joined: 4 years ago

#1: Post by Knightey- »

Hello all,

one year ago I changed my place of living and suddenly the espresso taste goes very bad!
So I assumed because of water. For the short term solution, I am using a Brita jug but it seems not efficient enough.

I still need to stay here for about 1,5 year so I decide to have a better solution than a Brita jug.
The main reason for better water are:
1. coffee taste
2. eliminate any possible issues with the coffee espresso machine (descale the HX is bad!)
3. use the water for drinking, cooking in the kitchen

So with these three points, I decided to install something under the kitchen sink. It does mean a limited space there.

Here is picture of my water - Sorry for CZ

Here are some parameters and some of them I tried to mark as important and bad:
conductivity: 47-54 mS/m = 308-345 TDS (640 scale)
pH: 7,3-7,8
alkality: 4-4,6 mmol/l
ammonium ions: <0,05 mg/l
nitrite (NO2): <0,01 mg/l
nitrate (NO3): 3-6,5 mg/l
chloride (Cl-): 8,9-13,7 mg/l
iron (Fe): <0,02-0,1 mg/l
CHSK Mn: <0,5-0,77 mg/l
Hardness: 2,4-2,6 mmol/l = 13,44-14,56 dH°
calcium (Ca): 97-102 mg/l
magnesium (Mg): <2-3 mg/l
manganese (Mn): <0,03 mg/l
sulfates (SO4): 30-34 mg/l

Is it possible to use only a water softener under the sink and output from it will go directly to a water tap in the kitchen?
https://www.elektros.it/br/en/manual_wa ... i-LT8.html

Is there any other solution from BTW which could works? Are there any benefits against the manual water softener?

To be honest, I am trying to avoid the RO technology because of the waste of water, limited space and the really bad taste of coffee from it.

Are there exists any water meters that works for "checking the quality of water" for home use? Like TDS or pH meter. Is it worth buy it or it is a waste of money only?
https://www.amazon.com/Lxuemlu-Professi ... B079DN9DRS

Thank you all for any feedback.

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homeburrero
Team HB
Posts: 4863
Joined: 13 years ago

#2: Post by homeburrero »

Knighty wrote:Is it possible to use only a water softener under the sink and output from it will go directly to a water tap in the kitchen?
https://www.elektros.it/br/en/manual_wa ... i-LT8.html
Yes. That uses a conventional cation exchange softening resin. And it would be your most economical option, which allows recharging the softening resin. It would do a good job of reducing your hardness and would not acidify your water. But you would have to deal with significant hassle of periodically recharging the resin with softener salt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYqsHB7sfv0 .

Knighty wrote: Is there any other solution from BTW which could works? Are there any benefits against the manual water softener?
The comparable solution from BWT would be the BWT 'Bestprotect' product, which is also a conventional softening resin (strong acid cation resin, sodium cation exchange resin). The advantage of the BWT would be less space, easy change, and fairly straightforward calculation of replacement lifetime based on your total hardness and throughput. BWT sells a flowmeter that can help you measure the throughput. The disadvantage is price and the waste of discarded cartridges when the softener is depleted. The manual softener would allow you to use potassium chloride to recharge if you preferred that, which you can't do with the BWT.


There are other brands of conventional easy-change softener cartridges that do the same job as that BWT bestprotect.

Conventional softening will lower the hardness dramatically without reducing the alkalinity or acidifying the water.

In your case with an alkalinity of around 200-230 mg/L (as CaCO3) or 12 German degrees carbonate hardness, and with the low chloride ion of 9 - 14 mg/L some might argue that a BWT betsmax or bestmax premium would do the job. That filter uses is a weak acid cation (WAC) resin (aka decarbonizing resin, aka hydrogen ion exchange resin), which if dialed in right would reduce both hardness and alkalinity and acidify the water. And at your high level of hardness, water would come out of the filter with a lower than recommended pH. If you pulled that water out of a tap and let it sit overnight in a jug, it should release CO2 and the pH would rise to acceptable levels. As far as assuring no limescale or gypsum deposits in the espresso machine, I think the bestprotect would be a better choice than the bestmax. For producing tasty pourover coffee, the lowered alkalinity from the bestmax might be a major plus. For espresso, the high alkalinity is not so much of a taste issue.


Knighty wrote:Is it possible to use only a water softener under the sink and output from it will go directly to a water tap in the kitchen?
https://www.amazon.com/Lxuemlu-Professi ... B079DN9DRS
Those inexpensive TDS meters can come in handy, especially when evaluating RO or other supposedly soft waters, but not of much help in your case. You can't use them to tell if a conventional softener has done its job.
Pat
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Knightey- (original poster)
Posts: 17
Joined: 4 years ago

#3: Post by Knightey- (original poster) »

Hello homeburrero:

At first, thank you for your valuable inputs.
I pull the trigger and ordered the water softener LTP 08 (8-litre capacity) with BY-PASS (still able to get unfiltered water during the regeneration and possible to adjust the level of regeneration)


I also bought the TDS meter as I mentioned and tried to measure:
1. tap water = 260ppm
2. distilled water = 1ppm (for calibration of the TDS meter and it looks that works well)
3. filtred water with Brita maxtra MG+ = 120ppm (after the second day of using it)
4. bottled water "Good water" (dobrá voda) in PET = 96ppm (on the label it is written 104ppm)

After some reading, the ideal TDS for coffee is around 150ppm.

If I understood well, that water softener just takes out the Ca and replace them with Na. So in the end, the TDS will be the same BEFORE water softener or AFTER. Am I right?
It is good for the machine itself, but how I can improve a little bit also for coffee?
Does it help that water will wait in the machine water tank some while before it goes into the boilers?

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homeburrero
Team HB
Posts: 4863
Joined: 13 years ago

#4: Post by homeburrero »

Knightey- wrote:After some reading, the ideal TDS for coffee is around 150ppm.
That is the conventional wisdom, but don't believe it.
First off, that number is from the old SCAA water recommendations, and they were tasting coffee brewed with a particular water makeup and a particular coffee, at different dilutions and TDS, and they happened to like the '150 ppm' water best. But that was 150 ppm as read with a '4-4-2' calibrated conductivity meter.* If you use an inexpensive NaCl calibrated conductivity meter like most everyone now uses, that water would read 115 ppm and not 150 ppm.

More importantly, you can have 150 ppm water that makes terrible coffee, or that is scale prone, or that is very corrosive and harms the machine, depending on the composition of the water. If you know nothing about the water other than the TDS, and if it's a natural water, I'd say the ideal TDS would be much lower, like the water you get in Seattle, Portland, Atlanta, San Francisco, Oslo, Melbourne, Vancouver, etc that would read closer to 20 - 80 ppm on a TDS meter. If you do know the alkalinity, calcium hardness, and chloride, then base your decision on those numbers and ignore your TDS value.

Knightey- wrote:If I understood well, that water softener just takes out the Ca and replace them with Na. So in the end, the TDS will be the same BEFORE water softener or AFTER. Am I right?
Yes. It may go up slightly after softening (two sodium ions replace each calcium ion, and those two ions weigh slightly more and are more conductive to a 'TDS meter'.)

Knightey- wrote:Does it help that water will wait in the machine water tank some while before it goes into the boilers?
No, it should be fine to use directly out of the softener. This type of softening does not cause increased CO2 and acidity in the water.

Do take care to flush the unit very well after regenerating the softener resin with salt. You want to flush out all chloride ion that came in with the softener salt.

* '442 Natural Water™ Standard Solution is trademarked conductivity standard solution from Myron L® Company. It's supposedly a good middle ground calibration choice for measuring boiler and cooling water samples, city water supply, lakes, wells, etc. 4-4-2 refers to the combination of salts mixed with deionized water: 40% sodium sulfate, 40% sodium bicarbonate, 20% sodium chloride by mass. (For muscle car enthusiasts, 442 refers to a 4 barrel carb, four speed transmission, and two exhaust pipes.)
Pat
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