Recommendations for water treatment for plumbing our Lelit Bianca

#1: Post by **Brett** » January 3rd, 2020, 7:08 pm

Hi there,

We bought a Lelit Bianca a couple of months ago, and now we'd like to plumb it in. We are currently using Crystal Geyser spring water, which is fine, but we like the convenience of having it plumbed in.

I've put some water sample data at the end of my post. The data came from our water provider here in Parker, CO. These data points were taken an a tap a few houses down from ours. Their website interface is a map that I have to click through to get each data point, so some of these may be from different days, but they're all from the last year.

From what I understand:

I need to use RO to remove the Chloride to prevent pitting of the stainless steel
I need to get the pH down
The alkalinity to too high
The hardness is borderline high

I saw an RO system from iSpring that offered a remineralization cartridge, but it's not clear to me exactly what my water will look like after going through that system, so I'm not sure it's what I want to use.

Does any one have any suggestions for what we might do to our water? I'd like to keep the total cost of this under $1k if we can

Thanks!!
Brett

Alkalinity                          104    mg/L as CaCO3
Ammonia, Free                       <0.05  mg/L
Calcium Disolved                    31.04  mg/L
Chloride                            42.54  mg/L  
Cl2                                 0.95   mg/L
CSMR (Chlorid/Sulfate Mass Ratio)   0.94  
Hardness Mg as CaCO3                23.33  mg/L as CaCO3 
Hardness, Ca as CaCO3               84.61  mg/L as CaCO3
Hardness, Calculated                98.23  mg/L as CaCO3 
Langelier Index                     0.29
Magnesium                           7.58   mg/L 
Monochloramin                       2.16   mg/L as Cl2 
Nitrate                             <0.2   mg/L 
Nitrite                             <0.1   mg/L 
pH                                  8.14  
Phosphorus, Ortho as P              0.11   mg/L     
Potasium                            5.67   mg/L
Redox                               480.4  mV 
Sodium                              50.64  mg/L 
Sulfate                             39.24  mg/L 
TDS (calc)                          230    mg/L
Turbidity                           0.33   NTU

#2: Post by **homeburrero** » January 4th, 2020, 1:52 pm

This is a difficult call - a conventional softener or a decarbonizer (WAC) would handle issues with limescale deposits, but you have that borderline high chloride, which is a corrosion concern especially for brass and copper. If your chloride number of 42 mg/L is not a seasonal fluke, I'd say steer clear of decarbonizers (WAC resin filters) and consider going with RO.

RO with a remin cartridge will produce water on the soft side of conventional wisdom about ideal minerals, giving you something that resembles Seattle water. That method is tried and true - being commonly used in espresso shops around the world. If you're the worrisome type with respect to machine health I think that's your best plumb-in option.

What you end up with after RO and remin depends on a lot of factors, especially the pH and the flow rate through the remin cartridges. The iSpring seems to be reasonable, as is the Home Master Artesian Full Contact. Their remin cartridges may give you a fairly high mineral (but not scale-prone) in the first flow after sitting overnight, and drop to a middling 20-60 mg/L during the day.

January 4th, 2020, 4:12 pm

Thanks for the info!

We're leaning toward RO I think. We would also put a faucet on the sink for drinking water, and we could use that to flush a little water in the mornings to prevent that spike of minerals I suppose.

Thanks!!
Brett