Thanks again for the detailed info.

I am located just outside of Philly in the western suburbs (the "main line" area - zip 19072). I asked Aqua to send me the full reports of the source + 2 sampling points in the main line. I will report beck when I get them.

Is there a simple RO solution? (small under sink or whole house, no frequent filter replacement/no elaborate flushing). Too much work to plumb makes bottled water more attractive to me (reservoir or maybe flow jet?) This is all new to me so I might be missing something.

It's much more economical to buy RO or Distilled(my choice) water and mix your r pavlis. I am fortunate to have a supplier of distilled water a couple miles away.

I have always had my machine "plumbed in" in some fashion, whether directly plumbed or a reservoir fill falve, etc. When I discovered my chloride levels were high, I went to using the rpavlis water exclusively. I thought it was going to be a huge PITA but, fortunately, the BDB has a front fill feature, which takes away some of the sting.

I keep a 5 gallon bottle of rpavlis in a crock despenser in the corner of the kitchen, a few feet from the coffee station. It's convenient and easy to see(remember) when I need to mix more water. The only part that is somewhat troublesome is carrying the 5 gallon bottles up and down the basement stairs as I do not have room to store them upstairs.

katkat wrote:Is there a simple RO solution? (small under sink or whole house, no frequent filter replacement/no elaborate flushing). Too much work to plumb makes bottled water more attractive to me (reservoir or maybe flow jet?) This is all new to me so I might be missing something.

I agree with others that it's very little trouble to mineralize purified water with a recipe like rpalvis. The difficult part is lugging water from the store, but even that is pretty easy if you can find a refill station with RO and/or de-ionized at a local store.

In your case your chloride is so high that you probably don't want to be blending back tap water, so it may not pay to invest in a nice system like the Optipure BWS that is often recommended. Undersink units like the HomeMaster, iSpring, and APEC should do the job if you decide to go with RO + remineralization cartridge. You would end up with low mineral (low TDS, low hardness, low alkalinity) water. Here are a few threads that may be helpful.

Reverse osmosis water system recommendation?
Yet Another RO + Water Remineralization Setup Question
Remineralized RO water for new espresso machine
BWT Bestmin for remineralization
Optipure BWS 175 System

I got the report for Aqua and things are not looking great in terms of keeping things simple...
Aqua states that there are 2 possible supplies (Pickering and Upper Merion) and depending on system demand, my home will get a blend from either.
Here are the reports for both: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ci2fXT ... sp=sharing

Aqua also sent reports from 2 sampling stations close to my house and based on the values, I am getting my water from Upper Merion right now (Chloride = 173)

I am not sure if I have any hope for things to get much better in the near future when road salt is not an issue. Looks like my options are: (1) under-sink RO + remineralization; (2) 5 gallon Mineral Water with known quality (e.g. Poland Spring); (3) 5 gallon distilled + rpavlis; or (4) putting a simple filter like Homeland and taking the risk of corrosion.

Kudos to your water provider for giving you that nice complete report. Too bad about the high chloride.

katkat wrote:I am not sure if I have any hope for things to get much better in the near future when road salt is not an issue. Looks like my options are: (1) under-sink RO + remineralization; (2) 5 gallon Mineral Water with known quality (e.g. Poland Spring); (3) 5 gallon distilled + rpavlis; or (4) putting a simple filter like Homeland and taking the risk of corrosion.

Agree with that. Finding a good local source of 5 gallon ready to use natural water that's affordable and lets you re-use containers may be pretty difficult. Many of them come from a variety of unspecified sources, so you never quite know exactly what you are getting. Option 3 is likely the cheapest, easiest way to get predictably good water in 5 gallon refills or delivery/exchange. You don't need distilled, any purified water will do. You can start with rpavlis ( 1g - 2g potassium bicarbonate per 5 gallons) and perhaps experiment with adding a touch of Epsom salt to see if you prefer the taste. (Each 1g of Epsom salt per 5 gallons would add 21 mg/L (CaCO3 equivalent) of magnesium hardness. It doesn't dissolve as readily as potassium bicarb, may take overnight.)

P.S.
After a bit of googling I came across a doc* that indicates it's a widespread problem in neighborhoods that get water from the lower Schuylkill River. Here's a chart from that doc -- shows some values over a 5 month high road salt period.



The "Philadelphia" data in this chart are for a residence that gets all water from the Philadelphia Water Department Queen Lane treatment plant on the Schuylkill. The "Pottstown" data are from the same river, but 60 kilometers upstream. PWD has three treatment plants, and the two others get some or all water from the Delaware rather than the Schuylkill, so other neighborhoods of Philly may have very different numbers.

* https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com ... 21GH000538

I am outside of Philly, Downingtown. I just run a standard 3 inch 3 stage filter on my plumbed-in machine, filter, softener, and carbon block. That gets my PPM down and the coffee is good. Filters are relatively inexpensive and last a very long time since they are a whole house filter but only feed my coffee bar.

cannonfodder wrote:I am outside of Philly, Downingtown.

Hey neighbor! (BTW - I bought a used Elektra MCAL from a member and I believe it has handles you made )

I also used a carbon filter + softening solutions for my Mini Vivaldi over the past 12 years in this location (19072.) I do not have any issue with the taste and I thought I did not have any issues with my machine (and I definitely did not have scaling issues.) However, I just remembered that I had to replace my steam boiler maybe 5-6 years ago due to a pinhole on the bottom - where the drain nut is welded... Now, I am not sure what caused it - I previously thought that the heat/cool cycles impacted the weld - but maybe it was the Chlorides?? Anyway - this is definitely a rabbit hole.... Once I read the specs for my new GS/3, it was hard to ignore my reality (Chlorides at 170) vs. La Marzocco's recommendation (0-30)

Pat - many thanks for the wealth of info! It is much appreciated. As I read more, I wonder - what's so special about Zerowater? Why isn't there an inline filter that removes all solids without a holding tank? (Or maybe this is what the "tankless" RO systems are?) I am still desperately looking for a convenient solution and I am apprehensive about disinfecting the RO tank, elaborate flushing cycles when replacing cartridges, etc.

katkat wrote:However, I just remembered that I had to replace my steam boiler maybe 5-6 years ago due to a pinhole on the bottom - where the drain nut is welded... Now, I am not sure what caused it - I previously thought that the heat/cool cycles impacted the weld - but maybe it was the Chlorides??

In this case I think chlorides would be a factor. High chloride is associated with pinhole corrosion in stainless steel as well as copper and brass, and with an insidious corrosion called bronze disease in copper and brass.

katkat wrote:As I read more, I wonder - what's so special about Zerowater?

Zerowater uses a mixed bed of cation exchange and anion exchange resins to remove all minerals. The cations are replaced with H+ ions and the anions are replaced with OH- ions, so you get H2O, and the result is very pure water. It is slow and not very cost effective for high TDS water. The one inline filter that I'm aware of that uses this approach would be the Claris Prime, an expensive filter intended for cafes with chloride and/or sulfate issues. It's a 1 gpm max flowrate, and with your high TDS high chloride water, I'm guessing that the ~$400 filter would be depleted in about 400 gallons.

P.S.
It's hard to generalize about Philly area water, which is one reason I posted that graph. You have very different numbers from upper vs lower Schuylkill River, Schuylkill vs Delaware rivers, upper vs lower Delaware River, and over in cannonfodders's Downingtown, another completely different surface water source. High chloride from road salt does seem to be a common problem there and across the river in New Jersey, but you don't really know much until you contact the water authority for your particular neighborhood.

Speaking of the expensive Claris Prime, I recently installed one for my machine.

Not to hijack the thread away from Philly water, but I might as well give my info in the interest of "collecting data"!

We're in a small town north of Toronto with water horrible enough that our issues have been featured a couple of times in the country's biggest newspaper. The most immediate health risk is the high level of trihalomethanes, but the water is generally brown and disgusting as well.
My incoming tds is around 300, with chlorides of 50-60. I don't have a whole house softener, but in the past have always used a 10" cation softener (followed by another small carbon) for my machines. We have 20" sediment (1µ) and carbon (5µ) filters on the incoming line from the town that do make the tap water surprisingly palatable. Unfortunately these only last about 2 months before the output slows to a trickle, and I have to replace them both at a cost of $170. Then, to add insult to injury, my water bill arrives. I'll be installing a backflushing carbon filter soon, and probably a whole house softener as well.

The most obvious specifically espresso solution for me would be RO, but after a fair bit of reading of often conflicting reports on various issues not the least of which is remin, I hoped that the Claris would be more plug-and-play. I'm not sure how long it'll last - I may end up switching to RO in the end - but at least I'm getting what I think are decent numbers now. With the Claris on bypass position 3 (roughly midpoint out of 6 possible), my numbers are:

TDS 94 (tds meter)
KH 89.5 (API kit)
GH 89.5 (API kit)
PH 7.2 (Hach strip)
Cl 11 (Hanna drop kit)

With 125ºC water, the online calculator I used gave me a Langelier index of -0.2.

The drop in my chloride level is only about 40-50 at the mid-bypass position so to be effective for the O.P.'s water at 173 the filter would probably have to be maxed out with no bypass, giving it a very short lifespan indeed.

Splunge wrote:I might as well give my info in the interest of "collecting data"

Thank you. This is extremely useful. I read the manual for the Claris Prime (head): https://pentairfoodservice.eu/pdfs/Ever ... _79693.pdf and could not find any data on the level of Chlorides reduction and its relation to the bypass setting.

Assuming I'm using the chart on page 11 correctly, my values (KH - 6 drops - 107.4 ppm, GH -11 drops - 196.9 ppm, Chlorides 173) call for bypass 3 and capacity of 530 gallon. But - again, I cannot figure out the filter's level of reduction of Chlorides.

The bottom line for me is if I get enough reduction in Chlorides then this might be the right solution for me (assuming La Marzocco confirms that 1GPM is enough.) I do not think I'd use more than .5 gallon/day and Pentair says that the filter needs to be replaced every year anyway.

(As a side note I wonder if this filter produces good drinking water - if so I might also add a countertop faucet.)