water softener with soft water?

[jonakedthan]

here in Jackson, Missippi our water hardness is <1 gpg: 17 ppm. I'm dealing with a commercial espresso machine (la Pavoni BarT2VNUL) which came with an 8 liter softener. The manual recommends 1.5Kg (3.3lbs) of rock salt per regeneration; i guess that's for the water hardness of France. Do I even need to use the softener? If so, I'm thinking that less sodium, about <1lb of salt, should be sufficient; got any feedback?

 

[CCafe]

There is no reason why you would need to run a water softener with your kind of water hardness.

As for the salt, it takes 3.3lbs of salt to regenerate the water softener back to 6000 grain capacity. Lets just say you have 1 gpg, since the softener is rated at 6000 grains it has a total capacity to soften 6000 gallons of water. So if you had 10 gpg it would only do 600 gallons,

So in your case you would need to add 3.3lbs of salt after 6000 gallons of water had been softened.

The goal is to keep your water below 3 grains, I like to see 0 - 1.5 grains. There are parts in Iowa where the water is over 30 grains. In such areas a water softener is a must or you will wreck your equipment in under a year.

I would suggest running just a water filtration unit that removes chlorine, fluorine, and particles of debris down to .5 microns. That will keep you running for a very long time.

 

[jonakedthan]

hmmm

thanks for the response. After my post, I talked to 3 additional local water analysts (or those who perform the service), and was informed the measure of water hardness varies around the Jackson area; <1gpg being the softest and 6, the hardest. I wouldn't think that city water would vary to that degree.