Using Joule with well water

Now that Joule’s arrival is looking more realistic it has me thinking about water of all things!

Has anyone been beta testing the Joule product with anything other than city water? I have well water which in my case is hard water and I use a softener to treat the water and I am curious how this will affect the internals of Joule. If I have to keep gallons of water around the house or go to the store every time then this would reduce some of the convenience of the product. Thanks

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Comments

fisher23

I am a beta tester and I live outside the city, not well water but a local co-op. My water is hard as well. No problem using tap water. I just rinse out my cooking container and wipe off the hard-water residue then rinse Joule, remove the foot and rinse. I have added a couple of tablespoons of vinegar to the some cook water (not cooking in the vinegar water, just cleaning) and let it run a 5-10 minutes then rinsed when I see any hard water build up but it has not been a problem; I have only done this once in two months. Thank you for asking that question, it is one that hasn't came up before that I am aware of.

Daniel_R_Soto_415690

We use an immersion circulator(volrath brand) at work. Our store in Jacksonville, FL has terribly hard water. We use some diluted vinegar to clean it once a week. We are using this machine 4-6 days a week for 2-5 hours each day. So depending on your use I would say once every month or two should keep you running good. The last manager did not take care of our first machine and it was trashed.

Matt_330980

Hi Bob. I'm an engineer at ChefSteps, and we've been doing accelerated hard water testing. The basic answer is that Daniel and John are right on point. Circulating some diluted white vinegar is extremely effective at removing scale that has built up on the heater. Scale buildup reduces thermal transfer from the heater into the water, so letting things get out of hand means your Joule will have to work harder to bring water up to temperature and keep it there. Everyone's water is different, so it's not a bad idea to monitor the situation and come up with a cleaning frequency that works for you. Some people will never have to worry about scaling, others may require weekly cleaning like Daniel suggested. As for the water softener, no, that won't cause any problems. If your water is safe to drink, it's safe to circulate!

Bob_Johnson_418368

Thanks for the answers. I was confident someone was looking into hard water but its nice to confirm.