Water supply for your Jura coffee machine

General

All tap water has some limescale in it (unless you live in an area where all your water comes from reservoirs.) you can find out the hardness of your water spply by doing a postcode search on you water suppliers website, you will need the hardness in the German scale. see this Hardness converter if needed.

Lime scale is a killer of coffee machines and so must be dealt with by either filters or de-scaling. however some minerals are required in the water to make nice tasting coffee so do not double filter your water by using an in tank filter and then putting filtered or softened water in the tank.

In tank Filters

In tank filters for all jura machines come in three types and colours and different sizes for domestic and commercial machines. always have a spare filter on hand so that you can change it when required.

White filters

These are now only used in older machines as they were discontinued about 2010, You have to tell the machine that it has a filter inserted and change the filter on request.

Blue filters

These are used in all machines since the White filters were discontinued again You have to tell the machine that it has a filter inserted and change the filter on request.

Grey smart filters

These are the latest filter development from Jura which are used in newer machines and are not interchangeable with white and blue filters. The smart part is down to the RFID tag in the filter, the machine can read the tag and remembers the filter serial number. The capacity of a smart filter is calculated by the coffee machine which uses an Algorithm based on water hardness and litres of water put though the filter to determine the filters life. Because the machine reads the tag it knows there is a filter inserted so you only have to setup the weater hardness.

External Filters for Plumbed in Machines

This applies to mains water connected commercial machines. The Claris filter Cartridges come in 3 sizes and are the only filters that should be used with jura machines. The capacity of the filter cane be set in the machine for a given water hardness, the machine will prompt for a new filter when it has been used up or after 1 year of use.

De-scaling

Even if you use filters your machine will still need a periodic de-scale as none of the filters stop all the scale. I suggest annually for commercial machines and 2 yearly for domestic machines - unless the machine starts to play-up in term of steam production in which case a de-scale is always a good thing to try.

If you prefer to do periodic de-scales then you set the machine to 'Filter: No'. The machine will then periodically request a de-scale by displaying a message, you don't have to do this immediately as it takes up to 50 minutes to do.

The frequency of de-scales depends on the water hardness, this can be found on your water company's website and should be entered via the menu.

The de-scaling chemicals are quite strong so take appropriate care and follow your User Manual for the exact steps.

Remember that de-scaling tablets are not the same as Coffee-cleaning tablets and they should be placed in the water tank with the correct amount of water.