Filter life is measured in litres, not months. Take the cartridge capacity, adjust it for your local water hardness, divide by your weekly litres through the machine, and you have your real change interval.
A cartridge rated at 3,000 litres in soft water may only give you 1,200 in a hard water area, because capacity is consumed by hardness removed rather than by time. Get your hardness figure from your water supplier's postcode lookup, then work from the manufacturer's hardness-adjusted table.
Then count your litres. A site pulling 150 espressos and 80 steamed drinks a day is moving far more water than a five-person office, and the same cartridge will not last the same length of time in both. Most busy cafes land on a three to six month change, most offices on six to twelve.
Skipping changes costs more than the cartridge. An exhausted filter stops removing hardness, scale forms on the element and in the boiler, heat transfer drops, energy use rises and eventually you are paying for a boiler strip rather than a £40 part. It also flattens the taste, because a spent carbon stage stops removing chlorine.
Whenever the litre capacity is used, adjusted for hardness. In practice that is three to six months for a busy cafe and six to twelve for a typical office.
Scale builds in the boiler and on the element, heating slows, energy use climbs, shot temperature becomes unstable and eventually components fail. The coffee tastes flatter well before the machine complains.
Yes. Manufacturers specify a flush volume to clear carbon fines and set the bypass. Skipping it gives you a grey first few litres and can affect taste.
A correctly sized filter reduces descaling dramatically but does not always remove the need for it. Keep the descale schedule and treat the filter as prevention rather than a replacement.
Yes. Strip too much mineral content and extraction goes flat and hollow. Brew water wants some mineral content, which is why bypass settings exist.
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