75-250 is indeed a pretty large range. But not too unusual to do that. According to https://www.ysi.com/water-hardness that would be somewhere between soft and slightly hard (no particular endorsement; this was just the first site that I found online). I don't think you'd go horribly wrong by telling your oven to treat this as "medium". Worst case, it prompts you to descale the unit more frequently than strictly necessary. That'll waste a little money on supplies. But if in doubt, that's better than wasting money on repairs. I recommend you buy the descaling tabs in bulk. They regularly show up on Amazon and other online services. And they definitely get cheaper if you buy a bigger package. You'll need two per descale cycle. I usually need to do so every six to nine months. But that might not be the same for you. We use the steam oven very frequently, but we have very soft water. Also, you absolutely want to make sure you have tabs on hand, when the unit needs it. You don't want to find yourself in a situation where you can't use the oven for a few days while waiting for supplies.

I don't know the answer but I am curious. if I were you (and having the benefit of hindsight) I wouldn't hesitate to call any of the Miele USA "Experience Centers" and ask to talk to any of the design staff. If you are in the US start with the Princeton, NJ center, their US headquarters. Even better if you can get to a center. The staff at these centers are a world apart from anyone you'll encounter at any appliance dealer, they use the products for demos and classes and typically have the appliances in their own homes. And it's their job to know the details on what you are asking. And report back and let us know. P.S: A little searching and I found this: https://www.mieleusa.com/media/ex/us/PressReleases/2021/9.2021_Generation_7000_Launch.pdf. Food View sounds interesting. There's also this thread: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/6229141/miele-7000-series-speed-combi-steam#n=10 Advice on calling the experience centers still stands.

M, It is two separate statements. My first statement is taken out of context and is a comment on this. It is talking just about transfer of flavor. "You can cook the fish vegetables and a starch, like couscous or bulgur, all at the same time in the CSO without any flavor transfers, This is because of convection and the catalyzer rather than the steam. ____________ The second statement is this. For someone making this decision, they need to isolate what the steam capability truly adds to the combi oven and how they might use it. I agree that using steam has certain unique capabilities and that is my point. Because a CSO can also function as a regular or convection oven many people attribute things that are functions of standard or conv ovens as benefits of the CSO. I'm saying isolate the benefits of steam to see if a CSO is a worthwhile investment for that person. Someone might say I can bake great cookies in a CSO. You can but there is not an exclusive benefit or use of the steam capabilities for that. "In this particular example, dry air actually has really poor heat conductivity and really poor heat capacity. If it wasn't for natural or forced convection, it would in fact be a really good insulator." Heat transfer is a pretty complex subject. A standard/conv oven has so many variables. A CSO adds steam but might take away something else. Cold air would be an insulator to cold chicken but hot air would still transfer heat. Fan assisted convection is one way to increase the rate of transfer because it moves that slightly cooled hot air away and replaces it with hot air. You also have heat transfer by conduction and radiation. Radiation can be 50% of the heat. How does the radiant heat vary in an oven with stainless walls vs enameled steel? With a hidden bake element? What is the bulk of a CSO vs regular ovens and how much heat does it hold. How does a Pyrex dish increase the rate of heat transfer in the different types of ovens vs aluminum or stainless steel pans? If you think about what happens in cooking, it raises a lot of questions. I have actually read that steam can be cooling. It slows the setting and browning of a crust on a loaf of bread. How can that be if it increases the rate of heat transfer? I guess the question would be if water vapor is condensing on the surface of meat, releasing heat and then evaporating taking away heat, what is the net loss or gain of heat? How does conductive and radiant heat figure in? How does the presence of water figure in besides increasing the rate of heat transfer? What is the level of humidity in a regular oven in different situations? How does it compare to a CSO? The Gaggenau use and care manual gives some insight into this. See the chart above. https://media3.gaggenau.com/Documents/9000880517_J.pdf Unless you have some way to measure humidity in the oven and adjust the amount of steam injected, the percentages are just names of settings for how much steam is released. I think it is more of a convenience than control. Control is some more and a lot. I don't believe there is any feedback mechanism to add control like you have for temperature. 80% setting may really be close to 100% of saturation, so is there a real functional difference between 80 and 100? They say that the 30% setting is the amount of humidity a cake releases while baking with the vent closed, no additional steam is released by the oven. How much more vapor is released while cooking something like a chicken, especially if it has drippings underneath evaporating? O% setting is whatever intrinsic humidity is provided by the food cooking minus what is vented out with the vent open. I don't know if it is actively ventilated. I'm sure these actual percentages vary pretty significantly. How would humidity vary in an electric oven (very small vent) vs a gas oven (big vent)? "With conventional oven, you can't start heating the surface until it has started drying out. That probably explains why everybody raves about juicy crispy roast chicken from a CSO" Juiciness of the chicken is determined by the end temperature of the meat rather than a little superficial dryness. The temperature probe is what is responsible for that. You can submerge a chicken in a pot of water and boil it dry. This is a pretty good article that talks about this. "The higher the internal temp the meat achieves, the more water it squeezes out and the drier it gets. In general, most meats are juiciest and most tender when cooked to medium rare, 130 to 135°F internal temperature." https://amazingribs.com/more-technique-and-science/more-cooking-science/basic-meat-science-cooks Whatever drying you have initially is very superficial and you will need to have it in cooking a chicken one way or another to get crispiness and browning. There are techniques to blow fans on chickens to dry the skin out before cooking so it will be crispy. Check out this technique using a hair dryer. http://mytartare.com/tip-blow-dry-chicken/ When a chicken cooks, the steam or hot air only affects the outside as far as drying. The inside of the chicken is cooked by heat transfer from the outer layer of chicken next to it. Almost every convection oven advertises juicy chicken with a crispy skin as a selling point. Cooking chicken is a balance in heat transfer and drying to get the perfect 165F end temp internally along with browning and crispiness no matter how heat is applied. Sous vide brings the meat up to the perfect temperature by cooking with a very low gradient of heat, and then super intense heat to brown. With a combi oven, the chicken is cooked by steaming but to get browning, you have to get drying. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f3qQh3DHDGA Baked goods are different from meat as far as the way they react to heat and steam. Sort of a side issue I noticed is that foods that have more fat seem to brown even in the presence of steam. Plllog here has talked about how chicken browns, being steamed at the end of roasting. Pie crust creates steam and it browns while baking. I think with the chicken, you have a layer of fat on the outside of the chicken skin from basting or fat being released during cooking. As the skin heats, moisture reaches the boiling point and turns into steam. As it rapidly expands, it goes through the fat but the fat acts as a barrier to it coming back onto the skin. You have drying that way. There the are probably a hundred more effects that are not being considered. Another interesting comparison is a steam assist like Thermador/KA vs moisture assist like Capital vs the CSO.

I was about to purchase a 48 inch gas range but last minute realized I do not want to clean that beast, opted for a 36" electric cook top/intentionally non-induction. You do realize an electric cooktop is actually harder to clean than a gas cooktop? Also regarding EMF's I'm assuming you also do the following to avoid EMF's? Turn off wifi at night, use radiation cancelling cases and headsets for cellphones, use EMF shields for PCs and notebooks, and avoiding dirty electricity in your home by never using dimmer switches. I hope you also use battery power for your electronics as much as possible as higher EMF exposure occurs when you use a laptop while it is plugged in. And I assume you don't have a microwave too? However if you're interested in real science on the issue, might I suggest reading THIS ARTICLE Personally, I'll take my induction cooktop over electric any day and in reality, you're not spending hours a day in front of cooktop. From the article: "Here’s a very brief explanation of why you don’t have to worry about EMFs in the home. Most modern houses have 200 amperes of power running into them. This is simply not enough power to create EMFs that can damage the human body. And even if it were enough power to be harmful, turning off the offending appliance--or simply stepping a few feet away from it--solves the problem. (Why does this solve the problem? Because all household appliances emit non-ionizing radiation.) There are no home appliances that operate at dangerous levels of radiation, non-ionizing or otherwise. And with the consensus among scientists being that there is no cumulative effect of non-ionizing radiation, there is little evidence that you are in any danger from any of your home appliances, including your induction stove. And this is true even if you’ve got every appliance in your home running at full power at the same time. The only possible exception is your microwave--but even with this appliance (which by the way does not use ionizing radiation to cook food!), you have to be closer than a couple of inches for it to do any damage. At distances of even half a foot, the emissions drop off to an almost immeasurably small amount. Also, your microwave has to be malfunctioning in order to leak any dangerous waves. If it's old and the seal around the door has loosened, for example, it's possible for the microwave to emit some dangerous EMFs. But once again, you have to be standing very, very close to it for the waves to have any damaging effect." Also from the article: "It’s true that extremely low frequency magnetic fields and radiofrequency EMFs have been classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as class 2b carcinogens. This sounds compelling--but what exactly is a class 2B carcinogen? According to Wikipedia, the IARC defines it as “The [2B] agent (mixture) is possibly carcinogenic to humans. The exposure circumstance entails exposures that are possibly carcinogenic to humans. This category is used for agents, mixtures and exposure circumstances for which there is limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans and less than sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals.” In other words, there is no compelling evidence of a causal relationship between a Class 2b substance and cancer. It hasn’t been entirely ruled out (this is because you can’t prove a negative, not because of any evidence). However, none of the studies have shown any evidence that a link exists. That's right: not a single study has proven a link between a Class 2b substance and cancer. Because EMFs have been of interest since the 1979 study that drew a link between power lines and childhood leukemia, there have been tens of thousands of studies done, most of which have refuted the findings of the power line/leukemia relationship (and none that have supported it). Organizations throughout the world, both public and private, have reviewed findings and conducted new studies on a regular basis. And no conclusive evidence has yet been found that links non-ionizing radiation and cancer. Just to give some perspective, here are some other substances on the class 2b list: coffee, pickled vegetables, and aloe vera gel. Coffee has been on the list since the early 1970s and has repeatedly been proven to not be a carcinogen (in fact, it seems to actually reduce the rate of some cancers). Yet there it remains--once again, because you can't prove a negative."