53 ppm is way too high, never let it go above 10ppm otherwise you may as well just be using normal water.
Graham, you can get cartridges for some small DI units but for high volume systems resin is the best and cheapest method, you need to shop around for the best prices, £70 seems to be the norm at the moment, however if you are willing to fork out, you can buy it in larger quantities and get a discount as well as saving on delivery.
What sort of throughput are people getting on average on a 10kg DI unit? Does everyone use RO units or just DI units and what is the resin usage rate for both? 25kg lasts us about a month, or probably 15,000 - 20,000ltrs without a RO unit, standard tap water in our area is around 200ppm
Only use WFP on certain jobs, mainly commercial