Wards Lab Report for Indiana HELP PLEASE

[jcorn]

Just got my water report back today and trying to go over the tutorial videos and plug in my numbers. My mind is just about completely blown at this point. Was using Bru n' water and everything was going fine until the video told me that the bar should be highlighted in green for the ion balance results tab in the water report input. Mine is highlighted in yellow after inputting all of my numbers and shows an imbalance of 0.09 Could someone help me get past this part of my problem? Here is my lab report. Thank you guys!

pH 7.8
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 146
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.24
Cations / Anions, me/L 2.1 / 2.2
ppm

Sodium, Na 19
Potassium, K 3
Calcium, Ca 16
Magnesium, Mg 5
Total Hardness, CaCO3 61
Nitrate, NO3-N < 0.1 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 3
Chloride, Cl 26
Carbonate, CO3 < 1.0
Bicarbonate, HCO3 78
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 64
Total Phosphorus, P 0.02
Total Iron, Fe < 0.01
"<" - Not Detected / Below Detection Limit

 

[ajdelange]

Those numbers imply total cation content of 2.113 and anion content of 2.176 mEq/L (rounded to 2.1 and 2.2 on the report) for a difference (imbalance) of 0.061. That's pretty small meaning that the lab did a pretty good job on its measurements, that rounding errors were small and that no significant ions were overlooked. The real cation/anion imbalance for your water is 0 so even the 0.061 represents error of some sort. Your spreadsheet is alerting you to the fact that your water report isn't perfect. As there is nothing you can do about this, it doesn't matter whether the report is imperfect or not. Clearly you can have more confidence in a well balanced report (and this one is) than in ones where the imbalance is over a mEq/L. In those cases you can usually go back to Ward Labs and they will redo the tests.

We managed to get them straightened out on a minor problem with the way they were calculating bicarbonate and carbonate a few months back so their reports tend to balance better now.

Another point to keep in mind is that you cannot synthesize a balanced profile from an imbalanced source water.

 

[jcorn]

Thank you very much. I will continue on bru n water and see if I can figure it out from here. I saw on a youtube walkthrough that if the box showed anything other than green to contact the water testing company and was immediately worried. Appreciate the correction..

 

[ajdelange]

That is what you should do if the balance is way off. A threshold of 0.06 is too low for an alert. At that level the field should light up gold indicating that the lab did a good job.

 

[jcorn]

Ok I will maintain and stay aware of what I need to do in case my stuff goes nuts on me then. Thanks!