Interpreting water report

[benoj]

Hi There,

I'm trying to update my brewfather water source as I'm planning on making some adjustments to my water chemistry for the first time.

Most of the fields are directly available in my water report

Here is the profile I've got set-up:

But I've had to guess a couple of the values
1) Calcium
There seems to be two readings (Alkalinity and Harness, both of which talk about CaCO3) I have used the Alkilinity value here - is this correct?
2) Bicarbonate
According to this thread you can get your bicarbonate reading by multiplying your Hardness reading by 1.22 - Anyone know if this is the right approach here?

Thanks,

Ben

 

[Vale71]

Bicarbonate = Alkalinity * 0.61

Calcium = (Total Hardness / 100.1 - Magnesium / 24.3 ) * 40.1

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Something is amiss, as your Cation and Anion mEq/L should match well more closely. Ideally they should both indicate the same number, but rarely does the ideal derive perfectly from lab analyzed water. It might be that your water report is showing blended averages across 2 or more water sources. If so, that opens a can of worms.

 

[benoj]

Something is amiss, as your Cation and Anion mEq/L should match well more closely. Ideally they should both indicate the same number, but rarely does the ideal derive perfectly from lab analyzed water. It might be that your water report is showing blended averages across 2 or more water sources.

Following @Vale71 's advice - my profile looks like this:

Which is certainly a bit closer!

The report is pulling from multiple households (between 4 - 192) so I am using the mean value for all the inputs.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Real water must have the same amount of cation mEq/L's as it does anion mEq/L's. A valid lab analysis will get them real close, and this is actually a proof check for a water reports validity. Something is still way off for your water report because your cations and anions are way out of balance. Who did you get the report from? Is it possible to scan and post the actual water report?

 

[benoj]

Real water must have the same amount of cation mEq/L's as it does anion mEq/L's. A valid lab analysis will get them real close, and this is actually a proof check for a water reports validity. Something is still way off for your water report because your cations and anions are way out of balance. Who did you get the report from? Is it possible to scan and post the actual water report?

The link is in the first post to the PDF - it's from Thames water (my water supplier)

Again: http://twmediadevcdn.azureedge.net/waterquality/WQ Report_Z0121_Merton.pdf

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

This is the best I can do:

Ca++ ~= 93.3 mg/L
Mg++ ~= 4.8 mg/L
Na+ ~= 35.3 mg/L
Cl- ~= 50.9 mg/L
SO4-- ~= 55.6 mg/L
Alkalinity as CaCO3 ~= 177 mg/L
Bicarbonate ~= 216 mg/L

mEq/L Cations ~= 6.58
mEq/L Anions ~= 6.13

TDS ~= 385
Hardness ~= 253 mg/L as CaCO3
pH ~=7.6

Edit: Revised when I saw Alkalinity 177 mg/L on average on the report

 

[benoj]

Alkalinity as CaCO3 ~= 200 mg/L
Bicarbonate ~= 244 mg/L

WOW thanks!

How did you calculate those values?

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

I just revised post#7 above after seeing that they averaged Alkalinity to 177 mg/L as CaCO3 on their report.

I used 'Mash Made Easy'.

Plus: TDS ~= uS/Cm conductivity x 0.64

Most of the reason why cations and anions are not in balance better than seen in post #7 is due to averaged sample results. Real world water is never an averages valuation over time. It merely is what it is for the instant it is drawn. But your averages are not wildly differing vs. many a water report I've seen. So I think you can run with the averaged values.