alkalinity

[Redwulf]

I got my water report off Yorkshire Water and its missing a measurement for alkalinity or anything that can be interpreted as alkalinity by a simple soul like me

However I did have a hot tub test strip lying around and that suggests the alkalinity is 80-120ppm

The other important values are

Calcium 95mg/l
Magnesium 7.8mg/l
Total Hardness 107.6 mg/l

Would I be safe enough assuming 80-90 ppm for alkalinity?

 

[JockyBrewer]

Assuming all those figures are ppm or mg/l of CaCO3 (check!) then yes I think that would be about right. Total hardness as CaCO3 would normally be in excess of the alkalinity figure.

If you're going to delve into alkalinity then it's really worth getting a pH meter and an alkalinity test kit so you can first of all measure what you have, then make your adjustments, and then you can check the resulting mash pH. The water report alkalinity figures are often wildly misleading.

From there on though what you adjust is up to you, but at least you'll have more data points to work with.