Interesting results from Salfert water tests

[Litmus]

Hi All,

I already had a KH/Alk kits but recently added a Calcium kit.

Following @strange-steve excellent guide, I tested both my water from the garden tap and our water softener.

Using the KH/Alk kit only ( as originally it was all I had) I had decided that the water from the softener was the best starting point as it outputted CaCo3 of a lower value, therefore required less CRS saving me money.

The Blue tab is the water from the outside tap.
The pink tab is the water from the water softener.

,

The surprise that adding the Ca mg/l test gave me was the softener puts out >500ppm of Ca mg/L into the water.

Clear it uses sodium to replace other element, but I'm still shocked that the water softener puts out the much Ca mg/L.

I'm currently testing again :O

 

[strange-steve]

There's definitely something not right here because a water softener by definition removes calcium. If it added calcium then it would be a water hardener

A common mistake with those Salifert kits is reading them the wrong way round. You should be reading how much reagent is left in the syringe, not how much you've used.

Edit to add: oh and I wouldn't recommend using softened water for brewing, it's removing stuff we want (calcium and magnesium) and replacing it with stuff we don't (sodium).

 

[Litmus]

very weird, I actual added no reagent it went stright to blue

 

[strange-steve]

very weird, I actual added no reagent it went stright to blue

Yep, because there was no (or very little) calcium in it. You've read it backwards.

 

[Litmus]

ah OK I added no reagent, so used "0" I now see my mistake. Should have been 1.

so 10ppm

 

[strange-steve]

ah OK I added no reagent, so used "0" I now see my mistake. Should have been 1.

so 10ppm

Yeah, make sure you've read the KH test the same way :thumba:

 

[Litmus]

The KH result is also interesting, in that it has dropped 55ppm since the last time I tested, but I'm putting that down to all the run off from the weeks of rain.