Ph

Devans175

Devans175

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Does anyone know what the typical pH for city water is? I have a soda ash feeder and I've managed to get a consistent pH of 7.0 +/- .02 using a digital checker. I've had the checker for about a year and I decided to calibrate it using the reagents the manufacturer supplied. The pH reading of my treated well water changed a little and I was easily able to dial it in by adjusting the feeder.

I decided to test a sample from a friend's city water supply and it came in at 8.0. Would that be typical and safely within standards?

Is there any advantage to a pH of 7.0 rather than 8.0?
 
Neutral is 7.2. This is the optimum for household water. 8 is not awful, just a bit alkaline. Below 7 starts getting acidic and can eat things like copper pipe, galvanized pipe and other metals.

It would seem to me, it this is City Water it should have already had a PH correction before getting to you.

bob...
 
City water is usually controlled at or above 7.0 because it reduces corrosion of lead and copper, so the supplier can be within the EPA limits for those metals.

Some are pushing it higher than that because they are starting to use chloramines for disinfection instead of free chlorine to reduce the trihalomethanes and other disinfectant byproducts that may have a long term carcinogenic effect. Some are reporting pH above 8.5 with limits as high as 9.5.
 
I didn't know that Bob. The County here recently went to Chloramines. I didn't know why; I just figured they had some Ammonia to dispose of and thought "What better place than the drinking water".

Sounds like they are shooting themselves in the foot by pushing the PH up that high.

bob...
 
High PH is a lot less likely to cause problems than low PH. 7.0 is neutral and PH at just 6.8 can be bad news on copper pipes. It has to be a lot further off on the higher ph before there is any problem.
 
The EPA has a limit of 10 I believe. It the city water is softened they use the sime process and this raises the pH above 11 and then the city has to bring it back down. 8 is fine.

Chlorimines last longer than straight chlorine and that is why cities use it when there system gets big and they can't keep the chlorine residual where it is required to be.
 
I don’t like the whole PH thing. Co2 can affect the PH readings. So unless you let the water gas of for a few hours you PH readings don’t mean a thing to me unless you give us the KH of the water to. I’m saying this based of using well water all my life and not knowing how much Co2 is in city water.

Here would be a link to a chart.
http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/CO2/co2-dietsch.gif
 
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