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Hardness
Using a Hach titrate hardness kit: what water should I measure? From the BWT filtered tap? From the Londinium hot? From the filtered tap i’m getting 9 grains per gallon of CaCO3 which I think is too high. According to the flow meter the BWT cartridge should still be good.
Next step?
Next step?
Comments
i assume from what you write below that your machine is plumbed in?
you need to measure the hardness of the water post any treatment but before it enters the machine/boiler (as the boiler will precipitate some of the hardness out and give you an artificially low reading
9 grains (17.3ppm per grain from memory) is too high - you do not want it to exceed 4 grains / 70ppm in my view
you want the TDS value as high as you can get it, but the precipitating compounds within that TDS value (calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate) to be as low as possible
so dissolved solids in the water are desirable, other than those two that precipitate out and form scale when the water is heated
kind regards
reiss.
I am installing a new filter cartridge. In order to set the bypass and flow meter correctly I need to know the hardness. With my test kit one drop titrate equals 17.1 ppm. BWT quotes ° GH. Do you know how these equate?
Cheers
Ron
It’s 04:50 and I’m heading out fishing, but just google German degrees of hardness converted to ppm or similar
There are a number of websites that provide a form where you key in the number of units of what you have in one cell and it populates the equivalent units of measure in all the other bases, eg ppm, mg/L, gpg, etc
Reiss
So 3-4 drops titrate should hit your target. However when I mix the test kit powder with the sample from the new BWT cartridge the solution is blue immediately with no titrate. Is this ok or should I add some bypass water?
Hope you caught something...
Cheers
Ron
I apologise for the belated reply
Your kit is measuring hardness i presume, i.e. the scaling compounds within the TDS value, which are almost always limited to calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate
If it is going blue immediately, and i assume that you have run 3 tests to ensure you dont just have one odd reading, then the scaling compounds are zero as far as the kit is concerned
It is fine for the scaling compounds to be zero, as long as your TDS value is not zero
Do you have a TDS meter to establish the TDS reading for your water?
what i am saying is the TDS value can be as high as you like, as long as the scaling compounds within that TDS value do not exceed 70ppm
if the total of the scaling compounds is zero (0ppm) that is also fine, as long as the TDS value is greater than about 60ppm, and the higher the better for good tasting coffee
if the TDS value is too low the level probe circuit becomes unreliable and the boiler is likely to under or over fill
Kind regards
Reiss.
TDS meter reads 168 ppm.
I believe Volvic read 106 on the same meter.
Cheers
Ron