What is your water pH?

Post by **goldscalpel** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 6:40 am

Hello,
I just placed my water softener and my hardness is 0 but my water pH went up higher. It is so pink on the dip stick that I think it is off the scale. The max pH reading is 8.4. My alkalinity is 120. Is that normal?

I think the pH before was about 8.

Nana

Post by **JohnB** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 9:17 am

You may find that with your water that soft your Espresso tastes salty. CC recommends around 50 ppm as ideal for the machine. I brought mine up to between 80-100 ppm before I was happy with the taste. At 80+ppm my Alkalinity is 80 mg/l.

What was your water hardness before installing the kit? How are you testing? Strips or liquid drops? I found the strips from CC weren't very accurate. Any pet shops that sell fish will have liquid test kits that do a much better job then the strips.

Post by **goldscalpel** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 12:05 pm

My water hardness was 7/120 now 0
Alkalinity was 120 now 180
pH was 7.8 now 8.4+

I used the test strips recommended here:
http://www.diywatertesting.com/sofchekx3.html

I have ordered the aquarim one but have not received them yet.

Thanks,
Nana

Post by **goldscalpel** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 12:43 pm

I just tested my water with the liquid test and my hardness is probably arround 20-30ppm. Alkalinity is 140.

Do you think that is adequate?

I am going to have to get a liquid pH test next.

Nana

Post by **JohnB** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 1:06 pm

Thats a huge difference from the 120ppm indicated by the strips! Chris suggests 50ppm to prevent boiler build up so you are safe there. Since we aren't raising fish how important is the ph value & how would you go about changing it if you didn't like what you saw?