Star San and pH

[calumrobertson]

Hi,
I know star san must be one of the most popular threats on this forum but i dont seem to find any answers to a query i have from looking around.
I know star san should be mixed with watch and a ph 3-4.5 will give an effective sanitizer.
My water is about pH 6. I understand from reading around some people use bottled water. I had a look in the supermarkets and all the waters that had information on them were pH of about 6 too...presumably this is too high for mixing with star san, if so how do i get hold of water that is ok?
Ive heard about boiling water but surely this wont lower the pH to 3-4.5 just by boiling it..?!
Cheers in advance.

[oz11]

I get RO water from an aquarium supplies shop and use that. Normally available for around 10p - 15p / litre in my area.

[calumrobertson]

I realised my ph assumptions were wrong and 3.5 is the max. Do you know the pH of the RO water or does it just work?? That seems a good buy as looked up Halfords DEI water is £4! Do you know if most pet places would do RO water - is it a pretty common thing?

[oz11]

I cannot answer your question about PH, on account of being plain dumb, and you'll be needing a . Not every pet shop will do RO water, you'll need to look for one that sells fish tanks, fish, etc, often these are tacked onto garden centres (in my area) though I do have an aquarium supplies shop just off my local high street

[Kev888]

The water can be higher than PH 3.5 as long as the 'mixed solution' ends up at <3.5. Adding starsan reduces the PH of the water, but with many tap waters it can't do so by enough.

Tesco Ashbeck water seems to be the supermarket one most commonly found to work (and they don't seem to vary its source either), as are the Reverse Osmosis/Distilled/Deionised waters available. Some people can get RO water quite cheaply in bulk from aquarium suppliers and (in the damper months) I use water collected from a dehumidifier with great success. For convenience I've sometimes used car battery top-up water and that works well too, but isn't perhaps as cheap as some of the alternatives.

I tend to store and reuse starsan solution, and I have a suspicion that the lower the initial PH the longer it is before the solution becomes unuseably high, but that may have just been a coincidence as I've not done any scientific tests. I'd be keen to hear if anyone knows?

Cheers
Kev

[calumrobertson]

Yes certainly from what i read it performs best at lower pHs but that when its been repeatedly used and exceeds 3.5 then its best its best and will turn cloudy when it is.
No idea how to calculate whether my solution will be lower than pH 3.5 so i'll just try and get some RO water, distilled and DI water....trying to find the cheapest options first!
I live in Central Scotland so it seems the supermarket bottled waters tend to be scottish so havent seen that brand.

[OvenHiker]

Have you tried using your local tap water? I believe Scottish water to be quite soft in most places, so probably better suited to StarSan use. Get some very low range pH strips and try it out.

[calumrobertson]

Yeah will do, my water is soft its just the pH that through me since its about 6-7....wasnt aware that adding the star san would then change it and potentially to the correct 2-3.5 level....i guess i just need to see if it turns cloudy or not but would be nice to know how close i would be to the upper end of a usable solution...for whihc i guess the pH strips would be handy.