Hardness as Calcium?

(That's water to the rest of us!) Beer is about 95% water, so if you want to discuss water treatment, filtering etc this is the place to do it!
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smuggles

Hardness as Calcium?

Post by smuggles » Thu Nov 03, 2011 8:33 pm

Hi guys,

I've just got a copy of my water report and can't find Calcium on it, except that it does have a row for "Hardness Total as Ca" which is an average of 5.37. Do you think I can take this as being the amount of Calcium? I'm just a little confused as I thought hardness was usually given as Calcium Carbonate.

If this is the Calcium reading then the range is 0.7 to 14.6. Given the importance of Calcium, do you think I should use a lower estimate than the average to ensure I have enough?
Last edited by smuggles on Fri Nov 04, 2011 7:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

greenxpaddy

Re: Hardness as Calcium?

Post by greenxpaddy » Thu Nov 03, 2011 8:45 pm

Can you post up your report in full?

smuggles

Re: Hardness as Calcium?

Post by smuggles » Thu Nov 03, 2011 9:21 pm

Unfortunately it doesn't seem I can. It's a pdf they emailed to me and I can't see a way of copying it in without making a complete mess of the formatting and making it unreadable.

I can give you a list of everything it contains though, which is:
Lead
Mercury
Nickel
Faecal Coliform
Faecal Strep
Fluoride
Nitrate as NO3
Total Pesticides
Total THM
Total Trichlorethene + Tetrachloroethene
Nitrite as NO2
Selenium
Total PAH
Benzene
Benzo(a)Pyrene
Arsenic
1 2-Dichloroethane
Antimony
Boron
Copper
Cyanide
Chromium
Bromate
Cadmium
Sodium
Odour (Quantitative)
Taste (Quantitative)
Turbidity
Tetrachloromethane
Manganese
Aluminium
Colour
Iron
pH
Conductivity at 20 'C
Sulphate
TVC at 37 for 2 days
TVC at 22 for 3 days
Total Organic Carbon
C. perfringens
Ammonium as NH4
Chloride
Coliform
Chlorine Free (On Site)
Hardness Total as Ca
Phophorus
Chlorine Total (On Site)

greenxpaddy

Re: Hardness as Calcium?

Post by greenxpaddy » Fri Nov 04, 2011 10:05 am

Ok

What are your values for the following

sulphate
chloride
sodium
pH
Hardness total as Ca

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vacant
Even further under the Table
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Re: Hardness as Calcium?

Post by vacant » Fri Nov 04, 2011 11:56 am

smuggles wrote:Unfortunately it doesn't seem I can. It's a pdf they emailed to me and I can't see a way of copying it in without making a complete mess of the formatting and making it unreadable.
PDFs on google docs e.g. chelvey
I brew therefore I ... I .... forget

smuggles

Re: Hardness as Calcium?

Post by smuggles » Fri Nov 04, 2011 7:10 pm

Thanks vacant.

Here's the report: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid= ... z&hl=en_US

Sulphate is 12.02
Chloride 15.47
Sodium 13.29
pH 7.85
Hardness Total as Ca 5.37

Thanks guys.

greenxpaddy

Re: Hardness as Calcium?

Post by greenxpaddy » Fri Nov 04, 2011 8:27 pm

Overall its not much removed from my own water. Soft soft soft.

Here's my water treatment schedule for 48L in grams

--------- Lager Bitter Mild Stout Sweet pale ale Dry Pale Ale
Gypsum 1.7 18.7 8.3 2.5 10.9 21.9
CaCl 4.8 7.9 15.5 22.8 10.9 12.2
Epsom 0.3 4.2 4.2 4.2 6.6 6.6
NaCl 0.2 3.9 5.2 8.2 2.7 2.7
Chalk 0.8 0.8 1.6 3.6 0.8 0.8
(Chalk 1/2tsp 1/2tsp 1tsp 2tsp 1/2tsp 1/2tsp)

If anything you probably want to be adding about another 1g of Gypsum more compared to me, all other things are pretty much identical. Its the calcium that matters most.

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