Should I call my water department?

[UnderWaterVanya]

My drinking water today measured:

FC: 1.0 - 0.5
PH: 8.2

Should I call the water department? Or am I just bad at that color test? I can do an FAS-DPD test to verify the chlorine numbers but the PH is all color based and while I think I'm right it could be a between 7.8 and 8.2.

A few days ago I checked my father-in-law's drinking water and it measured:

FC: 1.5 (FAS-DPD measured)
PH: 7.5

EDIT: Hummmmm... I found some sources that say that PH can be as high as 9 in municipal water systems...

 

[linen]

Those are not uncommon values, are you having any problem with it?

 

[UnderWaterVanya]

Those are not uncommon values, are you having any problem with it?

No - I just wanted to be sure since I am new to the whole testing thing and didn't want to be dealing with values that were nonesense. I have just found the city info on the water:
http://charmeck.org/city/charlotte/Util ... ality.aspx

And it confirms that between 0.2 - 1.6ppm Chlorine should be present (assume FC), and that the Ph of the water can range from 7.8 to 9.2. I guess I answered my own questions. I am surprised how much variation I am seeing - my father-in-law only lives 1.5 miles by road from me and less as the crow flies.

I'm finding Ph to be really hard to judge - like someone else I saw on another topic I'd love to have a more accurate titration type Ph test rather than an optical comparison.

EDIT: Is this type of product any good?
http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Tester-Po ... B005EV44IE

 

[linen]

I do not know anything about that brand testor, but I do use and electronic one at my work (and could use it on my pool if I wanted). Any of the electronic ph testers will need to be calibrated frequently with a standard solution. This typically makes them more hassle then they are worth for private pools, IMO.

Take a look at the extended test kit directions and see if that helps at all.

 

[wetchem]

I'm finding Ph to be really hard to judge - like someone else I saw on another topic I'd love to have a more accurate titration type Ph test rather than an optical comparison.

You might take a look at using either a bright white or a slightly off coloured piece of paper behind the pH block... there was a discussion here: http://www.troublefreepool.com/ph-test-block-reading-t36482.html about this very issue and one solution I used for one of my students that had difficultly with seeing colours.

EDIT: Is this type of product any good?
http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Tester-Po ... B005EV44IE

There's a reason these are so cheap... the ones like this we have used in the industral lab well, in a lab, you usually get what you pay for....
the $7.00 ones don't last more than a few weeks at most... the $50 work until the field tech drops it the first time.


-wc

 

[UnderWaterVanya]

I'm finding Ph to be really hard to judge - like someone else I saw on another topic I'd love to have a more accurate titration type Ph test rather than an optical comparison.

You might take a look at using either a bright white or a slightly off coloured piece of paper behind the pH block... there was a discussion here: http://www.troublefreepool.com/ph-test-block-reading-t36482.html about this very issue and one solution I used for one of my students that had difficultly with seeing colours.

Already doing that... sadly not that much help. I have pretty good color vision - but apparently no color judgement - LOL.

EDIT: Is this type of product any good?
http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Tester-Po ... B005EV44IE

There's a reason these are so cheap... the ones like this we have used in the industral lab well, in a lab, you usually get what you pay for....
the $7.00 ones don't last more than a few weeks at most... the $50 work until the field tech drops it the first time.

Oh well...

 

[wetchem]

Have you tried the slightly different coloured backgrounds as offered in the other thread?
I have issues with Yellows; however, with a slightly blue light or very pale blue background, I can see the shifts in even very slight tints/shades of yellow. I discovered this about myself while helping my student work thru the red/green thing and the tints of red. Until then, I always thought I had really good colour vision - my Mom's a painter and I use to help mix her colours when I was kid. Never knew about the yellow thingy.

-
ya, bummer about the pH meter... sometimes some of the scientific suppliers will sale such items to the general public. Over the next few days I'll see if there's something reasonable out there for the industrial labs. I haven't looked in years because it was cheaper to make the field tech come back to the lab :!:
-wc