Get the strips guys if you are curious about your water. 15 bucks and it will tell you all you need to know. I was amazed that our water softner pretty much removed all the chlorine in the water. Some other good info is there too. The cheap one is 9 dollars or so but it only tells you about the free chlorine in the water typically.

Just a water softener (cation exchange) has no physical properties to remove chlorine , has to be activated carbon or KDF to remove it( which can be included with cation resin). Peace

Something must be going on then I dont know about. Almost shows 0 chlorine on the strips. Ph 7 ppm 220 or so.

What is the range ppm of the test strips ? And what is the chlorine level of the unsoftened water? The TDS of your hard and soft water should be about the same.

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jlb8qi-vv-Q[/YOUTUBE]

Check it

The problem is that you're using cheap test strips. Notoriously inaccurate, an absolute waste of money in my opinion. If you want something resembling accuracy, go with a titration test.

220ppm????? Holy God! What's the conversion factor used on your meter? 500 or 700 or... what's the other one? I think it's something like 635.

sea maiden knows best !!!!!!

Not sure since it was a generic meter it was calibrated with the packets at the hydro shop not pertaining to the meter. Its a cheap ebay pen.. By searching for ph pen or ppm pen I found it on google first or second page. The pen I am posting a link because the stats are huge and it will flood the thread

Maybe the shop is familiar with this meter, the eBay site doesn't give much of this type of information. Did it come with paperwork? Maybe it says in the paperwork how it's calibrated (conversion factor).

The paperwork is long gone on that sucker unfortunately. Are you thinking its not calibrated properly? Ahh in the back it just says Calibrate with NaCl.. Its been calibrated with Hanna. Thank you for the help by the way kind sir.

Madam (maiden), and you're quite welcome. I ask because it's helpful for others when trying to get a handle on the numbers you report. Have you calibrated your meter recently?

You bet madam, about 4 days ago calibrated with that solution I mentioned. Hopefully its not too much off. I will try to swing by the hydro store tomorrow for the proper one. These buckets right now are a pain in the butt and not being very nice back.

The NaCl (sodium chloride) is one type of solution that's used for calibration for ppm/TDS. If you just calibrated, then I think you're ok, just wanna be sure your ppm readings are correct.

And if they are, and you're getting awful out-of-the-tap readings, you might want to contact the overseeing agency and let them know what's happening on the consumer end. The EPA doesn't set standards for water as it sits waiting to be used, it needs to meet those standards where it's used.

Man, I thought my well water coming out of the tap at 7.8/160ppm was hard stuff.

I just sent them a inquiry on it. Lets see what they say about the water. I have posted in the infirmary thread the entire setup thats having issues. Thank you all!

220 ppm tap wouldnt be unusual around here. And we have chloramine also, I run the water through one of those whole house filters from lowes, do you think thats going to take it out?

Motta, I betcha this'll answer the question, and based on this, I betcha your meter's using the 700 conversion scale/factor/thingy.
http://www.getbluelab.com/Support/Understanding+what+ppm+scale+to+use.html

Good activated carbon will remove chlorine and chloramine until it's saturated.

The presence of chlorine and chloramine in the water supplied to a reverse osmosis system has been a continuous problem and threat. Free chlorine damages the membrane and combined chlorine (chloramine) is toxic for applications such as hemodialysis and aquaculture.

Filtration with activated carbon has and continues to be the primary technology for dechlorinating RO feedwater. However it has several shortcomings such as space requirements, breakthrough, difficulty in monitoring, bacteria generation, cost, and poor operation in water with a high load of competing organics. Carbon is much less effective in removing chloramine versus free chlorine.

A recognized alternative is neutralizing the chlorine by chemical addition of a reducing agent. In practice, this has most often been done with some form of sodium sulfite.

An alternative chemical is ascorbic acid – Vitamin C. Compared to a sulfite, ascorbic acid is physiologically benign or even beneficial. Learning that the municipal water industry was using Vitamin C to dechlorinate water from mains flushing, etc. spurred me to investigate its use for reverse osmosis.

I developed a reliable capillary feed apparatus that could add the vitamin C to the water in a steady, continuous manner without any moving parts. Monitoring the reaction with an ORP probe and alarm proved to be reliable. The reaction with chloramine was slower than that with free chlorine, but a delay volume prior to electrode monitoring solved the kinetic problem.

The process worked so well, we imagined applications for both portable and stationary RO systems of small to moderate size adopting this method of dechlorination.

Unfortunately further testing exposed a fundamental problem with using ascorbic acid to dechloriminate RO feed water. The ascorbic acid does efficiently remove the chloramine and this can be well monitored by the ORP and confirmed by the DPD reagent total chlorine test. However, a mysterious thing happens when this reduced water is fed to a reverse osmosis system. The chloramine is regenerated in the RO product water! Only witnessing this happening removes the obvious doubt as to its possibility.

Water that has contained 2.5 ppm of chloramine with an ORP of 600 mV is treated with ascorbic acid and results in water with 0.0 ppm chloramine and an ORP of less than 200 mV. However, when this water is supplied to an RO membrane, the ORP of the product water rises to more than 500 mV and the DPD test shows more than 1.0 ppm total chlorine. How can this happen???

This membrane reconstitution does not occur with free chlorine or with chloramine when using sulfite. Can anyone explain why it happens with ascorbic acid and chloramine?

I read that, fascinating that chloramine appears to RECOMBINE at the end of the RO line! I've spent decades using sodium thiosulfate, see no need to not use it if it were necessary. We don't chlorinate our well water, just filter it.

Just in case anyone is still looking at this thread. I did some digging and found that this product only contains sodium thiosulfate. And thats it! None of those slimecoat additives.



$5 at petco online.
4 fl. oz.
Treats up to 2,360 gallons!!!!

_________
-Phate

Brilliant info here