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Facts: pH and Alkalinity Part 1

Written by Falk Herd on January 9, 2010 — Leave a Comment

Historically pH is an abbreviation from Latin language and stands for “potentia hydrogenii” (those who had Latin at school might remember the double “i” referring to the genitive of the neutral gender – gee I am getting old, this is over 30 years ago now?) and could be translated as the power of hydrogen. Over the years and in order to keep the abbreviation in its genuine form alive, it has developed into “Potential of Hydrogen.”

PH is automatically linked to other components on which I will touch a little later and which will make the whole connection very interesting. The most important one is alkalinity.

PH displays how acidic or basic water is. On a scale from 0-14 you can test the respective levels with 7 being considered neutral, anything below meaning acidic and anything above meaning basic.

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Facts: pH and Alkalinity Part 2

Written by Falk Herd on December 15, 2009 — Leave a Comment

Hardness is a separate topic; as for water temperature, just keep in mind that colder water is more vicious than hot water (yep – no misprint).

But I would like to spend a few sentences on TDS and alkalinity with respect to pH of your water. Acidic water wants food; it needs to feed on “something”. To come up with the general equation that low-pH-water always eats your copper pipes is wrong!

It’s like “Bears eat humans”! Yeahh, maybe. But more likely when they are annoyed, teased, not treated right and/or have no other sources of food (and I mean the bears). Look at it this way: While the water runs through your pipes in the house and finds enough to feed on, is there a need for the water to necessarily attack the pipes? No, not really!

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Facts: Arsenic and Drinking Water

Written by Falk Herd on December 1, 2009 — Leave a Comment

Arsenic is a natural element found widely in the earth’s crust. It is found in some drinking water supplies, including wells. Exposure to high levels of arsenic has health adverse effects.

Over the past years, the levels for acceptable arsenic limits in Canada, have been lowered significantly with an increasing awareness of the negative aspects of arsenic ingestion.

Just a few years ago, the levels were at 0.05 mg/L (milligrams per liter or 50 parts per billion) and by now have reached 10 parts per billion (0.01 mg/L) as a current maximum level. But it is to be expected – following the example of many states in the US – the level to be dropped further and most likely to probably 5 parts per billion within the next few years.

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