Question about my water report

I live in the south suburbs of Chicago and we get our water from the city of Chicago. I asked my local city water works about a chemical analysis for the water and they actually gave me a copy of the City of Chicago report. A PDF of it can be found here....

http://egov.cityofchicago.org/webportal/COCWebPortal/COC_ATTACH/cca08a.pdf

First, all units seem to be Mg/L how does that relate to PPM that I usually see this expressed in?
EDIT: I see mg/L is the same as ppm as one liter of water under standard conditions weighs one kilogram or one million milligrams.

My second question is about the alkalinity/hardness. They have 2 things on the report one says total alkalinity determined as CACO3 and one that says Hardness determined as CACO3. They are 2 different numbers. Which do I use? I assumed it is the one that says Alkalinity.

Thanks in advance.

You should be be worried about alkalinity more than hardness.

Don't look at hardness as CaCO3. It is just the total of Mg and Ca as CaCO3 added together. You want to look at Mg and Ca as ppm. Yes, use the alkalinity.

BTW, that water report is sweet! It tells you totals from each quarter, that way you could make adjustments throughout the year if you wanted depending on how levels changed.

The only problem is that they don't provide that report until the end of the year. As of now, only the 2008 report is available. I suppose I could see if there are trends over the last few years and try to plan accordingly but I don't think the numbers really vary that much. The water gets piped from Chicago down here and the only way I'd really know if there is any difference from the report is to have it analyzed myself. Honestly, at this point I am really just looking for a ballpark to start thinking about water profiles.

Starting with the averages of 2008 is a pretty good place to start. Much better than not doing anything.

MrSaLTy said:

The only problem is that they don't provide that report until the end of the year. As of now, only the 2008 report is available. I suppose I could see if there are trends over the last few years and try to plan accordingly but I don't think the numbers really vary that much. The water gets piped from Chicago down here and the only way I'd really know if there is any difference from the report is to have it analyzed myself. Honestly, at this point I am really just looking for a ballpark to start thinking about water profiles.

Click to expand...

Are you in Cook or Dupage? I'm in Dupage but still its from Lake Michigan just pumped from different plants which changes it a little. Anyway I have the same thing 2007 and 2008 quarterly reports and the levels are pretty much average from quarter to quarter. I myself just rounded the numbers up from the last quarter.

Never mind! My Dupage water report is exactly the same it just under a Dupage County link.

I'm in cook county. I am thinking at this point that all communities that get water from the city of Chicago just rely on them for their water reports as well.