Parsing Water Report Numbers

[joshwoodward]

I've been dealing with horrible mash efficiency, and I tracked the problem down to the fact that I was using untreated RO water, mistakenly figuring it'd be better. I decided to try tap water, so I called up my local water department (Findlay, Ohio) and got the following numbers:

Hardness: 110-130 mg/l
Non-Carbonate Hardness: 60-80 mg/l
Calcium: 60-80 mg/l
pH: 8.6
Alkalinity: 40-50

They didn't have any of the more interesting specific numbers, and I don't really understand what they did give me. I'm was hoping for calcium, magnesium, sodium, sulfate, chloride and bicarbonate so I could put it in BeerSmith's water profile tool. Can I still use this information? How should I treat this water? Thanks!

 

[mabrungard]

They gave you a rough picture of the water and its not too bad. They did give you the calcium and the hardness. With that you can back calculate the magnesium content. They did give you the alkalinity and the non-carbonate hardness which can be used to estimate the total equivalents of anions. You won't be able to tell how much sulfate or chloride there is, but you will know the total. The resulting analysis still won't provide you with a full picture of the water profile. You will probably need to send a sample for testing to fill out the complete picture. One good thing from their result is that the water is fairly consistent since the range is small.