Water Analysis, Alkalinity Bru'n water question

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UMRebel

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Newbie here. I've been brewing/browsing the forums since Thanksgiving. I have a couple of all-grain batches under my belt and now want to take a look at my water. It took a month for the city Public Works Director to finally get me the following on the tap water.

PH 8.4
Total dissolved solids NA
Na 76.1 mg/l
K 0.5 mg/l
Ca 0.4 mg/l
Mg 0.001 mg/l
Hardness, CaCO3 1.2 mg/l
Nitrate <0.080 mg/l
Sulfate 5.7 mg/l
Chloride <6.0 mg/l
Carbonate NA
Bicarbonate NA
Alkalinity 3.2 mg/l

Appears to be high in Na. If I want to keep it simple, it looks like I could just dilute and follow the primer posted here. Correct?

Where I get confused is when I try to use Bru'n water with the alkalinity. Since I don't have the Carbonate/Bicarb values, I'm trying to use the alkalinity values to estimate. If I enter the 3.2 mg/l as total alkalinity, I get estimated bicarb as 3.8. This results in cation/anion imbalance of 2.99 so something seems off. The other option is to enter alkalinity as 3.2 meq/L even though the it was reported as mg/l. Are these the same or is there a conversion? If I enter as 3.2, I get a 195 bicarb value and a cation/anion imbalance of .14 so this seems more likely.

Any suggestions on how to handle the alkalinity/bicarb values or I am totally off?

Thanks for the help.
 
The anion/cation ratio of public water reports is often imbalanced because they are usually based on averages over time, testing locations, or both.

mg/l (aka ppm or parts per million) is not the same as meq/L. I don't personally know the conversion, if there is one. Somebody else will have to chime in on the alkalinity/bicarbonate topic.

Since nothing in the Primer adds sodium and 76ppm is generally considered acceptable, you're probably fine following the Primer without dilution in my opinion.
 
A spreadsheet should accept alkalinity is mEq/L or in ppm as CaCO3. You shouldn't have to compute bicarbonate.

Given that you do the only reasonable thing to do with the numbers you have is to interpret the 3.2 mg/L as mEq/L as you have done. That gives you bicarbonate of 189.5 mg/L. Be sure you entered the pH right. The fact that you got 195 for the bicarb implies that you entered the pH as 7.
 
Thanks for the replies. I guess the best thing to do is just send a sample to Ward for analysis. I don't want to wait another month on the public works director trying to get some clarity on the alkalinity value.
 
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