Water Volumes

[Gsusbrew]

Hey guys, first of all I would like to apologize for the lack of info i am going to give on my issue here. But at this point I am at the beginning of my search and looking for general information on why I always have too much water and therefor miss my gravity.
I use the free online tool brewtoad to input my recipes. I use the specified water as per brewtoad which i assumes calculates for , loss and amount fo grain. I am always almost a gallon or so over. Brewtoad assumes .5 gallon loss due to equipment. But I havent set this up under my equipment profile. How do i find out how much i lose to equipment'>? Also is there something I can be doing to make sure I am using the right water for mashing and sparging?

Any way this might be a bit confusing but any advice would be helpful.
I mean.... i like session beers but they are all turning out that way..

 

[johngaltsmotor]

Normal losses you can figure by filling your mashtun and draining it like normal. Then empty it into something to measure the volume. You also can look at your evaporation rate during the boil and see if that needs to be adjusted.
What do you mean by "the right water"? Brewtoad has a mash calculator which will tell you how much water at what temperature to add for mash and mashout and sparge depending on the technique you want to use.

 

[MattyIce]

Are you consistently a gallon over? I would start by deducting a gallon.

 

[tsl346]

Probably boil off rate. You are not boiling off as much as the program assumes you are. Could be due to either boil kettle dimensions or just not boiling hard enough. If you are happy with how your beers are turning out I would just start using a gallon less water.