Flow Restrictor

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Empress

Empress

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Hi Guys,

How do I test the Total Hardness of my Tap water?

I have a Spectrapure RODI system and it's time to change out the membrane. The instructions say to use the red restrictor if the Total Hardness is greater than 180 ppm and use the green one if it's less than 180. I'm out of test strips that came with the kit. Is there another way I can test my tap water for hardness?

Thanks,
Empress
 
Deltec
General hardness can be a ppm or dKH measure. The result can be converted to what you need. You can pick up a freshwater test in any pet store for this. A cheap API test should be fine.

I note that the API test will test a 5 ml sample at 1 dKH per drop added (until you reach the color change). For 0.5 dKH accuracy, use 10 ml of sample instead.
 
NY_Caveman said:
General hardness can be a ppm or dKH measure. The result can be converted to what you need. You can pick up a freshwater test in any pet store for this. A cheap API test should be fine.

I note that the API test will test a 5 ml sample at 1 dKH per drop added (until you reach the color change). For 0.5 dKH accuracy, use 10 ml of sample instead.
Click to expand...

I have a salifert test kit. Can I use that? If so, how can I go about converting it?
 
Top Shelf Aquatics
Empress said:
I have a salifert test kit. Can I use that? If so, how can I go about converting it?
Click to expand...

Are you on municipal water? If so, you can just look it up. Above 180 would be considered very hard and many users in your area would have home water softeners.
 
Tidal Gardens
PHXRISING said:
Empress,

Feel free to PM me or email me directly - [email protected]

I'll be more than happy to help you with anything you need or send you some hardness test strips.
Click to expand...
Hi, Daniel (I assume)

I LOVE your products and my clients do as well. SpectraPure is the only way to go. Is it okay if I email you with some questions? Its cool to see a SpectraPure employee on this forum. I don't think I've ever seen SpectraPure on the sponsor forum too.

Hope to chat soon and thanks for the tremendous help you've offered in the past.
 
Bruno516 said:
Hi, Daniel (I assume)

I LOVE your products and my clients do as well. SpectraPure is the only way to go. Is it okay if I email you with some questions? Its cool to see a SpectraPure employee on this forum. I don't think I've ever seen SpectraPure on the sponsor forum too.

Hope to chat soon and thanks for the tremendous help you've offered in the past.
Click to expand...

You're more than welcome to reach out to me for anything!
 
Top Shelf Aquatics
Randy Holmes-Farley said:
Are you on municipal water? If so, you can just look it up. Above 180 would be considered very hard and many users in your area would have home water softeners.
Click to expand...

Yea. I have city water. I looked it up but I'm not sure which one I should be looking at. It has Alkalinity and it has Phosphate. Which one do I go by? It doesn't say Total Hardness anywhere.
 
PHXRISING said:
Empress,

Feel free to PM me or email me directly - [email protected]

I'll be more than happy to help you with anything you need or send you some hardness test strips.
Click to expand...

I'll get to you sometime this weekend. I'm at work right now. BYW, I love my RODI system. It's never let me down. Thanks a bunch! [emoji227]
 
Empress said:
I'll get to you sometime this weekend. I'm at work right now. BYW, I love my RODI system. It's never let me down. Thanks a bunch! [emoji227]
Click to expand...
I don't access my emails on the weekend but if you do need me PM me on Reef2Reef!

Glad you love your unit :) I love mine too <33
 
Empress said:
Yea. I have city water. I looked it up but I'm not sure which one I should be looking at. It has Alkalinity and it has Phosphate. Which one do I go by? It doesn't say Total Hardness anywhere.
Click to expand...

Neither. Total hardness is a weird combination of calcium and magnesium. Do you have a link? I expect it is measured and reported.
 
Wouldn't the TDS value of Empress' water be a better indicator for which restrictor to use, rather than Total Hardness ?
 
Scrubber_steve said:
Wouldn't the TDS value of Empress' water be a better indicator for which restrictor to use, rather than Total Hardness ?
Click to expand...

I think the concern is precipitation of calcium carbonate on the membrane, damaging it.
 
Scrubber_steve said:
Wouldn't the TDS value of Empress' water be a better indicator for which restrictor to use, rather than Total Hardness ?
Click to expand...

I have a dual TDS meter on the RODI. The one on the left is starting to climb from zero to 4. The one on the right is still reading zero (coming out the blue tube).

I took the “fill the glass” test. I took two identical glasses and fill them until one of the glasses was full. The result was the lesser glass was just a little more than 1/3 full. That tells me that the membrane is almost exhausted. It’s just a little more than 3 years old and I use a lot of water (240 gallon system).

I just trying to figure out which flow restrictor to use when I buy a new membrane. Red or Green? Right now I’m using the red on without knowing if that is the correct one to use. I sent Randy the water report from my city water company. Maybe he can make some sense of it.
 
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