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  #21  
Old 18th September 2021, 02:49 PM
Nat Polton Nat Polton is offline
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Just bought a Brita Marella jug filter.

I used to brew my own all grain beer until a couple years ago, and one of the important things was knowing the Calcium carbonate level in your water supply, it could then be adjusted to suit the style of beer being brewed.
The water company reports are displayed on the web, but it was better to test the stuff coming out of the actual tap. It varies a lot from day to day.
Their figures have a large range, and so are just a rough indication.
After hours spent on home brewing sites I found a site that had some very knowledgeable homebrewers.
It is called Jimsbeerkit

Some clever people there decided to use a Salifert KH/ALK Profi Test kit to work out the amount of CaCO3 in their water supplies.
The kit gives the results of KH in units of dKH
and Alkalinity in units of meq/l

Someplace I found out that if the meq/l is multiplied by 50 the result becomes mg/l CaCO3

The Salifert KH/ALK is used to measure the alkalinity in fish tanks, both fresh and salt water. Available in pet shops. I have also seen it on ebay in the USA. Costs about 10 or 12 pounds in the UK.



My kit is about four years out of date but the result with the test sample was not bad, just midges out.



Water board figures...min. 70 average 100 max. 137. mg/l CaCo3

My tap water 59.5 mg/l CaCo3 (Salifert Test.)
After one pass through the Brita Marella jug, 13.5 mg/l CaCo3.

So the Brita takes a lot of CaCo3 out of the water.

I have enough chemicals left for a couple more tests so I will try putting the tap water through the filter a couple of times to see what happens.

Do not take these figures as totally accurate as my test kit is a few years out of date but the check solution is not far off it's target value.

I am not a chemist, I just follow these things like reading a cake recipe, so no technical chemistry questions please.

I hope this gives some food for thought.

Cheers.
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  #22  
Old 19th September 2021, 02:08 AM
Svend Svend is offline
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Nat - your mention of brewing reminds me of the famous British ales from Burton-on-Trent where the hard water contributes greatly to their character. They're delicious. I'll have to go and seek one out here now :-)

Very interesting results from your Brita and bringing the hardness down. Seems to be very effective, at least for moderate hardness water. I wonder how it would do with hardness in my BC house at 320 mg/L? Might be a challenge...that's pretty darn high on the scale.
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  #23  
Old 19th September 2021, 11:56 AM
Mike O'Pray Mike O'Pray is offline
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Svend, here's a zany thought. What might the hardness of either Ontario or BC snow? If it is much lower than the mains water, what about shovelling it into a barrel or other suitable container and then letting it eventually thaw?

If it is "of the right stuff" in hardness terms then there has to an awful lot of it in the forthcoming winter and it's free

In fact taking this thought one stage back, what about Ontario or BC rain. Once my rain water becomes what we term in the U.K. as "old water" i.e. after a week of so, I think that it loses some of the potentially harmful elements that modern day rain can contain?

There might of course be issues with my thoughts that I am unaware of but I thought I'd mention it.

I am always attracted by the word "free"

Mike
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  #24  
Old 19th September 2021, 09:29 PM
JOReynolds JOReynolds is offline
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Kodak UK used to have a training laboratory in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, up the hill from the river Gade, a chalk stream. The towns water was very hard (mainly carbonates) and the school had an ion-exchange water softener (requiring a backflow of brine to regenerate).

Although softened water may have been retained for film processing, untreated water was later used for mixing paper chemicals (EP2 and R14-R3) and washing. No problems reported. I heard that the brine was expensive to dump into the sewer.

I processed and washed Plus-X and Tri-x 120 film using the same water, untreated, with no problems. And I let the film drip dry - no squeegee!

Although these titbits of info do not directly answer your concern, I offer them to help in your decision-making.

Last edited by JOReynolds; 19th September 2021 at 09:46 PM.
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  #25  
Old 19th September 2021, 09:44 PM
JOReynolds JOReynolds is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lostlabours View Post
Commercial developers usually contain traces of surfactants.
Some colour emulsions, notably those that use electrostatic coating and are combined in mid-air, use surfactants to control the layer thickness. This is why the developer tank in continuous processors begins to look like a cappucino if the froth is not corrected. The Kodak catalogue used to list a frothbuster additive. I can't remember whether the bottle had a dropper like eye drops but that's how we used to add it - drop by drop!
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  #26  
Old 20th September 2021, 07:41 PM
Svend Svend is offline
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Mike - while I may be in the great white north of Canada, there’s not snow on the ground quite all year :-). Summer does come eventually and lasts a good two weeks at least. Three if we’re lucky. What would I do for water then?

Seriously, a 20L jug of demineralized water is about C$5 and 20L distilled is C$6.50. Cheap cheap.

JO - thanks for the insight. But I’m pretty sure I would get drying marks on my film if I didn’t use demineralized water for the final rinse, even with wetting agent. Everything in the house that comes into regular contact with the tap water has chalky residue on it - kitchen utensils, coffee maker, bath fixtures...the works. I’m going to pick up a jug of demin. water and a siphon pump this weekend - it’s all so inexpensive it’s not worth fussing around with anything else.
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Last edited by Svend; 20th September 2021 at 07:48 PM.
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  #27  
Old 21st September 2021, 07:21 PM
Nat Polton Nat Polton is offline
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Brita Water Jug.


Just had enough chemicals left to do one more test on my local water supply.

Original tap water was 59.5 mg/l CaCO3
Once through the filter 13.5 //


I put the same water through the filter three times and the result was
2.5 mg/l CaCO3



I think that is quite impressive myself.

I do not think I will be buying de ionised water at about £4.70p for 5 litres any more.


Cheers.
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  #28  
Old 21st September 2021, 07:42 PM
Mike O'Pray Mike O'Pray is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nat Polton View Post
Brita Water Jug.


Just had enough chemicals left to do one more test on my local water supply.

Original tap water was 59.5 mg/l CaCO3
Once through the filter 13.5 //


I put the same water through the filter three times and the result was
2.5 mg/l CaCO3


I think that is quite impressive myself.

Cheers.
Now that is impressive, Nat. I was given a Brita once many years ago, long before I did any film processing and it certainly changed the taste of tea, of which I drink loads, but frankly not for the better in terms of my taste buds

I give out this piece of irrelevant gossip to lead me into saying that I vaguely recall the filters were quite expensive for what was no improvement in the taste of tea so gave up.

So out of interest, how much are the filters, Nat, and how many litres can one filter process and how long does say 3 litres of tap water take to filter?

Thanks

Mike
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  #29  
Old 21st September 2021, 08:19 PM
Svend Svend is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nat Polton View Post
Brita Water Jug.


Just had enough chemicals left to do one more test on my local water supply.

Original tap water was 59.5 mg/l CaCO3
Once through the filter 13.5 //


I put the same water through the filter three times and the result was
2.5 mg/l CaCO3



I think that is quite impressive myself.

I do not think I will be buying de ionised water at about £4.70p for 5 litres any more.


Cheers.

Geez that's expensive! No wonder you guys over there are using a Brita. I would too at that price. Feeling pretty fortunate here to have ready access to water that's so incredibly inexpensive by comparison. C$6.50 (~3.70 GBP) for 20 litres of distilled...I'm almost embarrassed to mention it.

Still, that Brita really works. Very impressive. I'll have to keep that in mind if I ever need it in a pinch.
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  #30  
Old 21st September 2021, 08:26 PM
Terry S Terry S is offline
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Wow! That's some impressive figures there Nat.

I've had a Brita filter for years but it never crossed my mind to filter tap water to use as a final rinse, especially given the cost of buying these bottles of water.

I'll definitely be putting my next final rinse water through my jug three times and it'll be interesting to see if I get any drying marks or not on the film being processed.

It's a great tip you've given us all and any money saved is money that can be used in buying more film and paper.

Happy days!

And Mike, I think the price of filter cartridges have come down over the years as there's more than one brand available now. As to how much water each will filter, if I recall correctly, each manufacturer puts a figure on the packaging and some jugs even have an LED on, to help you keep track of how much water you have put through them. I've kept using an individual filter until it becomes so slow to filter that it becomes annoying. I'm not sure how scientific this is, or if the filter even does its job after so much water, but the proof is in the pudding as they say, and I'm sure my films will let me know by leaving drying marks or not.

Terry S

Last edited by Terry S; 21st September 2021 at 08:36 PM.
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