PH verse alkaline: how do you measure alkaline?

[Jame9111]

Water alkalinity and pH are not the same. Water pH measures the amount of hydrogen (acid ions) in the water, whereas water alkalinity is a measure of the carbonate and bicarbonate levels in water. Think of carbonates and bicarbonates as dissolved limestone. The higher the alkalinity of the water, the more lime it contains and therefore, the more rapidly the water can cause the growing medium pH to rise. On the other hand, the pH of the water does not have any influence on the pH of the growing medium.

Starting Water pH Water Alkalinity (ppm CaCO3) Sulfuric Acid Required to Reduce Water pH to 5.0 (ml)
9.3 71 1.2
8.3 310 6.0
For example, the chart above shows the starting pH of two water sources and the amount of acid required for each to reach a pH of 5.0. The water with the higher pH did not require as much as acid as the one with the lower starting pH. At first glance, this may not make sense. However, note the alkalinity in the center column. Regardless of the starting pH, the higher the alkalinity of the water source, the more acid is required to reduce pH to 5.0. For all water sources, it is the alkalinity that actually determines how much acid to use, not the pH. . Would love everybody's input only pro-mix HP I'm talking about.

 

[TorturedSoul]

Whenever you've got rows/columns of data, you can enclose the set in CODE tags, like you would with B for bold text (if you type it out instead of using the "buttons"). It keeps spacing correct, and uses a monospaced font so that each letter occupies the same width.

data tall wide
12345 ABCDE 890YZ

becomes:

data     tall     wide
12345    ABCDE    890YZ

I'll repeat that, but "void the tag" by adding a space, so that you can see what I did:
[ code] data data data
12345 ABCDE 890YZ[/code]

Well, sort of see; the forum software stole my additional spaces, lol. But hopefully you understand what I did. That should look correct on any size/resolution display (although small ones may end up with a scrollbar).