Thought maybe someone had run across this before or has some water conditioning experience…
A couple months ago the wife noticed our water having a bluish tint to it. You can only notice it when it’s in a white container. Both in hot/cold lines and in all faucets/showers. We’re on a well.
I did some research and quickly determined it was probably copper. I sent it off to get tested which I was told would take 2 weeks to 2 months. Luckily it came back on the early side of that estimate and it was high on the copper…2.8mg/l where the EPA “action limit” is 1.3mg/l. We don’t have any metallic taste to the water or blue stains on fixtures which most people say go along with it.
Since it was in both hot and cold lines I figured there was a corroded pipe before the water heater so I spent a day replacing that with PEX with no improvement.
Called up a water conditioning place and they thought it was acidic water. I had came across this and tested the PH with a fist tank test kit that showed it close to 7 but apparently it wasn’t very accurate as their test showed 5.5. They said a Calcite Acid Neutralizing tank would solve my problem right away.
They installed it Tuesday, no improvement. They back-tracked a bit and said it might take some more time for it to resolve but I’m tired to dealing with this.
I can easily replace the rest of the pipe with PEX to at least the kitchen sink/fridge (which the fridge filter seems to filter it out btw) to take care of the drinking water portion of stuff but it seems like it’s not treating the cause.
Thoughts?
Updated - - -
Couple other things to note. The house is only 12 years old so aging pipes shouldn’t be the problem. Also, although we didn’t test it, when pulling water directly from the pressure tank (before going through any treatment/pipes) it is visually clear.
If your PH is at 5.5 the age of the pipe doesn’t matter because your pipes are wearing at an accelerated rate.
I’d stick with the plan for the acid neutralizing tank. Just replacing your pipes with PEX isn’t going to resolve the issue of the PH being too low. There will still be copper bits instead hot water heaters and other appliances that are going to not only leach copper but have a reduced lifespan. It sounds like the system they installed either isn’t calibrated properly or was undersized. I’d start by demanding another PH test to verify the acid balancing is actually doing something.
Thanks, I’ll read through that even though the formatting of that site hurts my eyes.
The tank is installed and unless it is undersized it’s pretty simple so I’m not sure there’s any calibration to it other than the backwash schedule. And agreed on the other comment, replacing copper with PEX might help but the upstairs run is impossible to do and the last place I want a leak. The PH really needs to be corrected.
I dropped off water this morning but they’re taking their time getting back to me. A quick test with my apparently unreliable first tank test and horribly incremented hot tub test strips do show a noticeable improvement in PH but if it’s still under 7 that might explain the problem, especially on pipes that may still be “soft” due to the years or acidic water on them.
They said the next step is a soda ash injector but I’m worried that at this point I’m just throwing money at a problem without a clear diagnosis. They were confident this tank would solve the problem right away and here I am 4 days later still with blue water.
^ Pick up something like that. The old tried and true “add some drops to water in a clear glass tube and hold it up to a color chart” should be more than accurate enough if you buy a quality kit.
Finally got a call back from the water place. The new results are 6.9 from the well and 7.3 after treatment at the faucet.
A couple things. First off that 6.9 is close enough to 7 that it shouldn’t be a problem and is way different than the 5.5 they told me before. I’m not a well expert but a 1.5 point swing in 2 weeks seems crazy. I almost wonder if they screwed up the initial test and I just dropped a grand on something I didn’t need.
Either way the 7.3 means that acidity isn’t the cause at the moment. Something else is going on with the pipes or it’s going to take time for it to clear out. I’d hate to give it a month only to have the same issue.
I’m just completely confused how it’s in ALL the pipes unless they’re all shot. I mean the hot and cold are completely separate clearly and the downstairs bathroom splits off from the kitchen after only 4 or so feet of copper.
Dissolved CO2 can cause huge swings in PH but since both of these tests weren’t done immediately after pulling the water from the tap that doesn’t really do much to explain it. You could get a low PH reading when immediately testing and then an hour later test that same water that came out of the tap and see it read much higher as the dissolved CO2 went away.
If it’s 6.9 at the well I think you’re right, you probably just spent $1000 without needing to. So where’s the blue water coming from? I even called my wife (product chemist) and she agreed that at 6.9 it definitely shouldn’t be leaching any copper because that’s basically neutral. What I wasn’t sure of (and neither was she) was how long copper that had been eaten away enough to leach by acidic water would take to rinse clean. She also didn’t know why your well readings would swing like that but it’s not really her field.
Well I wasn’t aware until a bit ago when I called another water service place that PH could rise over time. I did pull the water samples the night before and dropped them off this morning, they weren’t tested until this afternoon. The other tests were a couple weeks ago and I’m pretty sure I pulled them the night before as well which still doesn’t describe the difference.
The other places I called are confused as well and weren’t much help. I was just hoping to get someone that said they’ve seen this before where it takes X days/weeks to clear up.
I think my options at this point are to wait it out or start replacing more copper. Everything is fairly accessible as it’s either in an open basement area or above the drop ceiling in our finished portion. The sink would be a fairly simple run and I should be able to knock it out in an afternoon. PEX is cheap enough where it might be worth giving it a shot (even if it’s just cold water) because if that doesn’t clear it up then we clearly have some other really weird issue.
Thanks for the help and the phone-a-friend to the wife!
Got a call back Monday from the water guy and he pulled the wait and see card. Sounds more like he has no clue and doesn’t want to say that. He did say he would do some research yesterday and call me…no call.
Did some digging myself and stumbled across electrolysis being a possible cause of this. I’m not completely sure how to test but grounding my voltmeter then testing the still copper sections of the pipe showed nothing. For all I know that could mean nothing but the house is also only 10 years old so it shouldn’t have anything grounded to the plumbing anyways…and everything is visible except for the upstairs run and I don’t see anything on it.
So I guess we’re playing wait and see unless I get bored and start swapping out copper with PEX.
