Investigating Mysterious Salty Taste in Water

[rorobee]

Hi all , we have a noticeable taste of a salt in our water.
I don't know what kind of salt it is.
Is there any way to precipitate it out ?

We have had our water tested , but apparently they don't test for a salt.

 

[russ_watters]

How was the water tested? I had mine tested using a kit I got at a hardware store and my water is ridiculously hard. That hardness is mostly calcium ions.

You can boil the water and what's left after you boil it will be whatever is dissolved in it.

 

[Borek]

We have had our water tested , but apparently they don't test for a salt.

So, what was the test for? What were the results? Could be the information is there, you just don't understand it.

 

[rorobee]

You can boil the water and what's left after you boil it will be whatever is dissolved in it.

Russ.
I'm glad you brought that up..
i did boil the water .
It has strange properties.
It seems the slower that it is heated , the less shows up at the end.
ie. if you were to boil vigorously there is more left in the bottom of the container , than if the heat is turned down near the end .

My way of thinking is it shouldn't matter what the boiling process is , there should still be the same amount of greyish powder left in the end .

but that's not what happens..

Borek .

i will look for the report and get back to you.

 

[rorobee]

Ok these are the results.

Chemistry Parameter Result

Free Chlorine 0.14 mg/l
Total chlorine 2.9 mg/l
PH 7.57 standard units
Turbidity 0.32 NTU
color 3 color units
Total hardness 33 mg/l
Alkalinity 37 mg/l
Conductavity 257 mS/cm
Total Dissolived Solids 126 mg/l
Dissolved Oxygen 11.95 mg/l

Bacterological Parameter

Total Coliform Bacteria Absent
E. coli Bacteria Absent
Hetrotrophic Plate Count Not Tested


I had the values lined up in a column but the software changed the look of it.

 

[Borek]

OK, there is no test for particular cations and anions, so there is no way of telling what is dissolved.

Note that it is not easy to tell what salts are dissolved. For example, if you dissolve 0.9530g of CaSO₄ and 0.8182g of NaCl in 1L of water (CaSO₄ is soluble enough for that), solution will be identical to the one obtained by dissolving 0.7769g of CaCl₂ and 0.9943g of Na₂SO₄. Question whether such solution contains calcium chloride or sodium chloride is a moot - it contains calcium, sodium and chloride ions.

 

[rorobee]

conductivity test of drinking water

Borek
Thanks for your reply and diligence.

I thought the conductivity test was interesting. It should give an indication of the number of ions in solution .

For reference the test of my water was 257mS/cm.

Acording to wikipedia "typical drinking water in the range of 5-50 mS/m, while sea water about 5 S/m[2] (i.e., sea water's conductivity is one million times higher than deionized water)."

 

[alxm]

Well if it tastes salty, it's probably table salt (sodium chloride). Different salts do have pretty distinct tastes (try it yourself, sodium chloride vs potassium chloride vs calcium chloride vs calcium bicarbonate).

If it's a bother, you can always get a water softener. Otherwise, it's probably mostly a matter of taste and the inconvenience that it can case with scaling on pipes and in appliances. Unless you're on a low-sodium diet, it's not likely to be a health hazard (even then I'm not sure the concentrations would be high enough in any water still considered freshwater, much less drinking water).

 

[Borek]

257mS/cm

High.