Do you guys think it would be wise to pull my sample hot since I run my strike water hot?
If that’s the water you use, that’s the water you should have tested.
thanks Denny. Just felt right to double check.
Yes, as Denny covered already.
This is the reason:
A water heater will develop scale after time and the “hot” water that you use can vary significantly from the same households “cold” water supply. So in the end your “hot” water being drawn from a traditional tank style water heater will contain a higher mineral count than the water drawn into the tank to heat. Now this all depends on the age of the tank being used and can change from time to time. Or better put from month to month or year to year.
I understand your design in saving time/energy/gas whatever by drawing hot water. But this test you intent to take on your hot water can be meaningless within days to a months time again as explained above.
Here is more on the topic.
If your very low ALk and your total TDS is under 30 ppm then you will have very low loading for years to come and could with confidence use your hot water supply, and this is the only scenario that plays to your method. As If you have moderate alk like mine around 50 and a total TDS around 100 on average it will load up at a higher rate and there is no way I would use this hot water as it will be much higher alk/ mineral counts than I would ever want to use, for showers yes it is soft enough—just not enough to confidently use for great beers. Third if you have very high ALk at 100+ then you are using a water softener and the softened water is ALWAYS fed to the hot water systems again because of scale loading otherwise you would constantly plug pipes solid. So then you would be using softened “hot” water which is never desirable.
Whatever works my man, But I would suggest testing and using house “cold” supply as this will stay pretty consistent for years to come again unless you have very low TDS then the difference is neglible, but far too many of us are not blessed with this holy grail of water and I am just guessing today that your water matches the greater majority of us all which is somewhat soft water if your lucky to moderately hard water. Depending on the season all municipal supply will have high and low alkalinity seasons. But if yours is anything like mine it is within reason. IE: My alkalinity will range from a low of 45 ppm to a high of 60 ppm so well within adjust ability.
If you are unsure of what I am saying send in a test of both your hot and cold side and see the difference for yourself.
Edit… I thought about it and checked out Portland’s water out of curiosity as most of OR water is very low in TDS. Well here you go you are indeed one of the lucky ones as you should have a TDS around 30 unless you are drawing from a deep water well on a farmstead and also your hot side will be slightly higher again just due to loading but it should be trival amounts as spoken to above…NOW this couple of paragraphs should be a warning to others that would try your method out blindly, thinking O’gee wilikers why do I heat cold water? I should do what Hopp does and they may not consider the difference between hot and cold side within their own homes as more of the average US populations municipal supply are usually looking more like 75-150+ TDS and I wish I could cut open a water heater just to show what moderately soft to somewhat hard water scale looks like after even 5 years time. I used to have a deck of photos when I was in the water softening game, but no longer need them to show people what happens to heater/pipes if you don’t soften moderately hard water.
See Portland’s Triannual report published April 2013:
The next installment of my book will cost you all BIG TIME $$$$ :mrgreen:
