New Indirect

lchmb

curious if anyone has any idea's. i recently added a superstor indirect to my in-laws boiler. While visiting tonight I was asked if there would be anything to cause the water to have a blue tint to it and cause staining in the sink. It was never noticed when they were using the coil. The water to the house is from a dug well and when mother nature allow's I'll be checking there for any issues also. I'm not a mineral expert but is there something that would occure in an indirect but not in a coil? Maybe from having a buildup in the tank?

icesailor

Indirect Blues:

You have acidic water, low Ph and it is from the copper pipes. If anyone uses hair coloring  with bleach, you will have blue tinted hair.

You have always had this problem. It isn't caused by the SuperStor. You need a water test. I doubt seriously that you have bad water. By that I mean, bacterial contamination. You may have high copper levels that will go away when you run the water for a long time before you do the testing. You will have the low PH problem. I find it easiest to fix with a AMF Cuno APUN 200 acid neutralizing filter. It contains no moving parts and does not need to backwash. You just add some calcite Medium (ground limestone) when the level gets below a set level.

You probably have blue staining in the sinks and the water tastes metallic in the AM when you get up. The morning coffee probably tastes bad too.

Hope this helps.

(I have this unit in my own home and recommend it to my customers who have this problem.)

lchmb

Thanks

I planned to have a water test done and I'll look into that filter. Thanks for the input, very nicely explained..

lchmb

Thanks

I planned to have a water test done and I'll look into that filter. Thanks for the input, very nicely explained..

kcopp

correct me...

if I am wrong. I was told long time ago that blue water staining was from a bad electrical ground on the water main....

icesailor

Blue Water Stains:

That may be true about electrical grounds. I've never seen one do it. I've seen a lot of other strange things from bad grounds or neutrals.

But electrical is the root of the problem though. See, when all those critters and gizmos get out of convergence, all kinds of strange things happen. I've seen pin holes develop in a piece of copper tube. In fact, more than one hole but in different sections of tube. Upon closer inspection, all the holes were in tubing that came from the same length of tube.

My fiberglass showers get green/blue in the bottom when the media gets too low. It stops when I refresh it. My grounding seems to be fine.

Mark Eatherton

Copper Development Association sez...

http://www.copper.org/applications/plumbing/techcorner/staining_bathroom_fixtures.html



Regarding bad electrical grounds...



http://www.copper.org/applications/plumbing/techcorner/electrolysis_cause_copper_tube_fail.html



And JUST in case you don't have it, heres a link to their Handbook.



http://www.copper.org/publications/pub_list/pdf/copper_tube_handbook.pdf



Great resource for copper systems questions.



ME

icesailor

Blue Water:

ME,

That about covers what I see. "soft water" that is acidic with PH's in the 6's. High levels of CO2 from rainwater and water picking up CO2 from dead vegetation. Iron in the water, and throw in some calcium carbonate or bicarbonate to finish off the brew, you get blue water. Then, heat up the water and the fun starts. If I could figure out how to post pictures here, I could post some rather interesting photos. Those instantaneous gas water heaters are plugging up as bad as old tank less heater coils in oil boilers. Someone is selling acid pump kits for cleaning them out. I'm already set up. I never stopped using my old one.

Steamhead

It's simple, Icy

All you have to do is use the "File Attachment" dialog, seen below the main message window where you type the text of your post. The Browse button will let you navigate to where the file is. Then you select the file in the usual manner, and it appears as part of the post after you hit Submit Post.



For pics I believe .jpg files are the only ones that will work. And it helps those who still have slow dial-up Net access if you shrink the pics to 640x480 or so.



I'm a PC. Some of this may be different if you use a Mac.