In this episode, I talk about when to use Soda Ash for Acid Well Water.
Topics discussed include:

* What is low pH and why you might want to correct your low pH to a neutral pH?
* What is soda ash for well water?
* Why use soda ash instead of a calcite neutralizer?
* What are the benefits and advantages of using soda ash?
* How does soda ash compare to other alkaline chemicals such as sodium hydroxide?
* How to set up a soda ash injection system
* How much soda ash you should inject.

Episode 14
Acid Well Water: When to Use Soda Ash Systems to Treat Acidic Well Water
Hello, Hey. Thank you so much for tuning in to Clean Water Made Easy Podcast. This is Episode #14. My name is Gerry Bulfin. I’m a Water Treatment Contractor and WQA-Certified Master Water Specialist. You’re in the right place if you want to learn more about well water, well water treatment systems and how to improve the quality of your well water.
Each episode in the series is broken down into a single area or topic that you can listen to each one, one after another, or you can jump around and find the ones that pertain the most to your application.
In Episode 13 I talked about calcite acid neutralizers. An acid neutralizer in general to correct acid well water conditions.  I did talk about a little bit about sodas ash.
In this episode, we’re going to look a little more in-depth look and deep dive into when and how to use soda ash systems.
We’re going to talk about: What is low pH and why you might want to correct your low pH to a neutral pH, what is soda ash, why use soda ash instead of a calcite neutralizer, when to use it as opposed to calcite, what are the benefits and advantages to using soda ash, and how soda ash compares to other alkaline chemicals such as sodium hydroxide. We’re going to go over how to set up a soda ash injection system and how much soda ash should you inject.
First off is What is low pH? How you might want to correct your low pH.
It’s easy to check for pH. If you check your well water and you have acid water,  which is pH less than 7,  then you might also be experiencing some corrosion problems. Particularly if you have copper pipes, but also you can get corrosion on your water heater, appliances, fixtures.
It’s a good idea to have neutral water or water that’s not gonna corrode your pipes. Signs of your acid water could be corrosion of your fixtures, blue stains in your copper pipes, or sometimes rust staining if you old galvanized pipe.
Basically, acidic water with pH value in the range of less than 7 is more corrosive to metal. That’s why we want to correct the pH. Groundwater such as well, and surface water such as spring water, can both be acidic.
The most common cause of acid water (I talked about this in episode 13) is from the rain. So you get the acid rain– the rain goes to the atmosphere, picks up carbon dioxide, or in some case, if it’s in an industrial area where you may have sulfur dioxide or nitric oxide, you get acids forming in the water which is easy to do because rainwater is pure water so it doesn’t have any lime or buffering capacity to it. It goes into the ground and eventually end up as groundwater. What happens is that if you have an area where there’s a lot of limestone, or your well is pulling water out of an area where there’s limestone, then you have hard water and you don’t have acidic water, generally.
A lot of folks will be in an area where there’s fracture granite or sand or some kind of strata in the ground that doesn’t have the buffering capacity to change the pH of water from acidic to neutral or alkaline.