Water Quality in Water Features
Water Quality in Water Features
For The Proper Functioning of Architectural Fountains and for their component parts to provide a good performance along the years, it is important to use the right water in order to prevent failures and a rapid wear of the parts that make up the fountain. As a general rule the:
-The PH must be between 7.2 and 7.6
– The impurity content of any kind must not be over 50 g per m3 of water
– The water hardness must not be over 180 mg of Ca Co3 per 1 liter of water
-The chlorine amount must be under 5 mg per 1 litter of water
– The water temperature must be between +5C(41°F) and +35C (95°F)
Water PH
This detail, which is usually not known and is barely mentioned, is often the reason for many of the architectural fountains’ component parts – elector -pumps, nozzles, submersible light, pipes, etc.-to get intensely corroded and eventually stop functioning in a timeframe shorter than a year. This is because most of these parts are made of Bronze, Brass, Tombago, AISI 304 Stainless Steel, etc., metals which do not tolerate high acidity. Water is considered neutral when its PH is of 7 – if the PH over 7 it is considered alkaline water. (figure. 1) shows the corrosion of a ½ “cascade nozzle after 7 months undergoing the action of very acid water.
PH is an abbreviation of potential hydrogen and the normal scale of value can be between
0 and 14, being 7 the value of a neutral solution such as water. if the value is between
0 and 7 the solution will be considered acid, while if it is between 7 and 14 it will be
considered basic (or alkaline). A good way to make an approximate PH measurement is by
using a test strip (flgure.2). when put into water, the paper strip
Changes its color so it can be compared with a scale of colors printed outside the packaging.
Each color indicates the PH quite Accurately.
Analyzer Test kits for pools are also quite reliable. They provide quite approximate values
and are not expressive. see (figure 3). Figure (1)
In general, when the PH value is over 8 water gets cloudy and promote deposits in pipes, Nozzles, etc. it can cause irritation of eyes, ears, nose and throat too. Also, if the PH values is over 8 there is no point in adding chlorine to water as such high PH value will prevent it from acting.
