Any Water Ionizer may be able to ionize well in St. Louis, where I live, but the same water ionizer may not ionize well in your municipality.

Why? Because the hardness, water quality and total dissolved solids from place to place are so different! If you look at the hardness map, above, you can get a general idea of the wide differences in water hardness around the USA. Keep in mind that these are general ground water conditions and do not take into account the other sources [lakes, rivers, springs and fresh water runoff collected when it rains]. If you live in an area that is …

• Temperate and moist, but very hard [i.e., the red areas on the map], your municipal water company may get their water from a variety of places [wells and rivers for instance] and so you may look hard according to the map, above, but not be too bad when it gets to your tap.
• Hot and dry,  your municipal water company probably gets most of your water from wells. In this case with the map, above, it shows probably a good picture of your water hardness. If you live in a hot and dry [all year long] location, and you have very hard ground water, I’m going to guess you also have a very high TDS [total dissolved solids].
• If you live in a region with very soft water it is possible that your municipal water company adds calcium [lime] to your water to buffer it. Water that is too soft may corrode pipes and so it is for the protection of the pipes that the water treatment companies do this.
• If you have a well, on the other hand, then your source of water is only the ground water, and so the map would more likely be showing a pretty good representation of the water you are getting.

The actual hardness of municipal water should be looked up, and if it’s your own well it should be tested.

The parts per million [ppm] of hardness is a very important number to a water ionizer owner. It means you are either going to probably get good, better or best ionization….or possibly not so good, and you should know something about this ahead of time, so you’re prepared in the event you need to do some prefiltration [in line with your water ionizer].

Your municipal water company has a responsibility to report to you what your water quality is. They file an annual water quality report online usually, and this can be located and looked at. The report usually tells you the levels detected of certain contaminants deemed to be regulated by the EPA. The report doesn’t have to tell you your water hardness, but sometimes you can find it in there. It’s a good thing to look at your water quality report from time to time, and if you can’t find it or if they don’t say what your hardness is you can call the phone number on your water bill [or your landlord’s bill]. They will usually be very good about answering your questions.

What does this mean for your water ionizer purchase?

Very Hard Water: (200 ppm or higher) This water is possibly some of the hardest water to ionize. Many, many people in this situation are already using a whole house water softener and reverse osmosis. If this is you…you can simply add a Remineralizer in the line and you should be able to ionize just fine. [Check the water ionizer you're considering to make sure it works well with a 1.5 liters per minute flow-rate.] If you use a water softener without reverse osmosis, please refer to this page: Sodium and Water Softeners If you have very hard water and don't soften it or use Reverse Osmosis, then you are strongly advised to use the Spartan Ionizer Shield for Hard Water or the Elimination of Scaling Device or both. This will help your water ionizer fall into the "Good Results" range (explained below), but with very hard water to even have a chance of "Great Results" you would most likely need to set up a reverse osmosis remineralizer system and possibly might need to add a Remineralizer (extra) into the system.

Very Soft Water: (60 ppm or lower) This water isn’t too troublesome. If your water is too soft all you need to do is get a Remineralizer to put in-line with your water ionizer. With soft water try to choose a stronger ionizer if you can afford it.

Medium Waters: The best water to ionize is between 80 and 140 ppm of hardness. Below that you may want to use a Remineralizer or mineral port. Harder than that you should still be able to ionize fairly well all the way up to about 200 ppm, but you would need something to keep scale from damaging your water ionizer. [This is a good device for that: Elimination of Scaling Device]

What does this mean for your water ionizer results?

Depending on your location you may not get as good results as you would in another location. The last section tells some ways to control your results better, but even so, you should expect variations in the following:

PH Range: 

• A great pH range would be about 3 or 3.5 to 10.5 or 11
• Good results would be anything from a pH range of 4 to 10 or greater.
• Fair results would be 5 to 9
• Poor results would be 6 to 8

Antioxidant Levels in Your Drinking Water

The variations of antioxidants in ionized water are too great to anticipate here. It is considered good to be able to get -300 ORP or greater in your drinking levels of ionized water.

If You Want Better Results

If you would like us to give you advice about how to get better results with your water ionizer -- given your specific water quality please contact us and we will be happy to help you. There is usually a way to improve your water quality (make it more perfect for water ionization) but it also may take a little bit of work to do.