Quote Originally Posted by tado921 View Post
In the water softening procedure it says to add 9 pounds of soda ash for every tablespoon in the bucket test, plus one more. Basically it is calling for a ratio of added soda ash depending on the CH level. However, it seems to me that the actual method is to get the pH above 10 in order to get calcium to precipitate. It wouldn't actually matter what the CH level is, I just need to get pH to 10. Is this not correct?
Partially. Without a meter, most people can't test for pH = 10, so providing instruction based on that is useless.

But, also, the chemistry of the precipitation requires an excess of carbonate ions (=CO4) in order to capture all the calcium. The amount of soda ash needed is determined by the quantity of calcium present.

It's very, very surprising that you'd add soda ash, drop calcium to the bottom, and still end up with the original 200 ppm. I'm not sure what actually is going on with your water.