Numbers: Mine and PoolStore

[chem geek]

In short, the saturation index just tells you when the water is "saturated" with calcium carbonate. It depends on pH, Calcium Hardness, Total Alkalinity adjusted for CYA (to get carbonate alkalinity), TDS (a proxy for ionic strength) and temperature.

It is most definitely certain that if your water is not saturated (enough) with calcium carbonate then it will be "corrosive" to plaster/gunite/grout surfaces since these (mostly) contain calcium carbonate which will dissolve into the water since the water is not saturated.

It is also most definitely certain that if your water is over saturated (enough) with calcium carbonate then the excess will precipitate out as scale and will make the water cloudy until such precipitation is complete.

The "enough" in the above is somewhere in the neighborhood of plus or minus 0.7 to 1.0 and higher in the index though the exact point is debatable.

What is not at all certain is what water that is not saturated with calcium carbonate does to surfaces that do not contain calcium carbonate, such as vinyl or metal. In this context, the pH is by far more important as low pH (i.e. acidity) is most certainly corrosive to both vinyl and metal in light of having lots of oxidizers in the water (both oxygen and especially chlorine).

That's about as far as I can go without venturing into the controversial and debatable topics such as whether saturated calcium carbonate can form a protective coating on metal to prevent corrosion, etc.

Richard

[waterbear]

CAn't find much out about the PinPoint water analysis system other than that it was by Avecia and that Arch Chemical bought out the division of that company that made it.
Here is a link to Ben's online SI calculator if you are interested
http://www.poolsolutions.com/frm/calculator_SI.php

The page will show a lot of errors until you plug in all the values and hit the submit button.

Edit: once again this illustrates that computer assisted testing is prone to errors because the computer it 'dumb' and is ony crunching the numbers put into it! There is no substitute for knowledge and human insight when it comes to water testing, IMHO!
Trust your own numbers!