Quote Originally Posted by CarlD View Post

Toybuilder hasn't given us a reading on the local fill water so its pH may well be normal, not excessively high. (Which, of course, makes me wonder about your water works managers, who let public water go out with high pH.)
They can't lower it too much because it causes plumbing to corrode. Here's the quick summary -

Arizona primarily steals....ummm, I mean "borrows" water from the Colorado River (surface water) and produces water from a few deep aquifers. The water is all fed through something called the CAP (Central Arizona Project) which, like California, is a series of large reservoirs and aqueducts to deliver water to us desert-dwellers. The water from the CAP is shipped down to Tucson BUT, before it gets here, it is injected back into the ground and pumped back up again before processing and delivery. This process of injection makes the water's mineral balance and pH closer to local conditions and saves a lot of water from evaporation.

Because of this and other factors, if you lower the pH of the municipal water too much relative to the local ground water, you run the risk of destroying household plumbing by, in effect, creating an electrochemical cell. Also, pH 8.0 water is not at all unusual in the West. The water here is "sweet" compared to the more acidic nature of water found east of the Mississippi. We also have substantial differences in soil composition which is why western water is heavy in calcium (and bad for making pizza dough) and eastern water is heavy in iron (great for pizza dough)....This is from an Italian boy from Long Island (me) who sorely misses his NY pizza