Help me! Decyphering Palmerston North water

[Jono Galuszka]

Help!

I emailed the local council about what the water is like - especially in relation to chlorine - and here is what I got back:

The water supply to your area is predominantly from Turitea surface water, but from times it could be supplemented from the bores.  

The bore water has hardly any Free Available Chlorine (FAC), as the status of the security bores.  

We dose chlorine to the Turitea water to achieve FAC.  

 The FAC level at Turitea water Treatment Plant is controlled between 06-0.8 g/m³ Cl_2. The FAC decays while water travels along the pipes and by the time gets to your area the FAC various between 0.25 to 0.5 g/m³ Cl_2,  depends on the local water demand.

 

Can someone/anyone tell me what the hell this means? Also, is this a fair bit of chlorine in my water? Can it easily be boiled out?

I should also explain that the water here in Palmy - from what I can tell - is from a catchment stream. However, when it is busy they take water from bores. More info is here: http://www.pncc.govt.nz/servicesandfacilities/commonservices/waters...

[Richard Deeble]

Chuck 1/2 a crushed campden tablet (potassium metabisulphate) in your brew water (20 litre batch) and let it stand for 10 minutes or so as its heating up and that should deal with the chlorine in your water. It just turns into chloride and sulphate ions in your water.

[Jono Galuszka]

Cheers Richard, much appreciated.

I'm still a total n00b when it comes to anything like water pH and stuff like that.