Water Quality Analyzer

Enter your source-water test and find out whether it's good for irrigation: salinity, alkalinity, sodium hazard, hardness, and ion toxicities, with a treatment plan.

Type in a few numbers from your water report or test strips, and it tells you whether the water is fine for your plants and what to do if it isn't.

About this tool: reading an irrigation water test

Water Test Report

Water use Sets how strict the alkalinity target is. Pots and seedlings need cleaner water than a lawn does.

Report values drag or type; leave 0 for anything it doesn't give

Core drag or type

Water pH

EC dS/m

TDS ppm, optional

Alkalinity ppm CaCO3

EC and TDS measure the same thing, the salt in the water, so either one is enough. Alkalinity is on most water reports, sometimes as "total alkalinity", and pool and aquarium test strips read it too. No alkalinity number but you have bicarbonate (HCO3)? Enter that below and we'll convert it.

Sodium ppm, leave 0 if not reported

Ions ppm, leave 0 if not reported

Ion	ppm	Ion	ppm
Calcium (Ca)		Chloride (Cl)
Magnesium (Mg)		Sulfate (SO4)
Sodium (Na)		Boron (B)
Bicarbonate (HCO3)		Iron (Fe)
Nitrate (as N)

VerdictResult

Treatment Plan

Full Reading

Measure	Value	Target	Status	Notes

General irrigation-water guidance. Crop tolerance and lab methods vary, so pair this with your lab's interpretation. Acid rates are a starting point; confirm with a titration or jar test before injecting.

Glossary

What's the water for?: Sets how strict the check is. Soil in the ground buffers a lot of what water brings, so a lawn tolerates water that would slowly ruin seedlings in small pots. Hydroponics, with no soil at all, is the strictest.
Water pH: How acidic or alkaline the water is, where 7 is neutral. Most tap and well water reads 6.5 to 8.4. On its own it matters less than alkalinity, below.
EC (dS/m): Electrical conductivity: how much dissolved salt is in the water, read by a cheap pen meter. Under 0.75 is clean; over 1.5 is salty enough to hurt many plants. Some meters read in µS/cm, which is the same number times 1,000.
TDS (ppm): Total dissolved solids, the same salt as EC in a different unit. Roughly EC × 640. Under about 480 ppm is clean.
Alkalinity (ppm CaCO3): How much the water resists being made more acidic. High-alkalinity water pushes the pH of soil or potting mix up a little with every watering, until iron and other nutrients lock up and leaves go pale between the veins. Under about 140 ppm is easy; containers need under 75.
Sodium (ppm): The sodium half of salt. Under 50 ppm is fine. High sodium burns leaf edges and, in the ground, makes clay seal up so water sits on top.
pH Down (acid): An acid added to water to cancel its alkalinity. Sold at garden and hydroponics shops. Always add acid to water, never water to acid, and measure the dose rather than guessing.
Softened water: Water run through a home water softener, which swaps the calcium in hard water for sodium. Fine for dishes, bad for plants: use an outside tap that bypasses the softener.
RO water: Reverse-osmosis water, filtered until almost nothing is left in it. Mixing it with salty or hard water dilutes the problem.

Related Tools

pH Adjustment Calculator

How much acid or base to add to reach your target pH, based on your water's hardness and alkalinity.

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EC & PPM Converter

Convert between EC, CF and ppm (500 and 700 scales), with target strength by crop stage.

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Soil Test Calculator

Enter your soil test results and get an amendment plan.

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Lawn Watering Calculator

How much and how often to water your lawn, in minutes per zone.

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About this tool: reading an irrigation water test

pH and alkalinity

pH is how acidic the water is right now. Alkalinity is how much acid it takes to change that, and it is what shifts your substrate pH over a season. Water at pH 8.0 with 30 ppm alkalinity is easy to correct; pH 7.2 with 300 ppm drives your medium alkaline anyway. 1 meq/L = 50 ppm CaCO₃.

Choosing a target

Depends on the buffer between water and root. Field soil buffers a lot; a plug tray buffers almost nothing.

Situation	Target alkalinity
Lawn and turf on field soil	under about 180 ppm
General irrigation, in-ground	under about 140 ppm
Greenhouse, containers, seedlings	under about 75 ppm
Hydroponics and sensitive crops	under about 60 ppm

The lawn target is a Bizon estimate; the rest are published (sources).

Nutrients from acids

Sulphuric adds sulphur, phosphoric adds a lot of phosphorus, nitric adds nitrate. Subtract it from your feed. Acid into water, never the reverse. Leave some alkalinity: zero means no buffer and a pH that swings.

Sodium

SAR compares sodium against the calcium and magnesium that hold soil aggregates together. High-SAR water disperses clay and seals the surface, so the ground stops taking water. Above about 3 warrants attention. Gypsum supplies calcium to displace the sodium.

Also worth checking

Boron has the narrowest safe range on the report: about 0.5 ppm for sensitive crops. And softeners swap calcium for sodium, which makes softened water worse for irrigation than the hard water it replaced.

Water Quality Analyzer