Storing water in plastic bottles.

Couple things to do:

1) Check with your municipality and see whether they use chlorine or chloramine. Chlorine will evaporate, chloramine will not. Also, reverse osmosis is NOT an effective way to remove chloramines. Not to mention RO is a very wasteful process.

2) Buy a HydroLogic Small Boy with the upgraded catalytic carbon. This WILL remove both chorine and chloramine, and it'll only set you back about $100-150.

3) If your municipality only adds chlorine, just leave the water out overnight in 5-gallon buckets. Chlorine evaporates from water at a rate proportional to the amount of surface area exposed to air, thus buckets will work much better than narrow mouthed bottles.

4) Yes, plastic bottles leach chemicals.

Maybe the scare here is coming from the plastic baby bottles (polycarbonate) that leaches BPH that has shown to possibly cause hormonal changes in lab rats. Polypropylene or High Density Polyethylene which are the most commonly used commodity plastics (cheap shit) for MILK (Low Density Polyethylene) and other food products are safe and do not leach harmful chemicals. They wouldn't be putting fucking mild in LDPE containers if it caused issues. I'd be worrying about the quality of your water before you start fretting over plastic containers.

All plastics leach some chemicals in the presence of large amounts of UV radiation. I agree that plastic is less of a concern, but I wouldn't leave my water buckets in direct sunlight either. Remember when I say the half life is 28 hours for chloramine - that means you reduce the amount by half in that time period. If you aren't willing to buy a filter, I would at least leave the water out for a few days.
SS is right that RO does nothing for chloramine, but I was under the impression that carbon filters would remove the chlorine portion of chloramine but not the ammonia. My water goes through a seven stage filtration system before use. Are you sure the Hydrologic is rated for chloramine as well?

Moldy said:

Maybe the scare here is coming from the plastic baby bottles (polycarbonate) that leaches BPH that has shown to possibly cause hormonal changes in lab rats. Polypropylene or High Density Polyethylene which are the most commonly used commodity plastics (cheap shit) for MILK (Low Density Polyethylene) and other food products are safe and do not leach harmful chemicals. They wouldn't be putting fucking mild in LDPE containers if it caused issues. I'd be worrying about the quality of your water before you start fretting over plastic containers.

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Thanks. We are concentrating on air cooling issues right now because it is already in the upper 80s daily. So the flowering space is getting too warm. After that is solved, I'll get to worrying about hooking up a decent water system. One thing at a time.

Looks like I can reduce the number of bottles to only that which will fit inside.

Water quality and any source of contamination is always a relavent topic. Any little thing that can be done to improve the end-product purity is a good thing. So this is for those that enjoy minutiae, and want to tweek the details. 20 years in a laboratory taught me to question that which is, find alternatives or solutions, and work towards that which may become.

And yes my city does distibute water with chloramines, and high solids. Our potable water is very hard.
Letting tap water sit for a week before use cuts the chloramines considerably according to AliCakes.
In the future, water treatment that contains a filtration step will help with the solids.

I notice that paper towels turn orange when I wipe down the inside of home depot buckets which I store water for a few days at a time. Seems to have slowed down after a year.

As Sincerely420 says "Those sneaky orange buckets" ! !

Oh, and thanks for all the tips on what kind of water filter system to look for. And price quotes.

Mixing a bit of humic acid in your water will work too. It does not remove the chloramine, but instead the organics bind to it making it inert. I do this outside when out of rain water. The water for my indoor plants still goes thru a multistage sediment/uv/cat carbon/ro filtration system. I hate using bottled water, but I rely on my herbs too much to take a chance.

Edgar9 said:

I had a nalgene plastic water bottle #7 next to my bed that I would use for water during the night when thirsty. When I poured water into a cup from it I didn't notice anything but recently I drank right from the nalgene bottle after water had been sitting in it at room temperature for just one night and I could taste the plastic.

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uhhhhh ok. . .nalgene doesnt leach out chems, hence why it is used for ALLLLLLL sorts of things in chemistry labs. Are you sure your bottle is actually nalgene?

dude what else is there to store it in, glass is heavy and you cant keep it in the bags. plastic is the only way water is carried anymore.

AliCakes said:

Mixing a bit of humic acid in your water will work too. It does not remove the chloramine, but instead the organics bind to it making it inert.

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Awesome, I add humic to every solution after aeration.