Thinking of R.O. water? You may want to think again.

i believe ro water is a real good alternative to tap water if your tap is high in ppm/ec. where i live during the summer(drought year) the ppm of my tap water was around 350. too much for my tastes whatever the contaminant may be. so i used ro water. but now during the winter (tap comes from lakes and rivers and such) because of the snow and rain my tap comes out at 120ppm. i can live with 120ppm. also like at the beginning of this thread says. check your cities most recent water quality analysis. its free, usually in pdf format. i live in a real small town and i googled it and found it in like 10 secs.(also said at the beginning of this thread). yeah

andrewcovetsall said:

i believe ro water is a real good alternative to tap water if your tap is high in ppm/ec...

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I 100% agree. Not everyone needs to use RO. A lot of hydro stores will push that you do because they want to sell you a system and RO users will boast how it is needed. NOT ALWAYS.
My tap water is 600+ PPM out of the tap and I have grown with it hydro with good results. I do mix in RO to lower PPM but don't use it 100% because I don't want to have to buy calmag.
People with low PPM tap water don't need to use RO.

There are good things in tap water but there are also bad things. Chlorine and fluorine for example are added which plants don't like and can kill benefiial microbes in your soil or reservoir. Tap water also has things that effect ph adjustment and are more prone to ph problems. I would stay ro is best . Good water ad add good nutrients. If your tap water is fairly soft and you let it set to remove chlorine and fluorine that's also fine. Around here tap water is nasty just look at your shower head.

Dirty Harry said:

I 100% agree. Not everyone needs to use RO. A lot of hydro stores will push that you do because they want to sell you a system and RO users will boast how it is needed. NOT ALWAYS.
My tap water is 600+ PPM out of the tap and I have grown with it hydro with good results. I do mix in RO to lower PPM but don't use it 100% because I don't want to have to buy calmag.
People with low PPM tap water don't need to use RO.

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Exactly, that's the reason I started this thread, just to let people know that it's over hyped. Some people need it, most don't.

i would love to have tap water with perfect mix of trace minerals, but i don't. hard water, so i have a water softener. i don't even drink that stuff. too much sodium. $1.30 you can get 5 gallon of RO water from wally world. much cheaper than buying an RO filter system and filters all the time.

I understand that perfect ph is around 6.5 but what is a good ppm. I have a water softener and an ro which is better

friguy said:

I understand that perfect ph is around 6.5 but what is a good ppm. I have a water softener and an ro which is better

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Normally you want to pull your plant tap water BEFORE the water softener. After it, you may have lower PPM but very high sodium (salt).
If before the softener comes out under 400PPM or less, it's usable.
Using RO only, you will need to add calmag or such to put back in trace minerals that the RO removed...another cost.
I use a mixture of tap and RO to bring down the PPM before nutes to 150-200PPM. That works for me and leaves in enough stuff in the tap water so I don't need calmag supplements.

BeaverHuntr said:

quick question? If bleach has chlorine and chlorine is bad for your plants then why use bleach ? I'm confused.

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Chlorine, just like any other nutrient, is good for your plants as long as it is in the right dosage. Chlorine is a required micro-nutrient. A little chlorinated tap water is great in any hydroponic system provided your not pouring money into any beneficial bacteria/fungus. Chlorine also happens to be superior at killing all forms of bacteria and bugs and will keep your res crystal clear forever as long as it is replenished.

haole420 said:

i would love to have tap water with perfect mix of trace minerals, but i don't. hard water, so i have a water softener. i don't even drink that stuff. too much sodium. $1.30 you can get 5 gallon of RO water from wally world. much cheaper than buying an RO filter system and filters all the time.

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not if you use 60 to 100 gallons per week. that just looks odd to the neighbors bringing 20 t0 30 gallons or water at a time, every week. pita!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks Dirty Harry I will check today and see if my outside faucet is before my softener or not. My RO water is 16 ppm and a PH of 7.8. I used one teaspoon of PH down and that brought my PH down to 3.4 wy to musch, but I am gonna start with that today as I am just germinating the seeds. I don't know the true result of my softener water beacause I have let the salt run down in it. I am gonna fill it today and let it do it's thing and will test this afternoon. I appreciate the inpit and never thought of mixing the two.

dart420 said:

not if you use 60 to 100 gallons per week. that just looks odd to the neighbors bringing 20 t0 30 gallons or water at a time, every week. pita!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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i do it behind a closed garage door

i have a pretty small grow for now. 20 gallon res change once a week no biggie. i just get 2x5gal every time i stop by the grocery store. maybe i'll hook a hose up before the water softener, bypass it as someone suggested...

@friguy,
If the water softener was installed correctly, your outside taps be be pulling before the softener. There is no need for outside taps to be running soft water and it would cost you money for the salt you would go through. My RO is around 7PH so I always need to use PH-.
I will add this though...When you are PH- RO water, it takes a HELL LESS PH- than straight tap. If I used the same amount of PH- used in plain tap in RO, it will drop down to around 3PH.
Time and experimentation with your tap/RO mix you will figure out how much or less to use.
In fact using soft water I believe will give you a higher PPM due to the salt. PPM and EC meters measure the electrical conductivity of the water to give you a reading. The nutes are dissolved salts and adding salt in the softening process would make the water more conductive and give you a higher reading.

Thanks Dirty Harry Still don't know if outside water is hooked into softener system I think it may be. I used RO water to start with, but like you said I put too much PH- in it. It was 7.8PH and I brought it down to 3.4 PH it shows 16 PPM. Outside water is 212 PPM and 7.8 PH Tap water inside is 224 PPM and 8.2 PH It seems as if about any of these will work will a little PH-. I just don't like the idea of adding salt to my water. I will have to get under the house and trace the water lines to know for sure how they got it tied in. I appreciate your input.

Here's my $.25:

I've been trying to get started since last spring, when I got a handful of small rooted plants to bring up as mothers. I'm on a well and have a softener, but was cautioned about the sodium the softener adds, so we watered the mothers with raw hard water. They seemed to be doing okay, but in fact they were scrawny and sickly and I was too inexperienced to recognize it. We tried repeatedly to take clones from them (after they'd grown up some) but the clones would not survive, even after we bought a TurboKlone. Eventually I clued in and measured the well water at 700ppm, at which point I installed a little RO (that I had lying around already) downstream from the softener. Things are better now - (most of) my mothers are healthy (a few of them simply didn't snap back after we cleaned up the water and slowly withered away) and the clones are growing the way they should.

So I agree with you that most domestic tap water supplied by city utilities is likely just fine for growing. But if you're having problems, your water is probably the first thing you should take a look at. Wherever you live, there's a testing lab nearby that'll tell you exactly what's in it for a hundred bucks. Doing it sooner sure would have saved us a lot of time and grief.

haole420 said:

i do it behind a closed garage door

i have a pretty small grow for now. 20 gallon res change once a week no biggie. i just get 2x5gal every time i stop by the grocery store. maybe i'll hook a hose up before the water softener, bypass it as someone suggested...

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yeah, our water here sucks ass. so ro it is. i do a small garage grow as well. 20 galx2 and if i have to flush both i end up tapping my 55 gal ro storage.

justpassingthrough said:

... Wherever you live, there's a testing lab nearby that'll tell you exactly what's in it for a hundred bucks. Doing it sooner sure would have saved us a lot of time and grief.

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Most places that sell water softeners and office size filtered water cooler jugs will do a free water test. I am not sure if they tell you exactly what is in it but they will test and let you know the quality of your sample. Clean a mason jar and take in a jar of your tap water. Act like a possible new customer and most will do a test right there.

only about $2 for 5 gallons of RO water at walmart from the culligan machine. $10 for the jug but only have to buy it once. i use RO when i can but since its a pain to refill my bottle all the time, i switch to tap once in a while and let the most of the chlorine evaporate over night. havent noticed any difference really, but then again, i never compared side by side. i do know for a fact though that tap works just fine.

I would have to disagree with the comment tap water being fine. When they make the nutes they use R.O water to test with and produce a standard using anything above 200 ppm you will not get the yeild and you will have to use more nutes to change the effect that your water is having on the chemicals in your nutes. Not a science major just using common sense.

This is my third try, so we will see how it goes. I have been using half tap water which is showing 256 PPM and a PH of 7.9 and half RO water which is showing 43 PPM and a PH of 8.1 Then I use PH- to bring it to a final PH of 6.5 and drops my PPM down to about 150. Only a few days in to this try but everything is looking good right now.

Just tested my tap at 327ppm. When I fill my bins, I mix RO to tap about 60/40. Don't know if it's necessary, but the plants seem to be doing great. (Am on my 2nd grow, 1st time hydro)