free water test. what do my results mean in relation to my plants?

[caveman117]

So this guys shows up at my house and asks me if I'm the owner of the place and all that jazz. Then tells me hes from a company called aerus technologies (not sure on spelling just going by how it sounded). And he would like to test my water for free.

So I invite him in and he sets up his test kits and what not. I told him about basic things ive noticed about the water and where my well is and what the ground is like near my well. I told him of an egg/sulphur tyoe smell that comes and goes seasonally, things like that.

After the tests are finished he shows me the results and it turns out my water has a tds of 47, ph 7.5 (which I already knew about), it has 3 grains of hardness to it, small amounts of bacterial iron which apparently is pretty normal even though id never heard of it and I had a high amount of manganese in it which is where the egg smell comes from apparently and not from any sulphur.

The manganese is what worries me the most when thinking of my plants. I forgot the damned scale of measurement it was but I assume its pretty universal if anyone knows, but it was .2 on the scale and there was warning at .05 and a max limit of like 1.5 for human consumption I think.

So my question is what do these results mean to my plants? And what would be optimum for organic soil?

 

[potpimp]

I don't know about the micros but you can't go wrong using filtered water. Wish I could be more help.

 

[caveman117]

I could probably distill water in small quantaties but other than that its an investment in water purification. I'm not really sure whether or not it would be worth the investment for me.

Thanks for the reply anything helps!

 

[vostok]

After the tests are finished he shows me the results and it turns out my water has a tds of 47, ph 7.5 (which I already knew about), it has I had a high amount of manganese in it which is where the egg smell comes from apparently and not from any sulphur.

Last I smelt manganese it had no smell, the rotten egg is S04, sulfer dioxide, typical in fe soils, and can be very toxic, as you are in mid summer see the water table is low down and heavily polluted in comparison with other months of the year, boot the carpetbagger out, do your own tests, same day every month, so you can see the annual change...thats vip to growers, then you can save water for these dry months

 

[phil k]

its completely fine ... r u sure the TDS was 47? and not 147? 47 is really low TDS for any tap or well water.

 

[phil k]

distilling it the way your thinking isn't going to change anything for your benefit... true distillation is vaporizing the water to steam and recondensing .....like liquor is made.. just heating it isn't going to release all the stuff.

 

[caveman117]

Vostock the water test for sulphur that he did came out negative. Good idea about testing it evwry month. Do you know where I would find the testing supplies (like what kind of store)?

Ya I'm sure rhe tds was 47. He didnt think itnwas accurate either but he callibrated his meter three times.

And the way I would distill is with a stovetop still that is made for producing alcohol so I figured that would work?

 

[phil k]

Vostock the water test for sulphur that he did came out negative. Good idea about testing it evwry month. Do you know where I would find the testing supplies (like what kind of store)?

Ya I'm sure rhe tds was 47. He didnt think itnwas accurate either but he callibrated his meter three times.

And the way I would distill is with a stovetop still that is made for producing alcohol so I figured that would work?

well if your going to go to that extreme you can but before you do that you need to do some basic science shit.. you need the vaporizing temps of shit like sulpher and the crap thats in your water.. theres a lot of shit that makes it back into the water you use like pesticides/herbicides and the down side to that is that shit generally carries a really low vapor temp and become trapped in the water vapors when you distill .. then condenses back down and becomes more potent because its now a higher content in the water, since you've distilled some of the volume. distilling water was really for irons and shit like that it wasn't ever a source for plant water because a lot of the beneficial nutrients that are in regular water are removed in the distillation.

if you can drink your well water there is no better water source for your plants... well water beats any watering choice around. you are tapped into a aquifer that supplies natural water your plants would be searching for if they resided outside.
normally you can get them at any filter store.... like culligan...absopure.... or whatever your major water supplier is in the area..

if you drink your well water your generally fine.. but have you even just looked into something as simple as a whole house water filter? they have many options some are cheap and some are really advanced but just a basic filter can pull out a lot of that crap to clean it up a bit more.

 

[phil k]

Vostock the water test for sulphur that he did came out negative. Good idea about testing it evwry month. Do you know where I would find the testing supplies (like what kind of store)?

Ya I'm sure rhe tds was 47. He didnt think itnwas accurate either but he callibrated his meter three times.

And the way I would distill is with a stovetop still that is made for producing alcohol so I figured that would work?

yeah 47 is almost unbelievable if you ask me.. general tap is about 150-190+ well generally is in the same area depending it can be a bit off each way but 47 is so low .... its crazy.. but i mean shit you must have a great pure water source your pulling from.

 

[phil k]

shit even bottled water gets into the 200-300ppm range.

 

[phil k]

Last I smelt manganese it had no smell, the rotten egg is S04, sulfer dioxide, typical in fe soils, and can be very toxic, as you are in mid summer see the water table is low down and heavily polluted in comparison with other months of the year, boot the carpetbagger out, do your own tests, same day every month, so you can see the annual change...thats vip to growers, then you can save water for these dry months

actually here in michigan theres a bacteria that grows in some water supplies that creates the rotten egg smell i can remember the exact way it works out and how it breeds but a friend of mine had to have some people come out and redo all kinds of shit in their system due to the bacteria because their water smelt like rotten ass eggs and they always thought the same thing.. that they had high sulfur levels but its not always sulfur. they paid thousands to have it cleaned up too...

 

[rkymtnman]

so what was he selling? and did you buy it?

i send my well water out every 2 years to be tested. for a bout $100, i get a printout of everything that is in it. and the range of safe levels. your local health dept should also be able to test it but they test more for bacterial contamination.

 

[caveman117]

Ok so maybe the stovetop still isnt the best idea. I have access to one but if it will take outnmore.of the good than the bad I'll leave the stjll alone. I live in the mountains in maine so I kind pf have trouble believing the tds but he did callibrate three times. the water also had a bit of bacteri iron whch he said didnt help the smell but rhere wasmt enough to worry about.



The rotten egg smell definitely comes from manganeese in the water. I looked it up last night and the sulphur smell is like the biggest indicator of manganeese build up.

Mtnman the things he was selling were whole house filtration systems. And he recommended one that uses salt to take out manganese because that was pretty much the only problem I had. He was also selling air purification systems that were originally designed for the space station.

I didnt buy anything (price on water purification was $2799.99 and air was 1999.99) but he was a good salesman and I gladly took the free water test and free demo of air purifier (which I had him set up right where my air gets taken in from haha)

 

[rkymtnman]

how much water do you use? i bought 4 of the 5 gal water containers at walmart and fill them up for 0.37 per gal. that's about 2 weeks for me.

i bought a cheap-o RO filter set-up and quit using it after seeing how much water it wastes making a little bit of RO water.

 

[phil k]

so what was he selling? and did you buy it?

i send my well water out every 2 years to be tested. for a bout $100, i get a printout of everything that is in it. and the range of safe levels. your local health dept should also be able to test it but they test more for bacterial contamination.

yep he's right i forgot about that your city/township should have a testing thing available for you.

 

[phil k]

ttheres really no need at all for RO thats really just a need for people that wanna know theres zero impurities mixing with their chemical regimens.. just a basic pre filter and carbon filter is more than enough to purify the wear for you and your plants.

 

[caveman117]

Ok so the only real question I have left I guess would be is would the excess manganeese in tge water cause any detrimental effects for the plants?

 

[phil k]

i mean excessive can, but your not there. your levels are fine.. you'd see ph issues before you would ever have magnesium poisoning ... just cause you have a fairly high ph level.

 

[phil k]

honestly though a whole home filter is like 50$ and they are very simple to install its basic plumbing. you'd benefit from it and it would give you peace of mind.

 

[phil k]

http://www.servapure.com/product.asp?itemid=1952&gclid=CPryvZGSnMYCFQccaQoddCAAbQ

thats a more expensive one but its what i found right away .. it gives you an idea