Distilled or Not Distilled, That is the Question

Hello everyone,

I live in the UK, and have done a little indoor gardening for a few years but decided now to take it more seriously. A small part of this is growing my own cannabis for medical reasons, I have a lot of pain. Therefore I do not have a large set up, just a 1m x 1m x 2m height grow tent. My love is to grow from seed, and I have several fruit and salad plants in there, as well is three weeds. I have done a great deal of reading, on this forum, elsewhere, Google and Youtube. I can afford to spend some money on this, but I do not want to waste money or time with expensive gadgets that are not really necessary.

I will be trying out deep water hydro soon, I have a second hand setup and a seed waiting to go in once germinated. I would appreciate some solid advice on water. I live in an area that has very hard water, so I have been using PH- to get to 6.0-6.5 for the current plants which are all in compost/perlite, and all are doing very so (so far). I leave the water for at least 24 hours in an open bucket as recommended everywhere to get rid of chlorine. I understand that has to drop to 5.5-6.0 for hydro. I am quite prepared to buy a home distilling piece of equipment (around £180), but there is conflicting information regarding distilled water. My pipes are 1970's iron, so there is some rust in the water, I get brown stains which are limescale mixed with rust (I had the water tested) around my sink after a few days, I only drink filtered water!

Is distilled water the way to go, and if so should I add elements to it, magnesium and calcium for example? My plants are all in pre-nuted soil for at least one more week, but after that I will have to slowly introduce more, starting at around 50% recommended and moving up. The other option I thought was every third water or so I could flush with distilled.

Any suggestions?

Many thanks.

Darkman, I'm facing something similar. First grow (Northern Lights Kannabia Special) and have been using distilled because I have well water with rust. Distilled has been fine so far but the cost will add up at some point. I have been looking into a reverse osmosis system but they can be expense in higher capacity. Any other suggestion are welcome.

run your
well water through a pillow case works greatttttt G\L

I use an RO filter, got one for less than $100 usd on ebay. That is without a reservoir.

I leave the water for at least 24 hours in an open bucket as recommended everywhere to get rid of chlorine.

Click to expand...

most municipal water treatment plants do not use chlorine anymore, they use chloramines, which do not evaporate or deteriorate like chlorine.
The good thing about letting water sit out is it warms up. I like my water to be in the 60s or 70s.

My tap water is about 43 right now, great for drinking but too cold for roots.

I use well water, and its very hard water indeed, we don't even use a water softener. I can't justify getting into setting up an RO system, as I go through about 80 gallons a week, and its just that much more work. I've never had a problem, ever. I just don't use any kind of cal/mag nutrients, since the water already has plenty of that in it.

Everyone has their system of how they like things, and mine is KISS. I'm happy with what I have, and don't need any extra stuff to do.

So I'm out with the distilled water thing, personally.

hi all, somewhere I read that distilled water has no nutrients in it. Is that really the case? If so one would have to add nutrients to their water for both soil and hydroponics? I have hard water as well but I have seen no ill effects on my plants so far. I don't use any nutrients thru out the entire grow but that is because I am new at growing and I don't want to mess anything up. I have started adjusting the PH and am seeing better growth. I am also interested in knowing which way to go with tap or distilled water.

distilled water is not going to have much of anything in it, that is the point
I don't grow in soil inside, so I don't know
for hydro you definitely have to add nutes and get the ph right

after I add nutes to my RO water I have to add 6ml of ph up, it would be more for soil

check the ppm of your tap water and or have it tested
tap water is fine, some prefer to get rid of all the stuff and add it themselves

bowlfullofbliss said:

I use well water, and its very hard water indeed, we don't even use a water softener. I can't justify getting into setting up an RO system, as I go through about 80 gallons a week, and its just that much more work. I've never had a problem, ever. I just don't use any kind of cal/mag nutrients, since the water already has plenty of that in it.

Everyone has their system of how they like things, and mine is KISS. I'm happy with what I have, and don't need any extra stuff to do.

So I'm out with the distilled water thing, personally.

Click to expand...

I don't disagree at all about hard water or the KISS, many nutes are made to go with hard water.
My cheapo RO filter can make 100 gallons a day. I have a 27 gallon reservoir but I only use a few gallons a day.

My tap water is only 125 ppm, but I want to remove the fluoride and all the other stuff.
I remove the stuff I do not want along with the minerals I do want only to replace them with expensive calmag.
i treat my plants better than I treat myself. I'm weird that way.

Update on this.

I continue with tap water, PH adjusted, and where required nutrients added. Absolutely everything is doing very well so far, tomatoes, salad leaves and cilllis as well as three rather more exotic plants.....! There is always the issue of long term build up of all kinds of unwanted gunge however!

My best WW is doing very well, extremely bushy and quadrupled in size from a week ago (14cms high and almost as wide). It is in a 3-4 gallon pot, and will stay there, I want to minimise stress and keep transplanting as little as possible. One issue with this is that the soil stays moist for about a week, so maybe that is not a great move until the plant is bigger 9experience need for me here). I would be comfortable flushing every third watering with distilled when I am watering/feeding daily. I suppose I just need to try it and see how it goes. One flush every three days is surely going to do no harm....is it?

I run Alaska tap water. pH is 7.4, PPM is 88 and mainly consists of magnesium and calcium with other minerals in trace amounts. I run it right into the res after adding my nutrients and adjusting the pH. No sitting out at all. Being medical (professionally not marijuana) I like the idea of the chloramines as I know they help limit bacterial overgrowths. I have root balls that totally fill the 5 gallon cans and require moving to larger bins (18 gallon this time). I have never had a slime or fungus issue and my roots are healthy as hell. The chloramine does no noticeable damage and my smoke is good.