Is it better to use rain water?

kevin said:

found this for people with the same question that i had.
Howstuffworks "How does reverse osmosis work?"

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answering your own question and sharing with the rest of us is very impressive. Thanks!
rep for you.

Third dday and the plants seem to love it. I got the great white north to thank for the nice clean air feeding me the clean water that doesn't go throurh gutters and is crystal clear. If it were bad for the plants they wouldn't have thrived on it for all these years. I don't see any outdoor growers puting a tent over their grow and watering with RO water. To each their own, as for me I think they like it.....

if u live in a city do not use rain water. contaiminents get caught in the rain. i dont know how many or how much and it will vary on the polution rate of the city. every city does give off polution though...cars, houses, etc. if u live in the country it would be safe to use rain water. u dont see alot of outdoor growers growing large-scale in the city so we dont need to worry about it.

budman500013 said:

if u live in a city do not use rain water. contaiminents get caught in the rain. i dont know how many or how much and it will vary on the polution rate of the city. every city does give off polution though...cars, houses, etc. if u live in the country it would be safe to use rain water. u dont see alot of outdoor growers growing large-scale in the city so we dont need to worry about it.

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Can you provide any sources or references for that? Because it sounds pretty dubious... If you live next to the coal power plant in the industrial section of town, I can see rainwater being a notable issue to plant health, but if you're living in any area suitable for human habitation, the rain will be just fine. Like said, plants have been using rainwater for hundreds of thousands of years. We've been using shiny gizmos to clean our water for what, a couple hundred?

Frankly, if you consider your living environment too toxic and deadly for some of the most resilient organisms in common occurrence, then what the fuck are you doing trying to stay alive there?

When there are no pollutants introduced to rain via air, the pH level of normal rain is 7, completly neutral. but there is very few places where people live that doesnt have any pollution. when carbon dioxide is release into the air (primary source of co2 expulsion is cars) it reats with the precipitation in the air for form carbonic acid. not very strong but chemical properties of carbonic acid arnt good. it can ionize with the water it was produced from to make hydronium ions...stronger acid rain. the hydronium ions (CO3 + 2H3) are what changes the pH of thewater. Therefore the more C02 pollutant producing objects (cars,power plants, etc) you have in the area...the more C03 +2H3O is produced. Every rain is acid rain now and days...but the places which contain more CO3+2H3O will be the places where acid rain is the highest and most noticable. Look at this link and it will show u the amount of average polution of the world and how it vaires from place to place.
http://earth.esa.int/satelliteimages/1679/no2scia_world2006_H_or.jpg
Any place in the green is probably still good to use rain water but i would be leary about yellow and deffiantly not red. To what point the plants are affected i have no idea. they might be fine it is. but to me if the water has poisen in it then i dont want to chance it. acid rain is exactly what is says...acid in the rain. this throws off the pH of ur soil by lowering it. RO water in the city just seems safer to me. imo. the best water you could use for plants is well water. weed has been on the earth for thousands, maybe millions of years. but now that we've introduced pollutants into the world, rain water might not be the best. well water would be the absolute best for any plant. the ground will filter out any pollutants and make it like the rain water millions of years ago, for the most part. you cant compare people to plants as far as living conditions go. plants have been around for millions of years before man and will be around long after man. im not saying plants cant grow in new york city outside or another place where pollution is high, im just saying this thread is about what is better for a plant. changing the pH level of the plant isn't good for it. the more consistent the pH the healthier the plant will be.
im a mechanical engineer elected had to do an environmental clean up process for a glass forming plant. so my research and thinking came from that. the rain water tested in the town which was right beside the plant was 5.2 due to their furnace output. as for the im doing to try and stay alive, i clean up environmentally unfriendly production plants and drive a hybrid, even if it is an suv...haha. if we were more concerned with the environment the nwe wouldnt even be having this dicussion now cause i would hands down be rain water. it just depends on where u live, nyc...probably RO water...here in the midwest out in the country...rain water is better.

thank you for the very interesting information!

according to your map, im in the clear....further proving me right!!!!!!

so yea i might invest in a rain harvest system.....or build one myself.

a rain harvesting barrel plus one of these systems? Tropf Blumat Watering System

perfect combination IMO.

Water comes from the toilet and I've never seen plants growing from the toilet. You should give your plants Brawndo, the Thirst Mutilator. It's got electrolytes. What are electrolytes? I don't know but their totally awesome.

????????????

lol thats from Idiocracy
and the stuff from the toilets made the plants GROW!!!!

It's been 5 days after flooding the 4 gallon pots with rain water. I moved the light the 20th and checked them this morning and the tall one had grown into the light and burnt the leaves and over heated the bud. Had to bend it to keep it out of the light anymore. It grew 6" two weeks in flower since I posted the thread... I think they like it...

They seem to really like it......

Still using nothing but rain water and my nutes. I hope for the first one to be done in 3 weeks. One plant is at least a week behind the others if not more.

Does anyone else have a grow using only rain water?

BIGSIX said:

Reverse osmosis water is the purest cleanest it can get.As for rainwater, depending on where you live you might want to stay away from it. it can be contaminted, worse so than tap water even. you ever hear of acid rain? RO is the way to go, its cheap around here, like 15 cents a gallon at aquarium stores in my area. I have also seen RO filtration units for as cheap as 300 bucks.

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RO WATER IS NOT THE CLEANEST IT STILL HAS A LOT OF CHLORINE AND OTHER HARMFUL MINERALS RAIN WHATERS GOOD CUZ IT HAS ALOT OF SILICA ITS NOT GOOD FOR U BUT IT IS GOOD FOR YOUR PLANTS DONT GET ME WRONG RO IS GOOD BUT IF U WANT THE BEST WATER TAKE RAIN WATER DISTIL IT THEN RUN IT THROUGH AN RO MACHINE AND PH IT FOR BEST RESULTS

WTF?...........If you RO rain it will be the same as any other RO water.... You are wanting all the micro and macro nutes that are present in rain water that get filtered out of RO water. Then when your plant shows difs you have to add them back. When it rains here it comes in from the north west. I have no big cities with any kind of factory that produces any "acid rain".

trying to RO rainwater could be an expensive setup.... you would have to get the rainwater pressurized.....

Their getting close....

One down, 2 to go... No problems with "pollution" here.....

Second plant was taken over the weekend. Still only using rain water. The first plant is now in jars and the second is drying.... I'm going to let the third go another week or two. It seems to grow new flowers every day.I want it to fill out before I chop it.....