Tyrone Smith
Member
What is the best way for a small grow to prep tap water for watering? or am I better off using bottled water?
Water prep
- Thread starter Tyrone Smith
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Tyrone Smith
Member
Would something like a Zero water filer work?
Madagascar
Well-Known Member
They sell at walmart? what is it called
rkymtnman
Well-Known Member
yep.
rkymtnman
Well-Known Member
my local walmart has a reverse osmosis water dispenser. 37 cents a gallon.
astronautrob
Well-Known Member
I use tap and let it sit out overnight so the chlorine can evaporate, they seem to like it just fine. RO is good if you have really hard tap water or something but here in CO my tap water is under 50ppm
What is the quality of your tap water? How many ppms?
Mine is 800pm and too high to grow (well). I mix it with "bottled" water (reverse osmosis filtered, sold at the dispensing machine) to get 150ppm before nutes.
As far as chlorine/choramine in tap water, there's not that much present. It's dosed for delivery through a closed, sanitary system. I add a pinch of sugar to promote microbial action which will exhaust the sanitizer. It's good for the soil microbes too.
Tyrone Smith
Member
I don't know the ppms... I have been looking for a meter locally with no luck... I think I will have to oder one...
It's a good, and inexpensive investment. $15-$25 US on Amazon for an HM EZ-TDS or TDS-3. You can calibrate it by adding 1g table salt to 1L distilled water. That makes 1000ppm.
It's handy to know your runoff ppms too, when you're dialing in soils and nutrients. It will let you know if you're heading toward salt buildup (if you feed nutrients instead of using an organic/composted soil.).
You should be able to call your water provider and they can tell you information about the water quality. They should know the average annual TDS/ppm. Some numbers about what makes up most of that (sodium? calcium?).