would you just get the basic 50$ one?
Does the water leave Ca deposits on faucets and stuff?
kinda depends. for the first one i got one of the more thorough ones just for a baseline. this is my first place on well water so i wanted to know all that was in it.
Good policy to have (growing cannabis or not) if the water is destined for drinking by your family. Once in Annapolis Valley NS we almost bought a house with 50 acres in an agricultural area. Luckily we made contamination by pesticides or heavy metals a condition of sale pending results. (Here sale is conditional on bacterial counts only, and that's the only thing they'd normally test for). Well the water was loaded with pesticides being situated in a commercial orchard area along with high levels of nitrates (likely from runoff from a manure pile from the neighbours cows). We bought another farm instead.
I have slightly hard well water. My ppm is around 150 I think. But I'm pretty sure it's mostly Ca. So I've been limiting extra Ca in my dry amendments. I even use a little citric acid occasionally to help flush some extra Ca out of my soil. You shouldn't use it in your humidifier or it can get clogged. I only put distilled in mine.
You're not supposed to give the plants the softened water. You're supposed to get the water out before it's been softened, or use the outside hose which isn't connected to the softener.Where I am, everyone is on well water/septic systems.
Most people have salt based water softeners. They require periodic addition of salt. They work by replacing Ca and Mg salts with Na salt. Probably not ideal for plants but people do drink such water without health risk afaik.
There are also ionic water softeners. More expensive but catalytic so they require zero maintenance, in general. They make the calcium and magnesium ions temporarily in a state where they will not bind to surfaces and leave deposits. I have water that is sub 100 ppm , untested but I know its not very hard. I have an ionic softener and a carbon filter. I drink the water and use it for my plants without issue.
Your water has to be pretty hard to cause issues, especially in soil (because soil buffers pH). Plus don't people supplement Ca and Mg...
That makes sense. My ionic softener isn't replacing Ca and Mg with Na so I'm not using hose water (which for me, as you'd expect, is pre-softener) but would if I had issues.
i did that for a few years when i first started growing hydro.