got a thing from the city about our water quality. i was hoping for somebody's interpretation of the data. or comparisons. i'm saving for a nice digital ph/ec tester. i should get some test strips in the mean time. so i don't have a clue what my ph. can i figure out ec with the soduim ppm?


fluoride .951-.959 ppm
nitrate .161-.172 ppm
trihalomethanes (tthm) 9.6-35.1 ppb (billion)
haloacetic acids (haa5) 4.9-16.5 ppb
chlorine residual .44-.78 ppm
turbidity(cloudiness of water) .26NTU
sodium 4.51 ppm

Looks low EC to me, but ideally you need to find out from them what the grain hardness is.

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Mandala Seeds Kalichakra and Satori Grow
Holefillers 0.6gram per watt 64w Micro Grow

babygrow wat is ec. i've never really known or asked.?
Nice one. i never test ph. and mines doin fine.

so by grain hardness you mean hard or soft water? what's better?

Grain hardness is a measure of the total dissolved solids (TDS) contained in the water. The lower the grain hardness, the lower the EC, the lower the total quantity of TDS, and vice versa for higher figures.

Yes, bottom line is how hard or soft the water is.

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Mandala Seeds Kalichakra and Satori Grow
Holefillers 0.6gram per watt 64w Micro Grow

EC stands for Electrical Conductivity. It's a measure of TDS (Total Dissolved solids) in the water. When you measure EC you measure an electrical charge between two probes and the amount of resistance encountered - the resistance is the dissolved solids.

EC and TDS can also be expressed as ppm or parts per million which is the measure or ratio of the amounts as expressed in millionths.

EC is important because it measures the TDS or dissolved salts in your irrigation water - too high and you'll burn plants with it.

If you're growing in soil you don't need to worry about ph - soil and composts are ph self buffering.

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Mandala Seeds Kalichakra and Satori Grow
Holefillers 0.6gram per watt 64w Micro Grow

i have this multimeter RadioShack.com - Cables, Parts & Connectors: Test & measuring equipment: Multimeters: 42-Range Digital Multimeter with Electric Field Detection

can this test ec? set it to ohms put the leads in a cup of water? going to try.

Aint gonna work sorry - get an EC Meter.

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Mandala Seeds Kalichakra and Satori Grow
Holefillers 0.6gram per watt 64w Micro Grow

lol! best laugh i've had all day!

lol, listen to babygro. get a tds pen. a digital multimeter is for electronics, not water.

love, kp

btw, ohms is the resistance to flow of electricity that an electronic component has. usually used to test resistors in electronics, to see if they are operating correctly.

I dont see why it couldn't work in a pinch...

Multimeter experiments with electricity and water

I think getting acurate readings would be next to impossible but you could still get a ball park figure...

Im not sure how you would go about converting the data recived from a multimeter into EC or PPM though...

Any math nerds in here who understand electric current...??

In this case water and the solids in it are your "electronic component"... A multimeter tests the resistance of a known (internal component) against that of an unknown (external component)...

If you have ever made or seen a solar cell of oxidized copper and salt water you know that they can be an electrical component...

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I just know i planted them around here somewhere...=]