RO water vs distilled water vs deionized water?

hello,
what is the difference between the 3? the grocery stores around me here (in northern california) only have distilled water, and the self serve machine is deionized waster. will that work just as good as RO water? if not, anyone in nor cal know where i can buy RO water from? thanks!!

I'm not quite sure about the logistics of using deionized water, however; I was talking to the dude at my local grow store and he told me never to use distilled water in my hydro system....he didnt really elaborate so idk if he was just blowing smoke or what

tap water here is about 7.0, so its not that bad, maybe just use the tap and pH it down would be ok?

anyone else have any suggestions?

stucklikechuck said:

tap water here is about 7.0, so its not that bad, maybe just use the tap and pH it down would be ok?

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By the time you figure in some nutes, you may not have to pH down at all!

I just moved and the new water, here, is "Alkaline Hell"!!! It takes 55 drops of "pH Down" to neutalize 2 litres @ 6.8. I had to switch to bottled water for the "short run". I would kill for tap water @ pH-7! Go ahead and use your treated tap water, just bubble it for a couple of days.

T.H.Cammo said:

By the time you figure in some nutes, you may not have to pH down at all!

I just moved and the new water, here, is "Alkaline Hell"!!! It takes 55 drops of "pH Down" to neutalize 2 litres @ 6.8. I had to switch to bottled water for the "short run". I would kill for tap water @ pH-7! Go ahead and use your treated tap water, just bubble it for a couple of days.

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yeah i was thinking that too, thanks. im in the bay area and we have pretty good water. but we are currently on water restrcition so i might have to end up buying the water anyways... so if i do have to buy water is it ok to get that distilled stuff? i hear some people say you shouldnt use it and some people say no problem. if i do end up using distilled, do i have to replace the lost minerals with cal-mag or some shit? thanks gain!

dont bye disstilled it waste about 2 gallons of water too make one,ro is fine if you must bye.

It takes up to 6 gallons of water to make one of RO...

The best units can get away with 3 gallons of waste to one gallon of RO.

Water restrictions suck ass

trapper said:

dont bye disstilled it waste about 2 gallons of water too make one,ro is fine if you must bye.

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i dont know where i can buy RO water around here...

Ph is easy to handle, in my case PPM was killing my plants. Personally I am going to stick with R/O and I am jealous of people with good tap water lucky buggers!

the thing is, i can use tap water but due to the water restrctions if we use the 40 gallons a week that is required to water our plants, we will get penalized. so our only other choice is steal water from the neighbors or buy the water from the store. if only the dude that owns the house didnt HAVE TO shower 3 times a day and flush after every piss, we wouldnt go over our restriction limit... sigh

As I understand it Distilled water is made similar to a moonshine still.

basically boiled water in a pressure cooker so that it turns to steam. Steam then rises and enters a metal tube at the top where the water vapor condenses back in to water. and into a separate container. All of the dissolved minerals are left in the pressure cooker and clean H20 is in the new container.

RO (reverse osmosis) water is tap water pumped through several charcoal filters with thin membranes that allow water to pass through whilst disallowing other particles to pass through.

Deionized water however i have not heard of until today.

So have we come to a consensus....should i be using distilled water as opposed to spring water and ignore what the dude at the hydro store said??

try drinking water... the drinking and purified styles of water at the stores in AZ say prepared by reverse osmosis... so it might be the same in cali.. i shop at fry's and i know they don't have that store there but yea

I have used RO and distilled without any problems.

I question deionized water tho. When I bought water at the fish store for my fish tanks, I once asked if I could fill up some water jugs for a camping trip, and he said no and that I did not want to be drinking deionized water.

RO water works well for here. Work at a power plant and we make around 10-15k gallons of it a day, sometimes more, low conductivity, etc. with a ph from 6.8-7.1, so I don't worry about adding anything to drop it. Have heard yay and nay on distilled water, and have never used it, so...

I use rain water run off from my roof. You get perfect PH and pretty damn clean water. Instead of buying those damn 200 dollar "rain barrels" I just use 2 55 gallon rubbermaid drums ( cost around 30 dollars) place them under good run off locations and you are set, both of my barrels are usually always full. I keep them covered when its not raining to prevent contamination and slow down evaporation. The good thing about rain water is there is no chlorine or fluoride to worry about among other things that could be in the town water supply.

R/O is what I'm using for my passive hydro and it's great. I get my R/O from the huts in parking lots....75 cents for 3 gallons, 1.25 for 5.

De-ionized water has the exact same minerals that runs through your tap water, all it does is change the alkalinity/acidity of your water.
EX: if your tap water reads 7.5 pH you can use an ionizer to lower it. Basically its useless for growing, thats why we have pH down/pH up.

Stick with rainwater/distilled, and an r/o system is nice too it just wastes an insane amount of water and expensive unless you can just buy the water