# My experience with tap water



## KaliKushman (Jan 20, 2009)

Hey everyone I am a long time hydro grower who has recently made the swithch to aero. Which is the main reason I joined this forum. I have read some interesting threads on here about tap water some seem to love it and some people like Earl will never use anything but RO. I have lived and grown in many different places with completly different water quality. My experience is that some tap water is great maybe not better then RO but very good. And when you subtract having to deal with massive holding tanks and replacings RO filters it suits my needs much better. I haved lived in northern califronia where the water is 20 ppm's or less all the way up to 480 ppm's as you go down the coast to southern california. My general rule of thumb is to stay away from using hard water anything 300 ppm's or higher. 250-260 ppm's I would say is a good cut off point anything higher and I would use RO. Even if tap water with much higher ppm's does not have any negative effects on your plants which in my experience it does. Using water with such high ppm's will not allow you to fully maximize your nutrients which is a big waste of money and will bring down your yield. My current grow (first Aero) is running off 200 ppm tap and seems to be thriving. I have had many successful hydro grows with tap water from 20-240 ppm's and don't see the need for RO unless you have no budget restrictions. Another thing I noticed is that everytime that I have lived someplace where I had RO I drank nothing but bottled water myself and when I lived someplace I didn't need RO I drank from the tap and it tasted great. The point I'm trying to make is that if it's not good enough for you to drink you probably don't want to feed it to your plants. I've had alot of practice I think my toungue now works as a TDS meter. Obviously ppm's is not the only thing to consider when judging the quality of tap water. The make up of whats actually in the water is just as important. Let me know what you guys think.


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## Hydrotech364 (Jan 20, 2009)

My neighborhood has a common well I just mixed some nutes for some babies and my tap water ph was at 8.0.I dont like vinegar that much so im going to be buying spring water til they get this shit fixed.I usually get my water from a/c runoff its perfect but its a little nipply for that.I had cases of bottled water after hurricane Ike but im out now.Oh i never noticed a difference between RO and reg H2O....


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## Bubba Kushman (Jan 20, 2009)

My tap water is 305ppm but I do add Pond Water Detox to it before I use it. I have a Koi pond and it removes all the bad stuff from the tap so I can add water to my pond. Chlorine kills fish and the other crap makes them sick if you just let bottles of water sit to remove the chlorine. I have used spring water and RO but I dont think my results were worth the money I had to spend at those water machines. I have read that some of the stuff they add to our water can bumb ppm even if the water is not hard! I have a friend that grows and lives nearby and she had the water tested and was told the water quality was good. My thoughts are simular to yours. If my fish cant swim in it I wont water my plants with it! I do use spring water to root clones and I allways drink distilled water. Thats just me though!


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