Well, shucks.I really think your plant could benefit from a flush.Maybe a one time flush with your crappy water....I found this interesting link when I googled.Boiling your water may remove some ppm, thereby making it more suitable for flushing your plant.
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/effectiveness-pre-boiling-water-remove-bicarbonate-134108/
This is an excerpt:
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Originally Posted by
boredatwork
With this method, how do you know how much has precipitated out? Do you just assume 100% drop out?
Nope. From Dave Miller's Homebrewing Guide:
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You can estimate the effect of boiling for decarbonation (removing bicarbonate) by the following formula: boiling will remove all but about 30 to 40 ppm of carbonate-bicarbonate; at the same time, it will remove 3 ppm of calcium for every 5 ppm of carbonate. For example, if your water has a total alkalinity of 150 ppm, boiling will remove 110 to 120 ppm of that amount. At the same time, the calcium content of your water will be lowered by 66 to 72 ppm.
So essentially, you're limited in how much bicarbonate you can remove by how much calcium is in the water. That's why some people add gyspum or calcium chloride before boiling. I didn't want to do that because I didn't want the leftover chloride and/or sulfate in the water, as those *don't* boil off. My water has 86 ppm calcium and 386 ppm of bicarbonate. I divide 86 by 3 getting 28.66. Multiply that by 5 and I end up with 143 ppm of bicarbonate, rounded down, removed from the water, so 243 ppm remaining.
I then take my adjusted water, with 0 calcium and 243 ppm of bicarbonate, and feed it into Palmer's water spreadsheet. I dilute it partially with distilled water, depending on the color of the beer, and add salts to achieve the desired residual alkalinity that I want for that color of beer.
Used this method on the first two beers in Croatia. One was diluted 50/50 while the other only had 15% distilled water. And both times the mash pH was right on track to what I wanted, around 5.4 when the wort was chilled to room temp.
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Originally Posted by
Saccharomyces
I have heard this works... but for me it's cheaper to blend RO water than it is to burn the propane to precipitate out the bicarb.
OTOH, if I ever have an electric HLT... then that is different.
I both blend and do this. For me it's partially to experiment. I boil the water on the stove, though, rather than using my propane. Likely the distilled water is cheaper than the gas, but I'm curious about this method, so doing it this way for now...
BUT, I'm doing a brown this weekend and the RA when using those dark grains is enough that I will be using the base water as 100% without boiling...
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So, in conclusion,I'd say you could boil enough water to get 3 gallons,and if you wish, dilute it with some store bought water.Or just use all boiled(cooled) water.I flushed my plants with my water after I used my pur' filter.The ph was still alkaline, but the ppm was at around 180....and it seemed to help.They say in there the more calcium is in the water, the lower you can get the ppm...but the calcium won't boil off, and that in itself can cause plant trouble.
I don't think so. This is the dry season around here.