Tap water comparisons

Buba Blend

Well-Known Member
480 out of the tap here in SoCal... It will kill any plant that it touches.. It took me a while to figure out why my plants were always F'd up :) Over 500 ppm and the EPA says not to drink it... Now I have RO and it's around 70 ppm.
I have water also ranging above 500ppm. My cheap $150 ebay ro unit has kept ppms below 20 for 2 years. Is your ro water that you make coming out at 70ppms? sounds high.
 

JSB99

Well-Known Member
I misread my tds the other day. It actually hovers around 70ppm. I have a reservoir I was planning on using to expel chlorine, but I'm wondering if I really even need it. I thoroughly checked out the waterplant's additives and didn't see chloramine as one of them.
 

Lordhooha

Well-Known Member
I misread my tds the other day. It actually hovers around 70ppm. I have a reservoir I was planning on using to expel chlorine, but I'm wondering if I really even need it. I thoroughly checked out the waterplant's additives and didn't see chloramine as one of them.
I would check to see I'm almost certain if it's city water they treat it with chorine of some sort simple pool kit should do it
 

JSB99

Well-Known Member
chloramine is not the same as chlorine, they treat with one or the other or both
Right. That's why I was saying that I wasn't seeing it listed. Chlorine breaks down and dissipates quickly, where chloramine takes much longer and is more difficult to remove.

Is chloramine pretty much standard in any city water then?
 

ThcGuy

Well-Known Member
Mine is anywhere from 110-200ppm and I'm fine with that but we also have chlorimines so I use rain water in the warm months and melt snow in the winter. My rain water is 20-30ppm.
 

JSB99

Well-Known Member
Mine is anywhere from 110-200ppm and I'm fine with that but we also have chlorimines so I use rain water in the warm months and melt snow in the winter. My rain water is 20-30ppm.
That's cool! I'm going to get 2 or 3 rain barrels for the Oregon rain season and try to go the whole winter without having to use the tap.
 

dstroy

Well-Known Member
Right. That's why I was saying that I wasn't seeing it listed. Chlorine breaks down and dissipates quickly, where chloramine takes much longer and is more difficult to remove.

Is chloramine pretty much standard in any city water then?
I'm not sure if every city uses chloramine. I do know that they are required by law in my state to list anything they find in the water, so if there was something in there it's on the report.
 

ThcGuy

Well-Known Member
That's cool! I'm going to get 2 or 3 rain barrels for the Oregon rain season and try to go the whole winter without having to use the tap.
I'm not sure if it makes much of a difference as my wife uses the tap water for her plants and they seem to do fine but I have the option to not use tap water so I take advantage of that.
 

Buba Blend

Well-Known Member
Yea, I bout an undersink unit from Costco for $120... I can't complain... It was at 50 ppm 2 years ago and now at 70.. If it removes 80% of the contaminates I'm still pretty happy.
As soon as I thought of this I had to find this thread.
My ro was always better than 20ppm's except when I ran hot water through it. I have mine hooked up in a shower with the shower head as the input. Several times I accidentally ran very hot water through the unit. When I did the ppm's were at 70. It always recovered after I fixed the hot water problem. Is your water cold?
 

JSB99

Well-Known Member
As soon as I thought of this I had to find this thread.
My ro was always better than 20ppm's except when I ran hot water through it. I have mine hooked up in a shower with the shower head as the input. Several times I accidentally ran very hot water through the unit. When I did the ppm's were at 70. It always recovered after I fixed the hot water problem. Is your water cold?
Hot water tends to have more minerals in it, like iron. I'm not sure if that's from the pipes or the water heater.
 
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