Question on Hard Water

[piperjim]

I am building several systems and I am using a three part nutrient solution. The problem I have is that I have hard water and I don't know how to adjust for a 250 EC before I even start adding anything. I don't want to buy distilled water for a 20 bato bucket system! How do I handle the hard water issue to know how much nutrient to use?

[fintuckyfarms]

Well, I have really hard water also from our well. We have a soft water system then an RO system under the kitchen sink. That drops the PPM to around 35 with the PH steady around 6. The problem with the under the sink system is that it only puts out about 9 gallons a day and that is just not enough. I am going to build a filter system like Gpsfrontier did that should take care of the hard water issue. You can check out his design in his thread on building his greenhouse.

[piperjim]

I checked out that thread! \
Holy cow! Nice greenhouse/system GPSFrontier!

I'm hoping that I can get a small Reverse Osmosis unit for my small rig in the house. The water in the house comes from deep municipal wells and is hard as can be. I have three systems that will be for the outside and I'm hoping that I won't have that hard water issue there.
In the summer I have irrigation water that is pumped to me from a canal system. That water originates from Lake Utah and that is snow melt.
It's not the cleanest, but it looks clear coming out of the hose, and I can filter it easy enough. I'm hoping that will work.
Thanks!!

[fintuckyfarms]

Sounds like you have a solid plan, good luck! Gpsfrontier has tons of resources so he might have some other ideas, but he is really busy right now trying to get his green house up and running.

[GpsFrontier]

piperjim
They do make portable reverse osmosis systems. But the way they work is still the same. They will waist at least 3 times more water than you get from the system. That is, if you fill a 20 gallon reservoir with RO water, at least 60 gallons went down the drain. That is in a nutshell why I went with a custom built water filtration system. On a small scale RO is fine, but on a larger scale it defeats one of the reasons for growing hydroponically. That is using one tenth the water to grow the same amount of plants. You cant really make that claim when you dump three times the water used by the system/plants straight down the drain.

I don't know your water quality, and that's the first thing to figure out. But municipal water is generally treated for human consumption. That isn't to say it will be fine for your hydroponic plants. Especially when I cant say/know how it's treated. I also don't know if you have a water softener system, or per-filters in your water lines.

But here are a couple of articles on the importance of water quality:

Hydroponic H2O: Water Quality and Treatment
Water Wisdom For Hydroponics

[piperjim]

Thank you! This will help a lot. I don't mind filters but I didn't know you could filter out disolved solids.
I see your post on the four filter housings. Can you give me an idea of your source for the filters?
Thanks!