OK, so I’m currently using unfiltered, straight from the tap, hard as a motherfucker water.
A few of the values are as follows:
Calcium - 114 mg/l
Magnesium - 8.39 mg/l
Phosphorus - 999 ug/l
Potassium - 11.5 mg/l
Nitrate - 17.9 mg/l
Couple of questions, firstly, how bad is this water for my plant?
And secondly, do I need to supplement cal mag with these levels? Or is this partly why low levels of nutes seem to burn my plant?
I do sit the water for around 48 hours before a feed to get rid of the chlorine, but nothing else.
I May give an RO system some consideration, though I’d rather not, but this partly depends on the replies to this post as I know the water here isn’t good!
Sure as hell won't be needing any CalMag with that water. I would seriously consider getting an RO unit. You have 50ppm sodium which is not only bad for your plants but not good for those on a sodium reduced diet either tho it's not extremely high. The higher proportion of Ca to Mg will likely lead to Mg lockout so I would supplement with Epsom Salts to up your Mg levels. Tsp/gal with that water always should do it.
With hard water every time you water your plants the salts in it stay behind in the pots so they build up over time and throw everything out of whack. Regular flushing can get rid of the excess but that's a major PITA.
I added up most of the different ppm readings on your water report and got 420. lol Sounds good but it's not. Strange they don't show the total so if you have a ppm pen you should check what come out of your tap. Alkalinity is fairly high and that's what causes problems trying to pH your water properly.
We've been buying RO water for our consumption and for my plants but I'm looking to build my own system. The store bought units come with a 5micron pre-filter. We already filter our dugout water down to 5 so that's no use. The units come with propitiatory filters that cost twice as much as the regular filters. RainFresh, that I use now to filter the dugout water. About the smallest gal/day unit is 50 and I sure as hell don't need 50gal/day.
I've been looking at running our filtered water thru a high capacity 1micron filter -> 0.5micron carbon filter -> 8gal/day RO membrane -> De-ionizing filter -> my 150L storage on a stand with a spigot to fill my 5gal jugs for transport upstairs or the grow room. Safer to pack full jugs up the stairs than down as I've been doing the last 17 years. A 5gal jug hitting the cement floor from 10 ft up means I need a bigger mop! Had to let go of the jug when I tripped once and I've had a few other close calls too.
A note to
@Mr.Goodtimes. RO filters work better and last longer if their output more closely matches your needs so doubling your capacity only means your filters need replacing at many less gallons of output than they would if used to capacity. If you only need 100gal/wk then a 16-20gal/day filter would be the most efficient and cheapest one for you. A storage container with a float switch would keep you in lots of water as you need it. The higher capacity just means you can pull the water off in higher volumes as you need it but it's not the best way to go. A filter that can run continuously will give up to 5x as many gallons at the end of it's life than one that makes batches now and again like you are doing now.
