I need help understanding EC.

D

dopenixon

Member
I have been feeding my plants with Terp Tea Bloom as a top dressing and I am only feeding them with plain water, no additives in the water, no brewed tea, and the water is reading at a .4 EC.

I am wondering if I need to raise my EC somehow, or is it okay to water it like that and maybe the soil will regulate it? I don’t really understand EC at all so any info will be great.
 
smokey0418

smokey0418

Well-Known Member
.4 ec would equate to 200 ppm for me.
This is a low value for sure. I would run 180ppm of calmag prior to taking my mix to 700ppm or 1.4ec for feeding in rdwc.
Now if I were to mix bottle directions for soil I’m sure it would be closer to 2ec.
 
NewSchoolGrower907

NewSchoolGrower907

Member
dopenixon said:
I have been feeding my plants with Terp Tea Bloom as a top dressing and I am only feeding them with plain water, no additives in the water, no brewed tea, and the water is reading at a .4 EC.

I am wondering if I need to raise my EC somehow, or is it okay to water it like that and maybe the soil will regulate it? I don’t really understand EC at all so any info will be great.
Click to expand...
EC is a measure of electronic current flowing through liquids, most often minerals, impurities, or additives if you're using something like tap water. using something like Reverse Osmosis water or Distilled water can help prevent any issues tap water might have caused, because it should be at a baseline of 0 EC total, meaning no salts or other minerals to conduct electricity. this means you can start fresh and customize exactly what you want to be in your feed.
 
NewSchoolGrower907

NewSchoolGrower907

Member
NewSchoolGrower907 said:
EC is a measure of electronic current flowing through liquids, most often minerals, impurities, or additives if you're using something like tap water. using something like Reverse Osmosis water or Distilled water can help prevent any issues tap water might have caused, because it should be at a baseline of 0 EC total, meaning no salts or other minerals to conduct electricity. this means you can start fresh and customize exactly what you want to be in your feed.
Click to expand...
you can increase EC by adding minerals and micronutrients to the water, and decrease EC by running the water through an RO system to remove minerals. you should look into Minerals and Micronutrients so you know what you would want to keep nutrients at optimum levels, of course factoring in any fertilizer solutions as well.
 
NewSchoolGrower907

NewSchoolGrower907

Member
NewSchoolGrower907 said:
you can increase EC by adding minerals and micronutrients to the water, and decrease EC by running the water through an RO system to remove minerals. you should look into Minerals and Micronutrients so you know what you would want to keep nutrients at optimum levels, of course factoring in any fertilizer solutions as well.
Click to expand...
Like smokey mentioned, EC can also be translated to PPM, but a PPM meter and EC meter used instead of EC translated to PPM would be faster.
 
D

Delps8

Well-Known Member
An EC meter measures the electrical conductivity of a solution. There is no such thing as a "PPM meter". PPM is not a measurement.

PPM is a calculation that uses the EC value and it indicates the parts per million of either sodium chloride or potassium chloride that would be needed to have the same level of electrical conductivity as the EC value. When growers use PPM it's a handy way of indicating an EC value but they have to be sure to state whether it's the 500 scale (NaCL) or the 700 scale (potassium chloride).

So what good is EC?

Even though it just measures how well a solution conducts electricity, it's used to indicate the "strength" of a nutrient solution.

Bluelab makes meters for agriculture. This page is the best description I've seen of EC and PPM.

As other posters have said, if you add more chemicals, EC will tend to go up because electricity can pass through the water more easily when water has chemicals in it. RO water, has no chemicals, has an EC of 0 because no electricity will pass through it.

RO is a good type of water to use as your baseline for mixing nutrients because, as long as your RO unit is working properly, you can be sure that there's are no chemicals in the water.

Tap water can be great to use but tap water will have some level of chemicals and what's in the water can vary. You can get a water quality report from your local water utility and it should tell you what's in the water as well as letting you know if the water source and water quality vary over the course of the year. If the chemical level is OK and if it's pretty stable, tap water can be great for making nutrients.. When mixing nutrients, you should take into account the PPM of the chemicals in your source water so, generally speaking, tap water gets you "free fertilizer"
 
Last edited:
NewSchoolGrower907

NewSchoolGrower907

Member
Delps8 said:
An EC meter measures the electrical conductivity of a solution. There is no such thing as a "PPM meter". PPM is not a measurement.

PPM is a calculation that uses the EC value and it indicates the parts per million of either sodium chloride or potassium chloride that would be needed to have the same level of electrical conductivity as the EC value. When growers use PPM it's a handy way of indicating an EC value but they have to be sure to state whether it's the 500 scale (NaCL) or the 700 scale (potassium chloride).

So what good is EC?

Even though it just measures how well a solution conducts electricity, it's used to indicate the "strength" of a nutrient solution.

Bluelab makes meters for agriculture. This page is the best description I've seen of EC and PPM.

As other posters have said, if you add more chemicals, EC will tend to go up because electricity can pass through the water more easily when water has chemicals in it. RO water, has no chemicals, has an EC of 0 because no electricity will pass through it.

RO is a good type of water to use as your baseline for mixing nutrients because, as long as your RO unit is working properly, you can be sure that there's are no chemicals in the water.

Tap water can be great to use but tap water will have some level of chemicals and what's in the water can vary. You can get a water quality report from your local water utility and it should tell you what's in the water as well as letting you know if the water source and water quality vary over the course of the year. If the chemical level is OK and if it's pretty stable, tap water can be great for making nutrients.. When mixing nutrients, you should take into account the PPM of the chemicals in your source water so, generally speaking, tap water gets you "free fertilizer"
Click to expand...
Thanks for correcting the info! Apologies for not providing correct information, gonna try to learn more on this subject so I can not make the same mistake in the future o_O
 
D

dopenixon

Member
Delps8 said:
An EC meter measures the electrical conductivity of a solution. There is no such thing as a "PPM meter". PPM is not a measurement.

PPM is a calculation that uses the EC value and it indicates the parts per million of either sodium chloride or potassium chloride that would be needed to have the same level of electrical conductivity as the EC value. When growers use PPM it's a handy way of indicating an EC value but they have to be sure to state whether it's the 500 scale (NaCL) or the 700 scale (potassium chloride).

So what good is EC?

Even though it just measures how well a solution conducts electricity, it's used to indicate the "strength" of a nutrient solution.

Bluelab makes meters for agriculture. This page is the best description I've seen of EC and PPM.

As other posters have said, if you add more chemicals, EC will tend to go up because electricity can pass through the water more easily when water has chemicals in it. RO water, has no chemicals, has an EC of 0 because no electricity will pass through it.

RO is a good type of water to use as your baseline for mixing nutrients because, as long as your RO unit is working properly, you can be sure that there's are no chemicals in the water.

Tap water can be great to use but tap water will have some level of chemicals and what's in the water can vary. You can get a water quality report from your local water utility and it should tell you what's in the water as well as letting you know if the water source and water quality vary over the course of the year. If the chemical level is OK and if it's pretty stable, tap water can be great for making nutrients.. When mixing nutrients, you should take into account the PPM of the chemicals in your source water so, generally speaking, tap water gets you "free fertilizer"
Click to expand...
So will the micro biology in the soil after putting in compost tea powder allow conductivity in my pot? I would t think I could add any nutrients to the water, at least not enough to bring up the EC, so I assume that is the case?
 
D

dopenixon

Member
smokey0418 said:
.4 ec would equate to 200 ppm for me.
This is a low value for sure. I would run 180ppm of calmag prior to taking my mix to 700ppm or 1.4ec for feeding in rdwc.
Now if I were to mix bottle directions for soil I’m sure it would be closer to 2ec.
Click to expand...
Would the PPM of the water go up as it runs through the soil and mixes with the nutrients?
 
D

Delps8

Well-Known Member
dopenixon said:
So will the micro biology in the soil after putting in compost tea powder allow conductivity in my pot? I would t think I could add any nutrients to the water, at least not enough to bring up the EC, so I assume that is the case?
Click to expand...
I'm not clear on the question and I'm a hydro grower so I have very little understanding of soil growing.
 
D

dopenixon

Member
Delps8 said:
I'm not clear on the question and I'm a hydro grower so I have very little understanding of soil growing.
Click to expand...
So I’m basically adding my nutrients to the soil, then watering them in. I am curious if the water EC is as important in that case as it is when adding the nutrients to the water and then adding the water, or if the soil biology would regulate that.
 
coreywebster

coreywebster

Well-Known Member
The EC is only important if you have too much of something in the water to cause a problem.
Or if you are lacking something in your soil.

You should be feeding plain water if you are amending your soil.

But I'm not a soil grower.
 
Roy O'Bannon

Roy O'Bannon

Well-Known Member
Yes ec going into soil matters. But not for the occasional tea.
I would worry more if I were feeding 2 ec or something like that.

If you are feeding natural soil with liquid nutrient, that's ok. but the way soil holds onto water, lends it's self to dry amendments and careful watering's. The plant operates like they do in the wild.

I grow hydro as well, so using liquid nutes makes more sense for me. My growing medium doesn't have anything to feed plants without me adding it.
I am as close to soil as hydro get's though, peat moss/bark mix + pearlite. Drains well, needs watered fully every 2 days.
 
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