rain water

I have been haveing problems with my tap water and was wondering if anyone uses rain water in there systems,it is cheaper than an ro set up for now.

from what ive heard I may be incorrect but please someone correct me if im wrong but I believe that rain water is already PH'd correctly

rain water works good...but gets to become a pain in the ass and messy ,carrying water inside house in 5 gallon buckets and dumping into 50 gallon drums..what is the problem with your tap water? i have had success with some really shitty well water at a friends cottage. if you have ph up/down you should be able to make it fine with shitty water and some nutes

I heard rain water is awesome if you can collect it.

I modified one of THESE with a hose adapter to filter water when I was growing in DWC. The resulting water had a ppm of 0 and a ph around 7. I grow in soil for the better part now, so I just let my tapwater stand for a few days before using it. Works fine.

lol... rainwater in where I live is acidic and sometimes even classified as acidic rain...

back in the days normal rain pH is 5.6
nowadays normal rain pH is between 4.6 to 5.6

I use melted snow. It is ph 6.3-6.4 and my plants are healthy.

Rain differs from location to location DRAMATICALLY. Not just pH but also the EC.
To be safe it is HIGHLY recommended that you test both these quantities before using collected rainwater.
(At my current location my TAP WATER is far less problematic than the rain.)

BOOGS said:

from what ive heard I may be incorrect but please someone correct me if im wrong but I believe that rain water is already PH'd correctly

Click to expand...

I believe I have chloramine in my water,wich is hard to remove.I usually grow in dwc but I had to do a soil grow due to work.so I watered 1 with tap water that did sit for a few days and 1 with spring water and clearly the plant that got the tap water has problems,my fan leaves at the top of the plant slowly start to turn brown and curl and also get dry,I think I have narrowed it down to the chloramine because everything thing else is fine no ph swings my water never goes above 70 deg. I have good ventalation I run on the low side on nutes never go above 1200 ppm in flower.as I stated I watered 1 with the tap water and 1 with spring water and there is clearly a difference. the plant with spring water was fine but it would be costly to have to buy water,I think I can devise a set up to collect the rain water and store it with not much effert and worth a try the air is fairly clean around here far from any smog producing factorys etc.

You can Google your water district and see what they put in their water. Chloramine is replacing chlorine because it is cheaper and lasts longer. You can use something like this from your local aquarium shop:







I was using this before I finally installed an r/o filter and I love it.

I guess I could use that but I would rather not have to use any chemicals,I was thinking about getting an ro system but I have to wait a month or so to fit it into my budget

Rain works very well for hydroponics. There is a whole community of medical growers here on the Washington coast growing hydroponically using rain water. PPM varies. Water coming off a roof will be about 30 PPM. Water collected otherwise (using a tarp or whatever) comes in a lot lower. Good shit, but you better have a backup water source.

when useing rain water will you run into cal problems?