Water Quality...safe to drink, but use it on my chids?? HELP

[orcdfrk]

Careful, this is in mg/L not PPM. Just a warning to the old-schoolers like me. Can anyone tell me if this is fine for my plants. Winter's here and rainwater almost depleted...thanks http://www.epcor.ca/NR/rdonlyres/89A...082006_211.pdf

[Anglo]

I took a quick glance at your water quality report and compared it to a quick glance at the one for the drinking water in San Antonio, Texas, where I live. The only radical difference I saw is in water hardness. We have a lot of calcium.

I know rainwater is better because I've seen that orchids and all plants like it better. My orchids get rainwater when they're out in the rain, but mostly they get tapwater because we have been having droughts during the past few years.

I have not seen that the water here does any harm. So if I lived where you live, I would'nt worry about using your tapwater either.

[Oscarman]

orcdfrk, have you considered R/O?

I use our city water and have not had any major problems, although I do water copiously each time. I think my seedlings could do better, that's why I am considering R/O. Rain water collection and R/O in 2007!

[orcdfrk]

I just need something to tide me over while the white stuff is on the ground, and if tap water here is fine then I'm not gonna sweat it. I collect rainwater in the summer and the R/O water to waste water ratio is kinda holding me back. Anywhere from 2 - 4 gallons of waster water down the drain for every gallon of R/O water??

[Ray]

Frankly, I wouldn't be overly concerned about the water chemistry. The TDS is fairly low as tapwater goes, and even though the pH is about a point high, it will come down a bit with fertilizer addition (although I would adjust it down with an aquarium chemical).

By the way, ml/L IS ppm! That's thousandths of a gram per thousand grams of water, or 0.001/1000 = 1/1,000,000.

[s1ren]

I might not have any clue what I'm talking about, here...but if you use rainwater anyway, couldn't you just melt snow and use that? Wouldn't that be the same thing?

Just curious. You know how us newbs are.

[orcdfrk]

oh yeah s1ren, the wife would just love that. Me trampling through the house with buckets full of snow down to the basement rainbarrel...lol. Don't think I didn't think about it but shovelling the snow off the sidewalk is enough. Plus I have a dog and then who knows what each shovelful would bring with it......surprise, OH HENRY??

[s1ren]

LOL! It was just a thought I hadn't thought about how much of a pain in the butt that might be - we don't have snow here, hehe.

[Ironwood]

That just means the melted snow already contains fertilizer.

[orcdfrk]

You try that Iron and let me know how it works for ya.