I have always used distilled water over tap water because its pH balanced and my soil is pH balanced but it is started to get kind of expensive not to mention the fact bringing 20-30 gallons of water into my condo every week may be a bit suspicisious. I was curious if using a filter on my faucet like a britta filter would be comparable to distilled water, would the pH be in an acceptable ranger. Anyone have experience with this... Thanks
btitta filters are almost like Revers Osmosis but doesnt filter the water as good, but it still does a good job if you change the filter often, what britta filters wont do is change your ph, but they will remove some tds in your water, but just not all tds as with RO
You could just spend a few hundred dollars and get a good RO system and hook it up to your tap. If you plan on growing for a while, it will be worth the investment. I just got one, so I'm still learning, but so far so good.
Distilled water is PH balanced to 7.0 usually. Most MJ plants prefer a 6.5-6.8ph depending on if your soil or hydro. So on your more finiky strains, even a 7 balanced PH can be too high. I prefer using filtered water. It's charcoal filtered and Brittas have ionized charcoal to ionized your water, which I really like.
My home tap has a three stage britta filter built in, the plants love the water straight from it. it comes out at about Ph 6.7.
I use the Pur faucet mount filter and it works great,and it quits flowing when its time to change the filter,and I've had GREAT results from all my harvests.
I use a brita filter (not built in or mountable) and my plants like it for the most part. still check your pH and TDS.
Hi Jack! Nice hijack... To the OP, your distilled water is not pH balanced. First off, theoretically distilled water should have a neutral pH of 7.0 but MJ likes a pH of 6.4-6.8, so putting in water that is 7.0 is not necessarily balanced to MJ's needs. Second, distilled water cannot avoid contact with the atmosphere, and the water interacts with the elements in the air and actually changes the pH of the distilled water. To what all depends on the air, how long it is exposed, etc. You have to test it. Third, regardless of the pH going in, it's the pH of your runoff that you are trying to manage -- you can put in water that is a seemingly perfect pH of 6.6 but still get runoff of 7.8, so in that case you would need to lower the pH of your water going in. Filters are excellent, but it's impossible for us to compare distilled to filtered tap water because that depends on the quality and pH of your tap water, and tap water varies widely from place to place.
No worries... Can't help you with your filter, though. I would think that there is a filtering membrane/medium inside those chambers, but if not then go back where you got it and find out.
I've tried the Pur water filter and it actually INCREASED the ppms of my water from 175 to 180, I assume Brita would be about the same. Save up the money and buy a Reverse Osmosis Water Filtration System. (Make certain it uses at least 1 RO membrane filter. I paid $80 on ebay a while back for a piece of crap water purifier that claimed to be reverse osmosis but wasn't.) As for pH of distilled being too high, at 7, for cannabis, that's true. But, the nutes you add to the water will make the pH go down, usually makes it perfect w/o having to use any pH down.
i use ro water for my flowering and gallons of spring water for my veg.in my apt i hooked up the ro to my sink in the kitchen.now i hook it up to my garden hose