Has anyone heard of nute lockout due to using water from a dehumidifier for watering the ladies? We've been doing this for most of this cycle with no problems until now. One plant is showing signs of lock out. We're 2 weeks to finish so i'm not too concerned for this round, but i want to make sure we're not poisoning the next round. A local growshop owner said doing this is a no-no because of toxic metals in the solder in the dehumidifier. Anyone know?
Testing the pH and ppm would be a great place to start and i would guess it would reveal that the pH is indeed too high or too low causing a natural lockout. Your hydro store is right IMO about using any water which is not fresh,tap can be a poor source for watering if the supply is poor. These are why so many ppl are using R/O water,its pure and predictable every time its used. You do test the Ph right?
Ocitown, thanks for the input. yes i do test ph, and i correct it using ph down(about as much as i'd have to correct distilled water). as i was typing in the original query i thought of the possibility that the fert could, however unlikely, be being recirculated. will check ppm, and i figure i'm going to send a sample of the collected water off to the lab to see if there is anything else funky coming through. mind you this is our first go at indoor, so we're still dialing things in. our room is on the second floor with no plumbing up there, so you can understand wanting to save a bit of labor. 21gallons every 3 to 4 days. yeah,so i'm a wuss. mind you there's a photo of a large room using recycled dehumidifier water in Jorge Cervantes' book "marijuana horticulture", i saw it after we started doing it, and it gave me confidence that it would be fine. I really don't know though that's why i'm asking.
I have heard from a few sources about dehumidifier coils having either or both copper and nasty stuff from solder or just plain dust and yuck on the coils. I thought about using some once then I poured it into a bucket and bacteria and orangy rusty type stuff came too.. I decided not to go there!
well, most water supplies in houses run through copper pipes which are soldered together, so we didn't think to be concerned about that angle. i never had any water look nasty coming out of the dehumidifier, but recently did toss a 5 gallon jug due to what looked like a red algae growing on the inside. obviously we've stopped using the water unless i can actually prove that it wont hurt the girls.
Whats your relative humidity at the moment? You not knowing that has nothing to do with being an idiot at all bro.