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Dehumidifier Water

PaganRich

New member
Greetings all and hope you are well
As anyone who has followed my posts will tell you they are often nothing short of cataclysmic disasters on an apocalyptic scale. Granted, most are down to basic rookie mistakes but you learn and get better but this season I thought I had it sorted. Okay, I`d just gone over to LED`s and that takes some figuring but I had overhauled my organic nutes after further research, sorted out soil mix that I`m happy with and the training I was doing. In fact, everything looked fine and dandy on paper. The weed I grow is teeth rattling but the yields still fall short and I seem to get this creeping, overall yellowness of leaves with very burnt tips and I always have. Now, I `ve chased everything down to over watering/ over feeding/ under feeding, etc and still I`d get these pesky leaves until I wondered what hardness my water was. In hindsight, an obvious question-I`d assumed that as treated water it would be soft to just above. Nope it was hard with 26mg/litre of calcium. This level of calcium (Coupled with high Mag)gave me an excess problem which I`d treated as a difficiency adding items like CalMag to address. To be honest, it was mainly my indicas that really didn`t handle this well but it made sense once I`d finally cottoned on.
So, I`m not set up to bring an RO kit into this house and lugging bottled water back from the supermarket seems unappealing at the very least so I`ve decided to try the following and wondered on folks` thoughts:
I will collect dehumidified water and add it to a much smaller amount of chlorinated tap water and let sit overnight before making a compost tea for the waterings. This reduction in tap water will mean much less calcium (though some will still be there as well as in the molasses added, etc) and the chlorine will kill off any bacteria in the dehumid water before evaporating. The microbes will then do the rest during brewing.
My question: Has anyone tried this? I appreciate you`re not meant to drink dehumid water but I`ve seen quite a few threads on other sites where folk have used it to water cannabis and nought bad has happened. The only thing I`m unsure of is metals in the water. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Cheers
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I know about hard water here's my humidifier after 36 hours. I've been using a Brita filter for my water used, everything, watering, humidifier, I've never much used dehumidifier water because it's always been to dry where I grow so it's been the opposite. But one basement grow I had I was using a dehumidifier for a few months and all the water went into the plants and they liked it so give it a try would be my advice. Even if you mix it with the usual water you give them..
 

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Great write up PaganRich - I run a dehumidifier in my house and pour the water down the drain - just cuz the instructions say it's non-potable.

Our drinking water is wonderful. Ph is a bit up there after rainfall - but local city of Chilliwack has constantly won awards for best tap water in Canada .
 
@Canuct147 Thanks mate and I`d love to live near a place called that...not that many cannabis articles/ info out there that I could find so be interesting what comes from this, if anything...take care :)
 
Few things... dehumidifier water sits stagnant in the reservoir prior to collecting. Perfect environment for pathogens. Second, as you mentioned, this water is almost like distilled water (or RO) in the sense that it has been stripped of many minerals. Water wants to absorb minerals, so unless you are adding these minerals back into the water... it could potentially strip your plant of minerals after long term use. Adding 50/50 tap and dehumidifier is a better ideas than dehumidifier water straight.
Lastly, most water treatment plants do not use chlorine gas in the water anymore. Leaving it out 24 hours does nothing for de-chlorination. You have to filter the water to remove chlorimimes from modern day water.
 
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It’s not entirely accurate to say “most” treatment facilities don’t use Chlorine. As of January 2019 over 53% of the US population was still getting water treated with free chlorine not chloramine. I agree that more and more municipalities are switching to chloramine every year but at this point it’s basically 50/50 and growers should contact their local water providers to be sure.

https://waterestore.ca/blogs/news/which-us-cities-use-chloramine-to-disinfect-drinking-water
 
Sorry, “most” meaning every city I have ever lived in. I’m not a back woods guy where population counts could be done on my fingers and toes. Lol I don’t see a population index on the attached article. So one can only assume gassing being done in places where population density is minimal due to cost effectiveness.
Besides, if you are attempting to gas off chlorine gas into your home you are releasing a WWI chemical weapon into your home. It’s very dangerous stuff.
Must government municipalities will not fun unnecessary dangerous treatment of water when other safer means are available.
 
Toker1 Obi-Wan Morning...Thanks for your input guys. Over here we only have Chlorine not Chloramine in our water which is a relief. My plan is this, water will only be in dehumid for a max 10 hrs before collecting. When stored I will add 1 part of tap water to 4 parts collected and leave overnight. We`re only talking a gall or 2 at most hanging around and this is the same water as the toilet so chlorine evaporation won`t be an issue. I then add it to compost tea and let the healthy microbes check it out. Due to the calcium being taken out I will need to watch out for cal deficiency for sure but I need to find a base to build my nutes up from as this calcium excess is masking the nutes required. Good thoughts and considerations which is appreciated and whilst this isn`t the optimum situation to have, undertaking RO or lugging bottled water back isn`t realistic either at pres sadfly
 
Toker1 Hey up mate, did check those out but they don`t catch calcium or mag but I do like your thinking and will look at other similar options...appreciated mate
 
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