RO waste water

[jpsully]

Hello,can you use the waste water from a RO system for watering plants and other shrubs instead of letting it go down the drain.

 

[Grower-Aaron]

I don't use ro water. I use water from a natural spring by my house but I have an outdoor vegetable garden in the summer. Tomatoes zucchini corn pumpkins watermelon just basic stuff. I pump my water out of my reservoirs and then dump it on the garden as long as it's not like late flower in my room and early spring outside. When I do that the garden loves it! I got a zucchini this year that was longer than my forearm

 

[jpsully]

I live in southern CAL and our water very expensive at this time and every gallon i save is water i am not billed for,it is not cheap when you go over your limit,it is taking me 5-6-gallons to get 1 gallon of R/O and if i have to dump the waste water it is not cost effective at this time,if i can use the waste water for my garden and shrubs and so on then it would be cool,otherwise no R/O right now.

 

[Grower-Aaron]

Ouch that sucks. I am lucky enough that the water is free where I am. I would use your ro waste on other stuff for sure. That's like throwing money away if u dont

 

[SiriusFourside]

I've read that some people use their RO waste water for their garden, but I think it's a matter of how bad your local water is. If your waste water comes out at a ppm of 300 or less, you're still doing better than most tap water in CA so I'd say use it. In any case, the most official (seeming) source I could find regarding RO waste water says, "In commercial settings, the potential uses include: pre-rinsing, laundry, toilet and urinal flushing, irrigation, washing hardscapes, make-up water for cooling towers and water cooled condensers, evaporative cooling, decorative fountains, swimming pools, water cooled machinery, vehicle wash, etc." (note: no mention of gardens of landscaping)

RO systems waste roughly 75% of the water they receive, so if you could use a lot of water for the things listed above, I'd go for it. That being said, I don't know if I'd trust my plants (of any kind) to water with higher concentrations of stuff I specifically removed for my plant's health!

 

[jpsully]

I do have a pool and thought of dumping it in, so with your info i will do that instead of my plants, but i will dump it on my grass,(i mean lawn).Thanks for everybody"s input.