True Living Organics - The Ultimate Guide to Growing All-Natural Marijuana Indoors (2012)

Hard water is water that contains high levels of dissolved magnesium and calcium mineral salts. You
can see the “scale” it leaves over time on your coffeemaker if you use city, well, or spring water. This
will also happen to your soil mix if you water your plants with hard water. The mineral salts will
collect around the root zones and build up, interfering with airflow through the soil, to the roots, and
to the microlife. You need to flush regularly—every other time you water I would say—and I do not
recommend using spring, well, or city water unfiltered, especially if it is hard water.
Now on the flipside, if your tap/city water comes out of the faucet at (or below) say 60 PPM you
may be able to get away with using an activated carbon filter (see the single carbon filter in the
picture) to remove the chloramine and the fluoride. The trick here is to let the water flow slowly
through the filter unit, because how effectively/thoroughly these elements are removed is determined
by the length of time the water is in contact with the carbon filter. I also have used a dual version of
the filter in the picture which allowed me to thoroughly remove the chloramine and fluoride while
also allowing me to run the water more quickly through the filters, and this comes in handy in larger
grows.
Single carbon filters can work with low PPM water
Dehumidifier and Rainwater
Water collected by dehumidifiers is essentially distilled water, and is fine to use in my experience as
long as you keep the unit clean around the collection areas. Rainwater is my number one favorite to
use in TLO growing, and if you have that option then use it, you lucky devil! If you collect rainwater
off your roof, do some checking into the type of roof you have, because there are types of shingles that
will leach out chemicals into the rainwater. If your roof is all good, by all means set yourself up to
collect the water from there into storage tanks under or above ground where the water can be stored
while being aerated with air pumps.
There are many resourceful ways to collect rainwater, and when I was a guerrilla grower