Treating hard water without softener????

Neild

I have heard a couple of methods for treating hard water without a softener, but cannot seem to find detailed info on how to go about this. Can anyone share any thing they have done?? I have tough situation to overcome.
My choices are: to buy distilled, use hard water (really bad hard water), soft water is not an option of course. I doubt I could collect enough rain water to reliably sustain my trees.
What is the method for using sulfuric acid (how much per gal etc..)?
Thanks
Neil

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Rock Chester

why is this water so bad? Is it well water? what is the ph? Are you haveing excesive buildup of salts on pots and top layers of soil? Whats upp

jcesarelli

I use this method to soften water in aquaria, it works very well.


http://www.peteducation.com/article...&articleid=2744


Joseph

Neild

Rock Chester,
The water is extremely hard. My understanding was that over time this isn't so good. I mainly just want to be certain I am using very good water for healthy trees as opposed to just settling for water that is just so, so.
I'll have to test the ph though.

Thank for the link.

willbillis

I have a rain soft water system the only time it uses salt is when it cleans itself. I had it hooked up to provide the outside spickets with good water as well, this system works great the only fallback is the $5000.00 price tag... well breaks over back to work I go.

Brent

Neil

The first thing you have to do is to determine if there is a problem, and specifically what that problem is. If you have municipal water, or water from a company, request the water analysis. They are required by law to do periodic tests and must make the tests available to you. In general, if the water is good enough to drink (from a legal standpoint), it is good enough for your plants.

If you have your own well, you will have to pay for an analysis, which generally costs in the vicinity of $100. Ask for an Agricultural analysis, often you can get a package deal that covers all the areas in which you would be interested for growing plants.

Most water problems come from an abundance of dissolved salts. Total dissolved salts or TDS should be on any water test. TDS in excess of 600ppm (mg/l) is bad and will require treatment. TDS of less than 200 is generally considered good. High TDS will usually result in high pH as well. Both of these will make it difficult for your plants to take up minor and micro essential elements. You might also have a specific toxicity problem such as excess of copper, boron, magnesium, manganese, etc. These are more rare but do happen. An excess of iron makes the water nasty and discolors everything but in general doesn't harm the plants. A high bicarbonate level can be very insidious and make otherwise good water toxic. Sodium is a very common problem and can be toxic to plants in rather small amounts.

If your problem is high TDS, pH, or both (likely), then you can acidify your water. A water treatment company can probably give you guidelines for how much and what kind of acid to choose and how to set up a system. It is generally injected under pressure into a holding pressure tank. The injector comes on when the well pump turns on. For small amounts of water such as treating 50 gal drums for watering only, you will have to experiment to find out what level to use and probably test each batch. This requires a GOOD pH meter. These are made for swimming pools and cost from $30 to $50 each. They have to be calibrated and the glass membrane only lasts a few months and then has to be replaced. pH paper, cheap testers, etc, won't cut it, don't even try. Indicator solutions are good but you really have to know what you are doing and have good color charts and a good eye. The salts buffer the water so you will add acid, and add acid, and add acid, and there won't be any change at all, and suddenly...blam, you shoot way under pH 7.0, so adding acid is tricky, not to mention handling a very corrosive substance. Sulfuric acid is particularly nasty and can cause severe burns. Always take precautions and follow directions.

So, what else can you do? If you don't have a lot of plants, and you KNOW you have a problem, you should consider investing in a reverse osmosis filtration system (RO). They ain't cheap, starting at about $200 for one that puts out around 10 gallons a day. The pre and post filters last about six months ($20 to $50 to replace) and the membrane should last several years ($100 to replace). Depending on how bad your water is, you should be able to mix the RO water with the untreated water around 50/50. So if you had a TDS of 600, it would bring it down to 300 with a 50/50 mix, which is tolerable and you could make 20 gallons total a day. Home Depot carries a pretty nice GE RO system and CharleysGreenhouse.com also has them. I use the Home Depot system for our drinking water and have not had any problems with it. They do waste water. It uses 10 gallons of untreated water to produce 1 gallon of RO water.

For just minor problems of high TDS, you can do a number of things to acidify or buffer your soil and soil water solution that are easy. One thing is to incorporate gypsum into your soil mix at the rate of about one teaspoon per gallon can of mix. You can also use soil sulfur in your mix at about the same rate. You can periodically water with Epsom salt at the rate of 1 tablespoon per gallon water (assuming you don't have excess magnesium in your water). Always feed with an acid forming chemical soluble fertilizer such as Miracid or other. In general, fertilizers that contain high ammoniacal (NH4) rates of nitrogen compared to nitrate nitrogen are more acid. High N in the NPK analysis is usually more acid forming as long as it isn't nitrate nitrogen. These things should be on the label, read the fine print. Some might disagree with me, but I would AVOID organic fertilizer. These often are high in salt content. This doesn't matter under ordinary circumstances but could be deadly when you have high TDS or especially if you have high Sodium or bicarbonate levels. When you do water, water THOROUGHLY and from the top. This will help flush out salts that can buildup in the soil. Water in the cool early morning hours to limit evaporation which tends to increase the salts.

I am probably forgetting something, that should pretty much sum it up.

Brent
EvergreenGardenworks.com
see our blog at http://BonsaiNurseryman.typepad.com

Kazoo

There's this.



http://www.spotfreeh2o.com/models.html

I think they have some light duty sorta similar things for car washing at auto parts stores.

007

I too have very hard water . . . I don't know if its causing any problems (I don't see anything wrong anyway and trees are growing quite nicely). I use water run through a Brita pitcher that is then boiled and cooled. I don't know if boiling does anything in terms of water quality, but it sure raises the humidity!

On an aside in response to Brents comments regarding RO water . . . I used to keep marine aquariums for a while and strictly used RO water. An excellent source for rather inexpensive RO filters is Air, Water, Ice. Another option if you don't have a lot of tree's is to check your grocery store. They often sell RO water for about thirty cents a gallon. If not there, then find a pet store that sells saltwater fish . . . they'll carry RO water.

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midwestbonsai

Wow.
Bret, you always have so much to say.
Thanks for sharing all of you knowledge with us.
-Paul

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