Storing RO water?

B

BMCarter

AC Members
Jan 20, 2007
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Our tap water here is not good, out of the tap, the water is 8.0ph, and after sitting overnight is up at 8.5ish with a kh of 300+ (its high, 50 drops of ph down into a 10qt bucket took it from 8.5-7.5). i think the hardness/ph is starting to kill my plants, as most of the leaves are not doing well, although i do have some new growth.

i've started to supplement the tap water with RO water from the kitchen. this has helped a little, but not much. With a 70/30 mix of tap/RO the ph is hovering right around 8.4ish, its steady but i still think it could stand to be a little closer to 7-7.5. (i do know that stable is better than number, but i'd like to get stable, and a good number)

here is my dillemma. our RO unit only gives me about 2 gallons before the flow diminishes to nothing. what i was thinking about doing is getting some gallon jugs and pre-filling them with RO water so i can have enough RO water to get my mixture of tap to RO closer to 50/50

are there any downsides to doing this? figure i start out slowly, go to 60/40 tap to RO, then adjust to more RO as necessary until i can get a stable level. obviously i'd need to supplement the water with some nutrients, but that inst a big deal. just want to know if there are downsides to storing water for up to a week between water changes.

what about pre-treating the water as i put it into the jugs with prime?
 
I store my RO water in a rubber garbage can lined with a food grade drum liner.

I can't say whether this is good advice or not. But to answer you question, I have not experienced any ill effects from storing water this way for a week.
 
All that will happen is that your water will pick up dissolved gases from the air, so the pH may go a bit lower (CO2). Take that into account and you sould be fine.
 
The important thing is to make sure that whatever you use is clearly labeled as food grade. I had a tub that was thought to be and it leeched crap into my water and killed off all my fish in one tank. I took the water into my labs and it was badly contaminated.

The grey brute rubbermaid trash cans are suppose to be good, I use the rubbermaid agri 100gallon stock tanks.

Just be careful what you use, but storing your RO will be fine so long as you keep a lid on it so nothing can drop into it to contaminate
 
I save all of my Poland Spring and Deer Park gallon jugs after I drink their contents. I use them to age tap water but I don't see why you couldn't adapt something like that to R/O water. Just an idea.
 
RO water my brother-in-law as one that he runs his whole house off of. Can use that water? It in a holding tank.
 
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