Difference between distilled and ro water for nutrients

TCH

TCH

Well-Known Member
Probably a silly question, but is there any difference between using distilled water and using ro water for nutrient reservoir? I normally run ro, but have 8-10 gallons of distilled water that I'm not going to use for anything else. Can I add it to the reservoir with my normal ro?
 
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Lou66

Well-Known Member
There's no difference. It'a actually the same production method as the standards only define how clean the product has to be and not the method to produce it.
 
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TCH

TCH

Well-Known Member
go go kid said:
Add Ca Mg, or if your nutrient lacks microminerals, CaMg+, DISTILLED WATER IS NOT TAP WATER, SO ITS VOID OF ALL SALTS, SO ADD THE CALMAG+ TO IT oops, soz for caps
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I'm currently running ro so I know that it is void of all things, I just wanted to make sure that there isn't something different about the distilled over the ro. They always seemed to be the same final product to me, just took different paths to get there.
 
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Roguedawg

Well-Known Member
Where I live store bought RO and distilled dont have CaCl, or anything else, there are jugs that have been added to for taste but distilled is distilled. I only use it for making fertilzer concentrate and cleaning off pH probe when I am calibrating. Are you sure you need RO/distilled, is the tap that bad?
 
TCH

TCH

Well-Known Member
Roguedawg said:
Where I live store bought RO and distilled dont have CaCl, or anything else, there are jugs that have been added to for taste but distilled is distilled. I only use it for making fertilzer concentrate and cleaning off pH probe when I am calibrating. Are you sure you need RO/distilled, is the tap that bad?
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Yes.
 
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conor c

Well-Known Member
Roguedawg said:
Where I live store bought RO and distilled dont have CaCl, or anything else, there are jugs that have been added to for taste but distilled is distilled. I only use it for making fertilzer concentrate and cleaning off pH probe when I am calibrating. Are you sure you need RO/distilled, is the tap that bad?
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Depends where u stay i use tap no problem but my waters good if you stay somewhere with bad tap water ro or distilled is your next option unless you got a decent well or something near you
 
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DanKiller

Well-Known Member
Yeah but in the mineral levels a good RO system is 0.017 which is very close to 0.000 (distilled system)
So they count RO and distilled the same in terms of purity.
 
jimihendrix1

jimihendrix1

Well-Known Member
For all intents and purposes, one, is as good as the other. RO, may be a little better at getting rid of volatile organic compounds, industrial cleaning chemicals, pharmaceuticals. But the benefit, is negligible. Ive also seen water for sale that is both RO/Distilled.
 
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DanKiller

Well-Known Member
jimihendrix1 said:
For all intents and purposes, one, is as good as the other. RO, may be a little better at getting rid of volatile organic compounds, industrial cleaning chemicals, pharmaceuticals. But the benefit, is negligible. Ive also seen water for sale that is both RO/Distilled.
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No, distilled is the the most pure of the two.
RO will never reach distilled water levels, but is so close to comfort ;)
 
OldMedUser

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
DanKiller said:
No, distilled is the the most pure of the two.
RO will never reach distilled water levels, but is so close to comfort ;)
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Depends on the feed water for your distilled. I have a Polar Bear water distiller in the basement that gets water from a dugout on my property and without charcoal filtration and a catalyst bed it has a lot of volatile organic compounds in it. Those won't hurt anything if used for plants but has an off taste for drinking. With the RO setup I one day will put together the only thing in it will be a few ppm of minerals from the hard water. I may run 2 RO filters in a row to get it as near to zero as I can. The water is about pH 8 and up to 400ppm depending on the season. Cleanest after spring melt but the element burned out so I'll get around to putting a new one in one of these days and sell it. Refurbished are going for around $1600Can. New element is around $100. New they're over 3G. This one has a 10gal SS storage tank with a spigot and pressure pump.
 
OldMedUser

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
Lou66 said:
There's no difference. It'a actually the same production method as the standards only define how clean the product has to be and not the method to produce it.
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Uh, no. Very different methods and levels of purity with both methods.

Google is your friend.
 
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Lou66

Well-Known Member
OldMedUser said:
Uh, no. Very different methods and levels of purity with both methods.

Google is your friend.
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Google is not a good tool to get the text of standards. But when you find e.g. ISO 3696 you find that production method is not specified but rather characteristics of the specified products and it is up to the manufacturer to choose a suitable method.

I can go to a store and buy something called distilled water that contains significant amounts of silica. Silica is characteristic of RO water as the membranes has a difficult time rejecting uncharged species.
 
OldMedUser

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
Lou66 said:
Google is not a good tool to get the text of standards. But when you find e.g. ISO 3696 you find that production method is not specified but rather characteristics of the specified products and it is up to the manufacturer to choose a suitable method.

I can go to a store and buy something called distilled water that contains significant amounts of silica. Silica is characteristic of RO water as the membranes has a difficult time rejecting uncharged species.
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I've never seen store bought distilled water with silica. Added fluoride and some with other minerals but not silica. I get the straight steam distilled with nothing added for making colloidal silver but use RO water for my plants and drinking. 0ppm mineral salts and 0ppm fluoride in the distilled from the drug store for under $4/gal/4L.

The point I was making in to reply to your statement that there is no difference in the production of either type of water when they are totally different methods. Steam distilled, de-ionized water is as pure as you can find anywhere where RO water will always have a minute amount of minerals that make it through the permeable filter under pressure with no heat input required.
 
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Lou66

Well-Known Member
OldMedUser said:
I've never seen store bought distilled water with silica. Added fluoride and some with other minerals but not silica. I get the straight steam distilled with nothing added for making colloidal silver but use RO water for my plants and drinking. 0ppm mineral salts and 0ppm fluoride in the distilled from the drug store for under $4/gal/4L.

The point I was making in to reply to your statement that there is no difference in the production of either type of water when they are totally different methods. Steam distilled, de-ionized water is as pure as you can find anywhere where RO water will always have a minute amount of minerals that make it through the permeable filter under pressure with no heat input required.
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You completely ignore that there are standards that define industrial products and the words used to describe them?
 
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