City or Tap Water for Outdoor Cannabis Production

City or Tap Water for Outdoor Cannabis Production

City or Tap Water for Outdoor Cannabis Production

Professor DeBacco

Test The Base Water
No matter the source you need to have an idea what your base water source has as a starting point.
Basics such as ppm or EC and pH and Temperature should be easily determined with a quality water meter.
Specifics for City Water include what type of antimicrobial is being used?
Ex. Chlorine, Fluorine, Chloramine, other…

Why is Chlorine Used?
Chlorine is a cheap disinfectant that is effective at removing microorganisms, infections, and protozoans that can develop in a water supply.

Change from Chlorine to Chloramine
Many municipalities are changing to chloramine from chlorine.
Chloramine is more stable, although it is a weaker disinfectant than chlorine.
Chloramine is ammonia added to drinking water containing chlorine.
As a result, Chloramine stays in your water much longer than chlorine.
Chloramine levels of up to 4 milligrams per liter (mg/L) (or 4ppm) are safe for drinking.

Filtering Chlorine with Activated Carbon
Carbon filters are some of the most effective tools for reducing the chlorine content in water.
They are also common in household since these filters can also improve the general taste and odor associated with chlorine.
The most common type of carbon filter is an activated carbon filter which effectively reduces and filters many contaminants and unwanted components from water.

Filtering Chlorine with Catalytic Carbon
Less common is a more advanced form of carbon filtration, called catalytic activated carbon filtration.
Catalytic activated carbon has a higher capacity for chlorine reduction and can effectively reduce chloramines.
Filtering Chlorine
The popular faucet-mounted filtration systems use an activated charcoal filter to treat tap water are not advised simply because of their small size and rate at which the water is emitted.
Due to both of these factors means less chlorine is filtered out than with an activated carbon filter used in more comprehensive and larger filters.

Filtering Chloramine
The filtration technique for chloramine is expensive versus to filtration of the chlorine.
To remove chloramine you need…
An extensive carbon filter.
To remove the chlorine included in the chloramine molecule.
Then utilize Reverse Osmosis or a cation filter
This will remove the ammonia content in the water

Combining Multiple Systems
While the overall flow rate of water may be reduced combining multiple systems can help ensure all particles, chemicals and organisms are removed.
This often is utilized with a storage tank of some kind simply because the flow rate it too slow to be used for irrigation directly.
Be sure this system is sized (or over sized) for your current operation to ensure there is enough water for the plants.

Link to Lecture Slides: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SRdAoEBidiNp22o2G-DlANw1IWcVSk6v/view?usp=sharing

*Due to the description character limit the full work cited for “City or Tap Water for Outdoor Cannabis Production” can be viewed at… https://drive.google.com/file/d/12_zsL2sYlj-dOO3Z-PKC5tU_ePUjKO9Q/view?usp=sharing