NYC Tap water safe?

Is anyone familiar with nyc tap water? Could it be used for any part of the growing process after chlorine is removed and PHed properly? Or are there too many other crap in the water?

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First you could request a water report from city. Water departments are required to provide one. Also if you have a TDS meter you could just check ppm’s and see what ppm level is. At one point I was using local tap water. I live in rural area and mine was 350 ppm. Also could smell the chlorine coming straight from the tap. My plants did fine with it. I wouldn’t be surprised if tap water in NYC is better than the rural area I’m in.

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NYC water is basically the best municipal tap water in the country. Your building could have old galvanized steel pipes or even lead, but the city water is amazing.

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Now if they could only pump in air from the Catskills they’d have it made!

As for municipal water and sewage, in Boston they don’t know where one ends and the other begins in a labyrinth of pipes made of everything from wood to iron. \

Here’s to you, Boston, bottom’s up!

Boston - you're my home - YouTube

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Just checked tap ppm and it’s 40. I grew up drinking from the tap. Random faucets, Garden hoses. You name it, I drank it And I turned out somewhat okay lol :joy: only started drinking bottled water when I got married a few years ago cause of my wife lol

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I do have galvanized pipes. PPM is at 40

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@Bulldognuts @Myfriendis410 @dbrn32

If the ppm reading coming out of your tap is 40 and you are the one who did the reading, not the water company then you most likely have copper pipes. That’s really low reading for tap water. Like @KeystoneCops pointed out, that NYC has some of the best tap water in the country.

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I did the reading myself. Would it be safe to use to water my plants? Maybe let a jug sit with a air stone for the chlorine overnight?

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30 mins per 5 gal pail with a air stone. That’s what I did and it worked fine. Rolling boil looking bubbles.
I’m in Detroit.
Now I use RO water because I wanted to remove the chloramines and whatever nonsense they added recently. Since this covid crap i can smell the chlorine like never before. So i got worried of what they did and got RO.

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Ahh I see. Going to give it a shot. I had 5 five gallon Poland spring jugs for free. Been using that to water lol will eventually do RO but if nyc tap at 40 ppm is safe to use. I’ll do that during my first grow. Looking for a cheap RO system

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I use my tap water here, my PPM is well over 200 T times but that is mostly calcium, lime etc…

As for chlorine i use potassium metabisulfite. It instantly removes chlorine. You can find it anywhere home beer brewing supplies are available. Never had an issue. Check to see if your supply uses chlorine or chloramine. I dont know if it will work on chloramine.

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I’ve been told NYC actually is all spring water. That’s what I was told by a buddy of mine that grew up in the city. From my understanding it comes from upper state New York.

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Been living here my whole life, I should probably find out from where and what’s in the water lol

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I was just reading on it. 90 percent comes from the catskills/Delaware watershed. The other 10 percent comes from the croton watershed.

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Hmmm sounds safe for me to drink again like my childhood days :joy:

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I grew in our muni tap water for a year or so and it was 550 ppm! I think you’ll be fine.

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What do u use now? Do u know of a cheap RO system?

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https://www.amazon.com/LiquaGen-4-Stage-Reverse-Deionization-Portable/dp/B00LKF09IW/?tag=greenrel-20

Something like this will work. I have an R/O Buddie and use that for all of my water now.

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Re: Chloramine. I was reading an article about making lactobacillus inoculant, and they claimed Vitamin C, molasses, or plain sugar would eliminate chloramine. That was from smilinggardener.com. I have no idea if that’s true or not, but it seems like it’s worth looking into.

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