tennis maynard wrote:

Steve wrote:

Dustin wrote:

Do any of you collect rainwater to use on your orchids? I want to
collect the rainwater off of the roof of my house. I had to get a new
roof after last summers hurricanes so I have new asphalt shingles and I
am wondering if there is anything toxic in them. Not that a TDS meter
can tell me anything, but the TDS of the rain from my roof is the same
as the rain falling right into a clean bucket.

Dustin



I collected water from my roof in the fall last year and the year
before. I started doing it when I got several seedling Phrags. Last
year I collected about 50 gallons and stored it in plastic milk jugs
for use over the winter. My roof was a few years old when I started
collecting rain. I was warned by people that there could be a danger
of toxic substances in the water. I never saw any problems. I always
tried to collect water AFTER it had been raining for a while and while
it was raining fairly hard. One time I collected some from the
beginning of a gentle rain and the water had a brown tint to it. I
threw that batch out.
By the way, I don't plan to collect water this year. I always
suspected that our water has a very low TDS but since I didn't have a
meter, I collected rain to be safe. A friend of mine got a TDS meter.
My collected rain gave a reading of 4. Water right out of the tap gave
a reading of 17.


Tapwater at 17? Where do you gbet that?? Eden? That's
just not normal! Ours is between 400 and 600. My
rainwater tests at 11. BIG difference, especially for
the disas.

Hi Tennis,
Our tap water is treated lake water. The main, and nearly only, type of
rock in these mountains is granite. I guess it doesn't give up many
minerals to the rain before it gets to the lakes.
I assume my friend's meter is fairly accurate. He got it because he was
told he needed it if he was going to use coconut husk chips. You know,
to confirm it is rinsed well enough. (I use CHC all the time. I rinse it
3 times and don't worry about it.) He lives north of here and is just
outside the Adirondack area. His water tests between 125 and 200 up
there. He brought the meter to a meeting so we could all test our water.
He brought in a jar of distilled water to rinse the meter between
samples. The distilled water gave a reading of zero but went up to 1
after is was used to rinse the meter a few times.

Steve
PS I've been wanting to try Disas. After the water test, I've been
thinking about it even more.