I ran a week long experiment on two identical compost piles to see if chlorine from tap water has a negative effect on the beneficial bacteria in the soil. The results are quite interesting. #Frizzlife
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15 Comments
Great video! This is definitely worth a university study / research deep dive. Would love to see how this affects the garden over the years!
they say it evaporates, but i feel like every time i tried that it just taste like it concentrates the chlorine, maybe its specific to my area.
You already have a filter system so that's great! And I am all for filtering my water for drinking and cooking. But this is A LOT of water to filter, so if the filters end up being prohibitively expensive you can actually buy a cheap aerator and submerge it in a 5 gallon bucket for 8 hours, you could just do that over night each night. An important caveat though, * this will only remove Chlorine, not Chloramine * so check with your water supplier. This is just to let anyone know, there are options besides a several hundred dollar filter system, those filters get expensive, and if you are constantly running a lot of water through them, it's gonna be really expensive, you might as well just buy distilled water and add a tiny bit of calcium and magnesium salt to it at that point. This is for anyone who is concerned about this, I am not trying to tell you what to do. 😆But just to let you know, all you need is a 15 dollar aerator kit for each bucket. and the stones last much longer than one of those filters.
Cool idea, have thought about this before while using some rainwater run off from a pool
Use an RV hose filter for your plants outside! Cheaper, easier, and much higher flow rate.
Indoors I have a reverse osmosis filter that also replenishes minerals after filtration.
There are also various cheap mechanisms to collect condensation through the night into reservoirs.
thanks for this one, so good to see this tested.
Dr. Elaine Ingham has a 2 hour lecture about soil on youtube, chlorine ABSOLUTELY kills the microscopic life in tap water (good and bad).
TLDR: While is not bad to water your plants or your compost piles with tap water it'll will slow down growth and encourage diseases since bad bacteria multiplies quicker than good bacteria among other stuff.
I was really looking forward to this video actually showing plant growth comparisons. The test you did proves that there is an affect on bacteria, but what we really want to know is what about the plants.
It's crazy how they even made it so you can't just leave the water out in a drum to dissipate the chlorine in 24 hours because they put Chloramine now in the water which may even concentrate as the water evaporates… They are too evil!
so is it bad?
idk, my lawn sprinklers barely drive growth, rain it goes like crazy
Humic acids can inactivate chlorine and such according to dr.elaine
I filter and ph my water for the first 6 weeks of my plants life. This seems to give them the best start. Great video! ❤
Good job on the video. Appreciate it.
You can get rid of these compounds in your own water without using a filter mind you, but it's good that you tested it either way. Vitamin C breaks chloramine down, and binds to chlorine, and Sodium Metabisulfite also does, and it's very cheap online. Actually turns it to ammonia, which is well.. fertilizer for a garden. Highly recommend. You need very very small amounts of this, even for a large container of water, because there's not a lot of chloramine/chlorine in it. You might think there is because you can small it sometimes, but our noses are super duper extra sensitive to chlorine, so it's a bit misleading. 0.1 parts per million is the threshold at which we can detect it usually, as an odour.
It does break down in compost piles via oxidation so really, it's not like it stays. But it does look like it slows everything down a bit.
That's a good question about the bacteria in your stomach. I wouldn't know. I don't drink water. I only drink diet soda. Lmao. Are you going to test it?
Can I make a suggestion for you? Since you're looking to improve the property. Seriously take a good look at permaculture. You might live in a desert, but it doesn't mean your property has to be a desert. There's so many land improvements you can do to help create a microclimate that will flourish, even in the hot dry desert.
Just having a bunch of trees around your property will drop the air temperature significantly due to the evaporation they cause, the shade. Border plants can help keep hot dry wind from hitting all your plants, drastically lowering their water loss. There's so much. It's the best thing I ever did for my garden.
Great video! Great test! Thank you. Suggestion, another interesting test you may think about doing is: how long does it take for chlorine to evaporate from 1 gallon of water. And does any other chemicals evaporate. Then somehow test before and after.