you think this system will be EASIER to take care of then soil?
ive checked my garden three times in two weeks. one time to water.
you sure as hell dont need to be in there everyday. and 95% of the time i walk in, look for bugs, check the soil and walk out. i dont see how thats a lot of work?
i have no res to change, no ppms or ph to check. i may not yield as much per watt as you but im sure its pretty close when you take into account all the wattage your adding for required equipment for a hydro setup, i have one fan and a 1k light for my personal room. its like 1250 watts TOTAL.
now you guys have pumps, chillers, a/c's, etc etc. so much shit to go wrong ya know, a pump fails anything.
about the only thing that will fuck my room up is if my power goes out or my timer or buld burns up. even then ill catch it in a day or two and nothing should DIE.
sorry, im just looking at the big picture and the whole cost of things. i can guarantee i have less headaches than you.
Hey man, you're preaching to the choir, and that was one of my main decisions when building my room - go intake/exhaust and save initially and on an ongoing power basis, or seal it up and spend more upfront and on an ongoing basis - I chose to seal it up, because my goal is to grow the dankest weed possible with my genetics, and unfortunately that's just not possible in an intake/exhaust scenario where I can't control my parameters.
By definition, being able to control every variable imaginable lets me worry less, have to check on my room less, and lets me max the plants out to their genetic potential.
Without a doubt, a well setup hydro system is less maintenance than a soil system that must be handwatered; it just is - yes, MUCH more effort upfront, but on an ongoing basis there's nothing besides an occasional rez change out.
Of course with all the extra equipment used there's more variables (and points of weakness, if you will), but for the drastically larger yields (seriously, it's not gonna be close in grams per watt at all between a hydro VSOG and a soil SCROG), I'm willing to take that chance.
However, I have said repeatedly that I may go to a drain to waste setup, which would eliminate the need for a chiller, eliminate my need to check PPMs and pH, and generally make my life much, much simpler - still haven't decided yet, but if I do that, the only point of failure would be a pump going out, and I'd install a redundant pump to combat that possibility.
BTW, no offense taken at all and I enjoy speaking about this - as I said in my PM to you, vertical bare bulbs (IMO) are the future (and present in many cases) of indoor growing.
EDIT: for some reason I keep on saying "vertical bare bulbs", when I really just mean "vertically hung bulbs", as I'm going to be using a cooltube on mine.