Drip Irrigation Knowledge Wanted

[Prestige]

Okay, so I'm buying a 'magnetic rotor' pump and gonna do a test. I'm gonna take ppm readings of my solution, run it thru the pump and take a second reading. If the magnets are hanging onto particles/ions/elements, I should get a lower ppm reading, right?

 

[motz]

Should that be all that I need?

@Prestige go to Menards and pick up rain bird products back in plumbing. They have everything you need from piping to a nifty timer waterer. Operates off of 2 batteries and uses no electricity. Hooks up to your standerd threaded hose bib. Timer is sky the limits you can set it up for whatever you want

 

[Prestige]

@Prestige go to Menards and pick up rain bird products back in plumbing. They have everything you need from piping to a nifty timer waterer. Operates off of 2 batteries and uses no electricity. Hooks up to your standerd threaded hose bib. Timer is sky the limits you can set it up for whatever you want

Sweet! Much thanks!

I already bought a bunch of Rain Bird products on Amazon. It was very well priced.

 

[Prestige]

I am going to get both a drip setup and a blumat setup because I just can't decide and I'm an indecisive person like that lol.

 

[Prestige]

Seaslug mentioned nasties in his res using bubblers earlier. How do you guys avoid that? I was doing just fine until I tried to add microbes to my res and it started giving a real funky smell. I guess I didn't clean it out well enough after that because it kept coming back, very mildly, but I could tell some sort of growth was still present.

 

[motz]

Those rain bird timers come in a single and triple manifold. Need more runs buy brass Y's. You can control flow with timer and or use of shutoffs built into the y's. Should be able to get to the gnats ass for watering

 

[motz]

as far as feeding I do that all by hand

 

[Prestige]

as far as feeding I do that all by hand

That's not a bad idea.

 

[Prestige]

I got the 1 GPH emitters and the 1/2 GPH emitters and a ball valve to control flow.

So your only dripping water and feeding by hand? How has it been working for you?

 

[seaslug]

I think you're on the right track, Prestige. Before I started using bleach, I was either going to run plain pH'd tap water or give up Blumats and do a powered drip in some manner.

I have old galvanized plumbing and get a little scale (iron oxide) in my res sometimes. I haven't taken my pumps apart but I don't think the permanent magnet is causing any problems.

My problem has been the built-in foam filter, big white plumes of oxygen loving mold started growing out overnight when I kept using hydrogen peroxide, LOL.

 

[Prestige]

I was planning on using like a 40% concentration hydrogen peroxide for nasties. Sounds like hydrogen peroxide won't do much for me after all. So do you put bleach into your feed and whatnot? Like your gurls get bleach in their water? That sounds totally fkd up to me man lol. But at low doses, I can see it working. Does it harm them at all?

 

[motz]

I got the 1 GPH emitters and the 1/2 GPH emitters and a ball valve to control flow.

So your only dripping water and feeding by hand? How has it been working for you?

Wish I knew about the 1/2 gal emitters but that still wouldn't of solved the situation. Got the smallest RIO pumps,they still pump 200 gal per hr. Set up with 1 gal emitters did not work to well. At 15 min that still pumped 50 gal. .Well we will just say the bank didn't last to long. This thing from Orbit with a backflow set up is the ticket. Just picked up there flyer and that stuff is on sale. It's cheaper thru menards than anywhere else I looked. There is so many ways to dial that thing in.

 

[Prestige]

Could you shoot a link to this back flow thing? Is it like a ball valve?

 

[Prestige]

My idea was to have the main line come back to the res with a ball valve at the end.

 

[motz]

Could you shoot a link to this back flow thing? Is it like a ball valve?

It is rainbird product,one end attaches to your hose bib,in between is a backflow valve with an irrigation tube attachment on the end. You hook these up to that Orbit timer or directly to your hose bib. $18 Theirs each line is dead ended.

 

[seaslug]

I was planning on using like a 40% concentration hydrogen peroxide for nasties. Sounds like hydrogen peroxide won't do much for me after all. So do you put bleach into your feed and whatnot? Like your gurls get bleach in their water? That sounds totally fkd up to me man lol. But at low doses, I can see it working. Does it harm them at all?

The H2O2 worked great on the orange-brown slime mold that started growing in the Veg + Bloom nute solution--I realized later it contains a sugar. So the brown went away but the cheapo pH probe storage solution had no preservative and I believe this caused continual contamination of the reservoirs. Bleach (the currently sold 8.25% stuff) at the rate of 0.3ml per gallon is what I use. I guess that equals 3 ppm of Cl; it seems like enough without being too much.

I released too strong of a diluted nute mix with Cl into freshly transplanted clones that screwed up the middle of the big leaves but then they recovered. I don't know if it was too hot of a nute solution or the bleach that caused the deformation/necrosis. But overall, no problems for me with bleach. My last grow with two meh phenotypes yielded a quarter pound for each plant (with two months veg under T8).

 

[chinqlinq]

Growing with 5/7 gallon pots indoors (tall and narrow pots & short and wide pots)... any idea how water dispersal would be and if blumat has anything to accommodate?

 

[seaslug]

Edit to post #56:
The problem in the second paragraph was mainly too much water, I now believe. I test for total chlorine using Hanna H711 colorimeter and I'm using less Clorox now in the reservoir.

 

[seaslug]

Growing with 5/7 gallon pots indoors (tall and narrow pots & short and wide pots)... any idea how water dispersal would be and if blumat has anything to accommodate?

Tall and narrow could make use of the Blumat "maxi" model. It uses the same ceramic cone on a plastic tube so it senses moisture at a greater depth. Blumat brochures illustrate water "circles" for different dimensions. They also have "distributers" which are smaller drippers coming off the 3mm line. Those only work well with clear water, I've heard.

 

[seaslug]

Tropf-Blumat:
http://www.blumat.at/en/general-info.html
It is recommended to assemble these under water in a bucket after squirting out all the air bubbles with a 3ml plastic pipette.