Grow Journal
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Thanks so much!!Sounds like a cool ass run, I'm in. Also need to get that sunshine daydream in my vault
Thanks Mike!I'll be watching this one.
Great set up. You never mentioned your root issues. As far as water level staying the same I totally disagree. My plants always respond better to wet/dry cycles. IM not currently recirculating, but always let the plant drink the water level down.Had some time so I thought I would post up some pics of the build out of the room
For the RDWC system, its my own personal twist, I call it the "overflow"
Here are a few highlights of my system. Pics below
Roots sink down but the water exits the side ports. This eliminates the potential for roots clogging the drain, if your new to RDWC keep in mind the roots will get (or should get) very thick and getting water to flow through can be a weak link in your system. In this system, the water exits off the surface and the roots are never involved with the drain.
In my system the warmest water sits on the surface, and anyone who has done RDWC knows the roots fill out the space and even will push p out of the water as the root zone becomes packed with roots, normal systems have no solution for the warm, oxygen deprived surface water, in my overflow system the warmest water is the first to get sent back to the chiller and the coldest water, at the bottom of the bucket, where the most oxygen is is where the most roots are.
In normal RDWC systems if the roots block your drain, depending on your system, your pump can flood your bucket. Ive had it happen. In my system there is piece of mind, dual 2" drains make it nearly impossible to flood. Ive run 2200 gph pump, via 1" pvc into a single overflow bucket and the pump couldn't flood the bucket, the drainage kept up.
The last thing that I like is that the water level in each bucket never moves, this is very "safe" or stable for the plant. The water level that moves is only the control bucket, which is fed from a reservoir.
Its a side business Id like to move forward on but would need an investor (in case anyone is interested), but wanted to share the ideas with you guys anyway.
This is my first run with this new design so its pretty unproven, but I think the concepts are solid. By the way the middle drain at the bottom of each bucket has a ball valve, this is used to do the weekly water change (opened to drain like normal) closed to run in overflow mode.
Each bucket uses
2" uniseal (quantity:3)
1" uniseal (quantity:1)
2" pvc ball-valve (quantity:1)
2" PVC 'T' (Quantity:2)
2" PVC 90/elbow (Quantity 4)
Bucket is from home depot, is about 16 gallons
10" netpot (Quantity:1) (in the pic is a 6" netpot but I switched it to the larger size)
In this first pic you can see the return lines have been run.
View attachment 614406
In this next pic below you can see the 1" inlet line has been run. The black section in the bottom left is the control bucket. (easier to see in the pic above)
The two 1" pipes that go to the right of the first bucket are to the chiller and back out. (the chiller is located under the AC unit, which I will be post in the next post)
View attachment 614414
The 1" pipe that is under the center area of the drain line is just there for support (I put the 2" center drain into the bucket as close to the floor as possible) the 1" pipe is enough to be level with the exit of the bucket.... in a different pic you can see this support doubles as the frame for the center light.
Thanks Ken!Kudos for an innovative design... been watching from the get-go.:)
Hey thanks Jay!Great set up. You never mentioned your root issues. As far as water level staying the same I totally disagree. My plants always respond better to wet/dry cycles. IM not currently recirculating, but always let the plant drink the water level down.
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