O
Oldschoolhydro
- Posts
- 13
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- 4
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2009
Hello
I normally don't post but due to having cancer I would like to share this while I still can.
In the mid 1950's my friend, lets call him John Doe worked in the movie/music business and 1 of his jobs was to help procure refreshments for musicians and actors and on 1 of his trips locating refreshments he came upon a grower who was supposelly the 1st or 1 of the 1st hydro growers in the states.
The system was flood and drain and I have to tried to replicate it on a smaller scale then what my friend John saw. The fill and drain manifold in the pictures were procured from the grower back in the 50's and has sat in storage down in the basement till recently when I decided to retrieve it. That manifold is about 60 yrs old and all the rest of the parts are new.
The system consisted of a reservoir filled with nutes pumped to dual buckets, the outer whiched is plumbed and a inner bucket perferated like a net pot. Nutrients pumped through the 90 degree fitting on the manifold and overflowed through an inner pipe inside of a outer pipe on the manifold that when the nutrients reached a certain height designated by the height of the inner pipe a suction/drain occured and the system basically flushes like a toilet.
You will see in the pics the manifold is on a angle which was able to rotate out of the resorvior for cleaning and nute changes, normally the manifold is in an upright position and the intake was disconnected in the pics for a nute change and may be a little confusing. My friend John does not recall what the farmer used for nutes back then and it was a outside unit. I used flouresents and mh along with dry nutes from a company out of Ohio, along with pea gravel for a medium like the original system used and it took alot of pea gravel that I cleaned and flushed through a strainer.
I'm sure other methods like the BB are the way to go now, I just thought some of you would like to see how it was done 60 yrs ago and sorry if the pics aren't the greatest.
I normally don't post but due to having cancer I would like to share this while I still can.
In the mid 1950's my friend, lets call him John Doe worked in the movie/music business and 1 of his jobs was to help procure refreshments for musicians and actors and on 1 of his trips locating refreshments he came upon a grower who was supposelly the 1st or 1 of the 1st hydro growers in the states.
The system was flood and drain and I have to tried to replicate it on a smaller scale then what my friend John saw. The fill and drain manifold in the pictures were procured from the grower back in the 50's and has sat in storage down in the basement till recently when I decided to retrieve it. That manifold is about 60 yrs old and all the rest of the parts are new.
The system consisted of a reservoir filled with nutes pumped to dual buckets, the outer whiched is plumbed and a inner bucket perferated like a net pot. Nutrients pumped through the 90 degree fitting on the manifold and overflowed through an inner pipe inside of a outer pipe on the manifold that when the nutrients reached a certain height designated by the height of the inner pipe a suction/drain occured and the system basically flushes like a toilet.
You will see in the pics the manifold is on a angle which was able to rotate out of the resorvior for cleaning and nute changes, normally the manifold is in an upright position and the intake was disconnected in the pics for a nute change and may be a little confusing. My friend John does not recall what the farmer used for nutes back then and it was a outside unit. I used flouresents and mh along with dry nutes from a company out of Ohio, along with pea gravel for a medium like the original system used and it took alot of pea gravel that I cleaned and flushed through a strainer.
I'm sure other methods like the BB are the way to go now, I just thought some of you would like to see how it was done 60 yrs ago and sorry if the pics aren't the greatest.