Update>>>>

Both are about the same. The tables have used about 2 times the amount of water per 1000w. The Bulmuts have been set so the pots are about 3/4 of full wetness. Which means there has not been any runoff as of yet. Still humming along. :poolparty

Great thread, full of great info on blumats, long debate read though :very_first_smiley:
I have been running 10l air pots and hand watering. Due to ill health, I have only been able to manage to water my plants every 2 days. Not a great way to grow /cough.
I went searching, as we all do, so I could get something that I could easily work with and was close to fail safe.
Prompted for blumats with some HG drip clean.
There seems to be a screed of info on them, for people that seem able to dial them in, they seem a great device, for some they are slated.
Me?
I bought a blumat maxi system to use with my air pots for next grow.
Will be getting a pond liner now too! :drink

Got me thinking though, Think I will play safe, get a friend to build a nice drain to waste table, drip the blumats for my desired run off and no longer try to man handle plants that I am simply not fit enough to do!
If I make a mistake on the drippers and get a full bucket in one day, then the ladies are in for some salty drink, I will be adding it back to the res via pump till I hit my EC!

Either way, It would be bliss!
:joint:

Thanks very much for the thread, been a great help.

I love my BM's but have had some issues dialing them in, anyone have advice for this? I feel like some grows I have them all set great and others seem fine only to find next day my reservoir empty because they were dripping too much. I guess I am simply trying to find the best way to achieve the right knob adjustment for barely any runoff while keeping it moist! Also it obviously gets a bit tricker the more ladies you run.

I also might add that for anyone using smart pots (which I prefer and love) do not jive well with BMs because of how wide they are (or any wide pot). When I used 2 drippers per SP 5 gal the watering was nowhere near even so I switched back to taller slim plastic bags. Case in point if you use wide pots I would load them up with drippers.

would something like this work in a hempy style pot? Maybe bury the BM deep and have the line drip from the top?

Hopefully I can pull off being helpful without sounding condensending. I have successfully used TB's for longer than I care to mention.

I have used them in every growing medium with and without nutes, in containers, beds and outdoors with absolute success.

If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. The system is based on actual individual need, not an assumption that all are created equal, (even if they are the same via clones), rather than a timed assumption.

There are a few tricks and a learning curve. Their service life is indefinate, so regardless of the initial cost, they are an absolute bargain! If your needing several hundred of more, form a relationship with a local shop and make a deal to prepay for an order directly form Canada, and you could cut the cost in half. Just be patient with customs.

It helps to understand exactly what makes TB's work. You have a porous cermaic cone, a plastic control cap with a small bladder connected to a pin which exerts pressure on the silicone feed hose.

As the growing medium looses moisture, it attempts to draw from the cone creating a negative pressure inside the TB. With the drop in pressure, the bladder is pulled down allowing the pin to reduce pressure on the silicone hose and you begin rehydration.

The design is brilliantly simplistic. Regardless of what my fellow enthusiast may have come up against, once the basics are mastered, the only control issue will be caused by human error. (sorry)

Now to address a few of the concearns.

Proper adjustment is a bit tricky at first. Be patient in the beginning, and the free time you gain will simply blow you away. Hosing can be fun, but there comes a point where you start feeling like a hose monkey!

Make certain your growing medium is absolutely saturated. Instert the cone midway between container and trunk. Press the cone in to where the plastic cap meets the cone. If the ceramic is exposed, it can cause erratic drip control due to evaporation. Extend the silicone drip hose to center of container. If you are using 10 gal or larger, you can use two TB's or purchase their drip extenders which allows you to drip in multiple locations using one TB.

Loosen the adjuster cap until you have a steady flow. Slowly and patiently turn the adj. cap clockwise until a drop is suspended at the end of the drip hose (important!). Again be patient and watch for 15 seconds. Now turn the cap clockwise and additional notch or two depending the level of saturation you are seeking, (this will take some attention over a few days). Once you have found what works, in the future it will be an absoulte set and forget. I do not reccommend readjusting to flush. Top flush with a hose. Once you got it right, don't touch until your resetting for your next go. At the end of the cycle, rinse the cones, remove the caps and store in clean H20 (preferably r/o).

If you are experiencing flooding after you perfectly adjusted the TB's, it will be the result of one of three issues:

First being a pinched drip line. To prevent this, before setting, completely loosen adjuster, pull the silicone hose to it's intended location and proceed with adjustment. Once adjusted, never pull on the hose!

Second would be a improperly soaked/filled/sealed TB. You must soak the cermaics in preferably r/o water for several hours. When filling (preferably r/o water), you must place the top on the cone under water making sure there are no air bubbles inside the cap. When sealing the unit (under water), make sure you tighten securely without going too far. You can strip them, thus no negative pressure, thus cone dries out, thus wfo!

Thirdly, supply and demand. The elevated reservoir is limited in scope when dealing with agressive thirstly babes. If you have a dozen little girls, this method works fine with the distribution hose supplied in the kit. If you are looking for fool proof delivery for thirteen to infinity, you must pressurize your system. I won't go into technical details as there are so many options, but the end result needs to be an endless supply of 6 psi. Ironically, you will eliminate many sensitivites with the higher pressure.

If you run out of pressure for even 5 thirsty minutes, you must, resoak, refill, readjust. No way around it.

I have read several complaints of the TB's not being able to keep up with severe demand. If set up properly with 6 psi, that would be impossible. At 6 psi, a TB will shoot a tiny but steady stream six feet.

With the problems I have read, the majority are from the supply end. If all you are getting is drips with adjuster wide open, you must elevate your tank or pressurize. Often times, if you have adjusted the TB's properly and you are experiencing flooding, it is because your supply could not keep up, the cone lost some of its internal water and you lost the proper balance of internal negative pessure and the pin is not applying the proper force on the drip hose. Once this has happened, you cannot adjust you way out of the problem. You must remove TB and start from square one.

Once you have taken care of the basics, you will never feed any other way.

In regards to production, that will always be a never ending debate. In regards to my own experience, in a commercial like scale, it is the best way. Each container has it's very own personalized system. If you have a dozen container hobby deal, then picking up each one and checking it twice is not only feasible, but enjoyable.

TG

Did we save the best for last. Thanks That Guy. I would guess you worked for them. Regardless, great info.

hand watering = best results overall.imo:rollj:

Good knowledge ~TG~. +1 on the info. I know its now in my "TB archives"

How do you guys handle res changes? If air enters the feed line while you are cleaning your res wouldn't you have to reset each Blumat? I am thinking of using them but have to plan a way to clean my 55gal res once a week without letting air into the line. Possibly could add a "T" and a shutoff valve to the feed line which leads to a five gallon bucket which would feed the blumats while doing maintenance. What do you think? Open for suggestions.

Respect bass

wow 10% runoff omg you guys are crazy... what r u gonna do when you step up to like 200 35 gallon pots =x. Or like 1000 3 gallon pots. thats a shit ton of run off water.

bass ackwards said:

How do you guys handle res changes? If air enters the feed line while you are cleaning your res wouldn't you have to reset each Blumat? I am thinking of using them but have to plan a way to clean my 55gal res once a week without letting air into the line. Possibly could add a "T" and a shutoff valve to the feed line which leads to a five gallon bucket which would feed the blumats while doing maintenance. What do you think? Open for suggestions.

Respect bass

Click to expand...

Unless I am mistaken (and I probably am) air in the actual line should not matter. Air in the inside of the actual cone is what is bad. Am I wrong?

bump

hoping your karma increases greatly

HEY Rasta311,
I knew there was a set of Blumats that would do what i wanted for growing coco drip style.

thx so much. now just have to find cheapest way to get them etc. i used the smaller ones already but didn't like them all that much because of size & getting used to them.

i'll hand water until i get them and run them. thx again

That Guy said:

Thirdly, supply and demand. The elevated reservoir is limited in scope when dealing with agressive thirstly babes. If you have a dozen little girls, this method works fine with the distribution hose supplied in the kit. If you are looking for fool proof delivery for thirteen to infinity, you must pressurize your system. I won't go into technical details as there are so many options, but the end result needs to be an endless supply of 6 psi. Ironically, you will eliminate many sensitivites with the higher pressure.

Click to expand...

Since i have a res below my plants, what's a good, easy-ish way to pressurize my system? I could hook up to the city water, but then, my nute mix is out the window. Can I simply hook it up to my pump on a manifold? If so, won't that burn out my little pump? I assume if the water loops back into my res in a closed system, that there will no longer be pressure? Because that would be easy on the pump.

if your gonna have a res, why not just get a timer with a watering drip system, set it at intervals which you can chose based on how your plants react? im not sure if i missed something here, but i actually prefer controlling the waterings

budseyeveiw said:

if your gonna have a res, why not just get a timer with a watering drip system, set it at intervals which you can chose based on how your plants react? im not sure if i missed something here, but i actually prefer controlling the waterings

Click to expand...

That's the primary difference though - to let the plants call for their own specific watering needs. I only have 6 small plants, but there's 2 that are thirstier than the others, so instead of watering them all the same, why not let each be watered a little differently? More efficient in terms of nutes/water, and better for the plants.

There's also the attraction of not needing a timer, or pump. Less can go wrong (in theory at least). Power failures are less of a concern.

I'm going to take the plunge with these things and hope for the best. I'm going SCROG for my next grow, and since it's a closet, I don't have access to the sides, making hand-watering really hard.

vancerz said:

the only time I messed up with blumats was when I first got them, I added the nutes to my res out doors ( H&G at 500 ppm for 12 foot tall plants) in pure coco they begin to yellow and what not a month after I had the blumats set up. I figured they needed more nutes since they been growing great and all and were massive.. that was not the case too much water was evaporating and causing the ppms to keep climbing I had lock out due to too much salt in my medium. so be careful about salt build up if you are using blumats to FERTILIZE your coco medium indoors or out I would recomend flushing the medium every now and then to stop salt build up that you WILL get.

thats my other measly 02 cents.

Click to expand...

cool beans that was my major concern I tried constant feed and got same problem didnt know till now what it was ty vancers total feed control and auto water thats the shit for coco

+rep

If you have trouble controlling the feed on a regular drip system, you just add on 1/4 valves on the end of the dripline and adjust the flow for the plants needs no need for clogging gph drippers, much easier to deal with then adjusting blumats and having the cones dry out/get stuck on.

antimatter said:

If you have trouble controlling the feed on a regular drip system, you just add on 1/4 valves on the end of the dripline and adjust the flow for the plants needs no need for clogging gph drippers, much easier to deal with then adjusting blumats and having the cones dry out/get stuck on.

Click to expand...

You're saying to use 1/4" adjustable valves on the end of your drip lines, and just individually adjust per plant? Brilliant. I'm trying to figure out how to setup my system. Thanks for this one

FYI. I found a someone in the US who's making an adapter that lets you attach your Blumat lines to your garden hose. Helps get over the metric hurdle:

http://blumatsystems.com/product/20/Blumat-Adapter-8-mm-tubing-to-1/2-inch-pipe-thread