Testing the Aerolife True HPA AA (Air Atomized) System -First run

Lots of variables to keep testing, good thing lettuce seedlings are cheap. I'm trying 4 seconds on, 2 minutes off now. Wanted to give a few seconds for the compressor to get going since I don't have a tank.

TB, since you are considering that the mist might not be of optimal size, have you or are you planning to try and adjust it? I believe you mentioned adjusting the siphon height, how will you do that? When I purchased the nozzle, the Aerolife person mentioned that I could adjust droplet size by changing the psi, but I guess that will have to wait until I get a tank with a regulator.

Thanks again.

Originally Posted by KKK808

Lots of variables to keep testing, good thing lettuce seedlings are cheap. I'm trying 4 seconds on, 2 minutes off now. Wanted to give a few seconds for the compressor to get going since I don't have a tank.

TB, since you are considering that the mist might not be of optimal size, have you or are you planning to try and adjust it? I believe you mentioned adjusting the siphon height, how will you do that? When I purchased the nozzle, the Aerolife person mentioned that I could adjust droplet size by changing the psi, but I guess that will have to wait until I get a tank with a regulator.

Thanks again.

Yes, been playing around with it, -quite tedious. The air pressure changes the mist size and pattern as well as the liquid siphon flowrate, so it's an issue trying to maintain both in the correct range, especially all by eye and root feedback- which takes time. The siphon height traditionally also affects flowrate but it appears on these nozzles it has little effect so that's another thing to contend with. I have considered hooking up a pressure feed with solenoid for the liquid side as well, but no idea what sort of results that will yield. I've even considerd cutting off the ultrasonic tip of the nozzle thinking it may have a good part to do with the final droplet breakdown and size, but I don't want to mutilate it permanantly without knowing if it would for sure make a positive difference.

What I did to adjust siphon height, is use a small lunchbox sized igloo cooler installed with an adjustable float valve gravity fed from a reservoir that maintains a certain liquid level. The siphon lines drop into this cooler and I can adjust the siphon height by elevating the cooler, and fine tune by adjusting the float level... It actually works pretty well for this purpose and insulates the nutrients from getting too warm.
For what it's worth since noise isn't much an issue for me, I am just using my craftsman air compressor to feed the solenoid and nozzles, which has a 3 gallon storage tank and regulator.

Roots still drying out with a 4 second spray and 2 minute off. Looks like not enough root mass to use that fine mist effectively. Interestingly, the plants that are sitting in nutrients have "water" root development, but nice root hair development just above the surface of the solution. Makes me think there is enough moisture and humidity in the root chamber to support root hairs. Could be from the evaporation from the solution and the confinement of the PVC coupler.
2012-07-07_16-26-23_127.jpg

Originally Posted by KKK808

Roots still drying out with a 4 second spray and 2 minute off. Looks like not enough root mass to use that fine mist effectively. Interestingly, the plants that are sitting in nutrients have "water" root development, but nice root hair development just above the surface of the solution. Makes me think there is enough moisture and humidity in the root chamber to support root hairs. Could be from the evaporation from the solution and the confinement of the PVC coupler.
2012-07-07_16-26-23_127.jpg

Looks like you might have transplanted from soil. While you can get this to work, I personally found it's hard to get the roots to adapt to the big change very easily...

Yes, Home Depot Manoa lettuce seedlings in potting soil. I'll try putting a plant that has been acclimating in the water culture into the spray and see what happens. Thanks.

Originally Posted by Trichy Bastard

Looks like you might have transplanted from soil. While you can get this to work, I personally found it's hard to get the roots to adapt to the big change very easily...

I noticed the same thing, after sulking for a while the plants tend to ignore the soil roots and just grow new ones from scratch. Clones/cuttings are the best option, plants that have been in grown using a wet hydro method (DWC/F&D) take longer to adapt but nowhere near as long as ex-soil plants.

Okay, so I have been dilligently playing with settings and times. I have added some strips of closed cell adhesive foam (like the kind to insulate around a door) around the lid to attempt to ensure no fresh air is coming in to dry the roots from the lid. In the following pic you can see that the roots higher up on the netpot are looking dry, so it makes me think there is still some dry air coming in from the top, but I am not sure. I have been making slow steady adjustments to the timings and right now am actually using 1.5s mist pulses with 9.5 minute pause times. I am slowly increasing the pause times in 30s increments every 2-3 days. One thing I think is making things harder is I have not cut in my additional nighttime pause timer which means the roots are getting too wet at night in comparison to the daytime. I will probably fix this today before making any other adjustments on timings. Additionally, all the stress on the plant while I dial in the settings has caused it to "catch" powdery mildew. The yellowing is in part due to that, as well as still running .2 ec. I didn't want to introduce another variable while dialing in the timings, plus powdery mildew feasts on new growth. However I will probably raise the ec to around 2.5 today when I refill my res. Right now 5 gallons of nutes are lasting well over a week- maybe closer to 2 weeks.
IMG_0115.jpg
If anybody has any input or suggestions I would like to hear it. I think I will eventually lose this plant but have a good amount of knowledge how to get the next plant up to par much quicker now. It is taking much less misting than I'd originally thought. Very different working with such a small chamber, I am starting to think that the airspace in these conditions cannot be linearly adjusted by just using the same ratios of mist as would be in a larger chamber, and requires it's own special condition settings. Perhaps there is some other variable I am missing though.

Greetings. Good to see your still at it. Is this cutting is from this image?



From what I'm looking at and have read the plants leaves are crying for help; shorter cycle times at a lower psi to increase droplet size. 140 ppm seems low and I would try doubling that.
For 24 hours try 30 psi at 1 sec burst every min and double the ec on there to 0.42 and cover the tops of those net pots so they reflect light. Give her a try and let us know. Best wishes.