ttystikk
Well-Known Member
Hey brother!
Ttystikk's vertical goodness
- Thread starter tystikk
- Start date
zep_lover
Well-Known Member
i will tomorrow when i get home.if you google ppk it will take you to icmag.there are a bunch of good threads with pics and an explantion how it all works.i have only completed 6 grows using the ppk and am still pretty new to it.i have only been using it for 4 and a half months.
delta9 is the inventor
ttystikk
Well-Known Member
I'm over there, too, and I've spoken with D9 and the rest of the ppk crew. I'd be using the Passive Plant Killer (lol) system myself if I could figure out how to make it portable!
zep_lover
Well-Known Member
how portable?i load the clone in my 3 gallon tote and put in my veg cabinet.when it is ready i lift out the tote and put it in my flower cabinet.the bottom container and plumbing stay put.the system uses two containers and the top one with the plant is pretty easy to move.it works good.my plants coming out of veg are only 30 to 36 inches tall.
ttystikk
Well-Known Member
I need to be able to tilt the root ball.
PKHydro
Well-Known Member
@ttystikk
So I've been reading through, but still can't grasp the new set-up. I get your switching over to cob lighting, and I think your getting rid of the round silo and going to flat panels??
Definitely interested in what you got going on. Have you put up any diagrams or pictures of the new room layout? I'm a visual type person. Hard to comprehend what's going on just through text.
Anyways you must be getting stoked to start running those cobs, it seems like it's been a long time coming!
So I've been reading through, but still can't grasp the new set-up. I get your switching over to cob lighting, and I think your getting rid of the round silo and going to flat panels??
Definitely interested in what you got going on. Have you put up any diagrams or pictures of the new room layout? I'm a visual type person. Hard to comprehend what's going on just through text.
Anyways you must be getting stoked to start running those cobs, it seems like it's been a long time coming!
zep_lover
Well-Known Member
how far do you need to tilt it?at what stage do you want to tilt it?turface is loose and doesnt clump up.i bend my plants over when they are small .i have to be careful or the whole plant then grows sideways.if you look at the stalks in the pics i posted that is why it looks it is coming almost sideways out of the turface.if you explain how far you tilt with how big a plant ,i can try it for you.i do not think it would be a problem..so far the system works great.post 866 and 867 in this thread show how my stalks are tilted.i only did that when they were maybe 8 to 10 inches high by bending the plant over and using a coat hanger wire to hold the plant down.i imagine a bigger plant would be a little harder to do since the roots would be filling the container more.
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hey dude ii saw a post where you said you did 16 plants in 3x3s, what types of gpw were you getting? because i was thinking of doing 36 in a 6x3 but then thought 32 would probably be better, using 2 600w over each 3x6 (2 week old clones, the Al B. Fuct way) so i was just wondering what you were usually pulling per 3x3 if you don't mind telling. I'm also going to be lollipopping/pruning as well
ttystikk
Well-Known Member
That's because even at this late date, the details are still pretty fluid.
The parts are just beginning to come together, and of course not everything is going quite to plan.
Carolina Dream'n
Well-Known Member
It was normally 1 gpw. Unless I just had a bad run. Plant numbers have a lot to do with the structure of the plants you're grow.
A plant with no side branching will need more plants per tray. a plant that naturally bushes out will need less plants per tray. I'd say what I was growing was right in the middle of bushy and single cola.
well with al b fuct, the point is the have clones with zero side branching then once the plants in flower make sure the lowe 1/3 of the plant has zero branching. you think id be better off doing that with 32 or 36? as far as yields go
PKHydro
Well-Known Member
I get it man, nothing like working the kinks out as you go. Well I'll be following along, waiting for the big unveil so to speak. Can't wait to see what you can do with the new setup.
ttystikk
Well-Known Member
ttystikk
Well-Known Member
So far, here's what we've got;I get it man, nothing like working the kinks out as you go. Well I'll be following along, waiting for the big unveil so to speak. Can't wait to see what you can do with the new setup.
The modules; I had them made to my own specs, but the COBs and driver are completely standard fare; 4 x CXB3590 3500K CD bin 72V on a Meanwell HLG-185H-C700B. They run at 224W apiece with the dimming leads capped off, for 54W per COB and a whole 8W lost to driver inefficiency.
Depending on who's running the numbers, the combo is good for 56% efficiency and between 811 and 824PPfD delivered to 6 sq ft. I designed my modules to each light a 2x3' area as evenly as possible, so four of them will fit nicely together on my 4' x 6' trellis panels.
The Rack; Twenty four of these modules have been thusly arranged on a large rack stand bolted to the ceiling to light six trellis panels, three on each side. That makes the rack ten feet long and effectively floor to ceiling.
Work is continuing on getting the power situation sorted out, which brings me to a question for someone who knows his Meanwell COB drivers pretty well; I've heard about inrush current on initial startup being a problem, and that problem is magnified in large arrays to the point where it can trip circuit breakers that would ordinarily hold the load. How do I quantify this phenomenon so I can build the electrical service to handle it? @churchhaze @REALSTYLES , a lil help here?
Without knowing the limits, I've so far simply gone the route of overkill; 60A breaker on heavy gauge service wire to the rack! This for only 5400W, or 22.5A@240V!
Anyone need to light a small town?
The RDWC; each leafy lady gets to dip her roots in a 27 gallon tuffbox, all connected together and to the control bucket with one inch lines and simple irrigation fittings. A copper heat exchange coil passes cold water through the control bucket, where a pump sits and pushes water through a manifold that delivers water to each tubsite right by the netpot. The resulting waterfall aerates and mixes the nutrient solution, doing away with air pumps, lines and stones altogether! Six tubs typically hold up to 100 gallons of nutrient solution, which is topped up as needed and changed halfway through.
A lot of this stuff has been running for some time now. For example, I designed and built this RDWC system several years ago.
A big visual change is that I used to run curved trellis panels in order to best control the distance between HID lamp and leaf. That turned out not to be a good idea, and in any case the upgrade to COB LED rendered the technique obsolete. So goes the Super Silo, may it rust into pieces... Now, the two rows of plants on flat panels look just like a hallway with really killer wall art! The upside is that I might finally be able to take a decent picture of it, lol!
The Chilling System; I'm upgrading to a 5 Ton chiller with hot gas recovery. This unit will provide both cold and hot water to my home and op. The cold water will service the heat exchange coil in the control bucket I mentioned, as well as the water cooled air handlers. These both cool the air and remove moisture by condensation. The hot water will provide dry heat for dehumidification, home heating, domestic hot water, garage heat, hot tub heat, a driveway ice melting system when it gets repoured, and who knows what else? Lol Hey, it's MY heat; I've already paid for it AND paid again to remove it from my grow, so it only makes sense that I get to do what I want with it! If all those things sound like great money savers, you are definitely paying attention.
There's much, much more to this whole hot mess, but that's the overview. Y'all have been caught up!
Feel free to heckle but bring your A game; everything is the way it is for good reasons, so it will take better ones for me to make changes. Frankly, that's meant more as an invitation for discussion and constructive debate than a challenge to a pissing contest. I'm all about implementing the best ideas and I give few fucks about where or who they came from.
churchhaze
Well-Known Member
I doubt inrush current will be any bigger of a problem than HPS ballasts. I'd just see how many you can put on the circuit reliably (guess and check). My setups are pretty small so I don't have real experience with this.
WestDenverPioneer
Well-Known Member
I doubt you're pulling enough amps to trip anything but a relay might be what you're looking for.
ttystikk
Well-Known Member
Thought of this, might try it. Downside is that it's all 240V so the devices will be more expensive.
ttystikk
Well-Known Member
5400W = 22.5A@240V, plenty to trip a thirty amp breaker if initial inrush current spikes to double running load. This is a similar situation to running a large electric motor; spinning it up to speed pulls a very big initial spike in the amp draw, but once it's up to speed it draws relatively little. This is why there's always a capacitor on your AC unit, to provide a boost for that initial spike.
ttystikk
Well-Known Member
Hmmmmm. Wish I'd known that before I went to Home dePot! I'm kinda committed now.