Originally Posted by RobMar

Kick ass setup.

Originally Posted by tree farmer

Im not sure when you talk about commercial res prices. I was refering to the 5 gal pail your putting the nozzels in. i have used all kinds of containers to house the LP nozzels over the years and it all depends on what your going to use as a cover and how many plant sites per container.
ive used 5 gal pails before with 10 inch net pots that just drop right in, no cover needed. I vegged with them and they worked very well but i never took anything to full maturity in the 5 gal pail. judging from what i saw just veging 3 weeks in the 5 gal pail id say if your doing one plant per container dont let them get over 8 inches before flipping them or theyll probbably cause some blockage by the time you finish them up. of coarse this depends on the lighting youll be using and the strains. I almost always used sat dominent strains with vertical light though and these sat dom. are a little different than the indies.

Youll be having some good run off with those nozzels so id advise at least 3/4 inch drains to help ensure when the roots matup on the bottom they wont slow down the draining process and cvause an excess of water to back up in your drain lines. I acutually use to use 1 inch but looking back i think 3/4 would of been fine.

i know you probably cant get to this on this run but something i learned that worked very well was to take a piece of simi rigid poly used for irrigation 1" and form a circle with it the size of the inside of the 5 gallon pail(if thats what your going to use) use a barb fittinfg to connect the ends so you have a circle that fits inside the 5 gallon pail. then take and put some plastic mesh over the poly circle you made and finally cover the plastic screen with some silk screen. Now you can put this in the bottom of the 5 gallon pail and it will keep the roots out of the runoff and keep them from plugging your drains. If you cut some short pieces of PVc and use them as legs you can lift the screen circle any hieght off the floor of the pail you want. It works very well to keep them roots that will matt up in the bottom from being waterlogged all the time cause the 5 gallon pails wont drain completly.This can cause problems at least it did me. not always but once it happens youll wish you would have lifted the roots off the container floor. Most people dont know this but roots wont grow thru fine silk screen yet water will pass right thru. ive used it for years and never had roots go thru. Ive got it over the drains in my new system and thier just growing over the top of the silk screen like it was the container bottom.

If you have alot of flow it doesnt matter if the roots are laying on the bottom but it sounds like youll be cycling the mist. im not sure how much runoff youll have with those nozzels either . All the nozzels i used were less than the 10gph.

I dont know if you caught it in my thread but i used utility sinks (approx 20 gallons)for the root chambers on my new system cause it eliminates the problems of water at the bottom of the container since sinks drain completly. they were on sale for like 20 bucks.of coarse then you have to make a cover. just something to think about for the future if you deciede to change containers.

i think you definatly want some sort of valve to release any excess flow that the nozzels arent using back to the res. Because if the flow is to low for the pump with the number of nozzels your currently using then the load on the pump will be excessive and might cause premature fauilure or might heat up the solution more than normal. Ive used those types of pumps and there good for quite a few nozzels but im just not sure if its going to heat up your solution to much running all the time. When i ran those pumps i used them in conjuction with accumulator tanks. they never heated up the solution then but they only ran for maybe 5 minutes every hour.I guess it depends on where the res is and if the return lines are insulated etc. The nice thing is once you do a run if you want to add an accumulaor tank it wont cost nothing but the tank price (around $100)cause youll already have everything else.

Have fun thats whats important

Originally Posted by The Mad Hatter

Just a few bonus shots here:



Keyence pressure sensor amplifier... These are really slick units... Wide range of pressure/vacuum sensing with different pressure heads. Lots of operating modes (The manual is 14 pages of charts and graphs), 2 alarm outputs that can drive a transistor, and one analogue voltage output that I will be feeding back into a display system. This is a demo that Keyence lent me, unfortunately they didn't make with the 4 units I requested (cheep bastards) even after I pressed the flesh and made nice with there rep... And they didn't even get the right pressure head so this one "only" does -80PSI/+15PSI but it's let me proto the interface side of things at least... And I managed to find a new sensor on ebay along with a complete gauge which is not quite as slick as this one... But it'll do...

Just in case you were wondering they told me that these units run a few hundred each! Suddenly analog pressure gauges from Harbor Freight don't look so bad




This is the actual sensor head... Beefy looking little sucker eh? Sitting under it is my bench supply for the amplifier.

Originally Posted by The Mad Hatter

Yeh... McMaster really is great... Nice catalog... And cad files for lots of stuff too. I'll let you know if the fittings stay solid...

I've personally tried the 2 nozzles I posted about one full cone, one hollow cone... No really appreciable difference as far as I'm concerned... I ended up going with the full cone just figuring on root mass blocking parts of the spray pattern so I figured it was better to have the full pattern. I also tried 2 of the brass nozzles, the fogger that sprays onto a pin point seemed to dribble a much as it misted and the volume was lower... And the fancy $20 nozzle with the helix cut -- have not put any water through this one yet... But I'll post up when I do.

The room is roughly 14x14, mostly subterranean ... Concrete walls and floor, stays nice and cool. And I have another one thats about double that size that I can expand into when I need it.

The solenoids are 120V AC... Probably should have gone with the 24V DC variant, but it made them simple to test this way... And I have an opticly isolated triac output board that I'll run them through so it shouldn't be to bad... But that company I posted about for the DIN sockets in your thread has some slick parts that really got me thinking. They have cords with a bridge rectifier in them that are suppose to drive AC solenoids and eliminate the buzz while prolonging coil life... And they have a clear gasket sort of thing for the low voltage solenoids that has blue (I think Ga LED's are blue...) LED's in it that lights up when the solenoids on... Honestly I thought the ones I ordered were suppose to have an indicator light, but they did not...

I'm not to concerned about it all working out in one shot -- most things don't -- and like you said, as long as you have fun doing it things will work out in the end... One of the things I learned working at a high end body shop was that a lot of the time -- well 2 things really... Things that look like they are simple usually involve a lot of technique this is not readily apparent to a layperson... Simple things like running a file over so metal, or making a nice bead with a welder... And rarely do the people doing them consciously think about this... A lot of them couldn't even tell you what they are doing on that level... It's just automatic... You find a stroke that works and it becomes part of muscle memory... And the second is that a true craftsman is never intimidated when he has to do something a few times to get it right... Things take time, and as long as you can see it through most of the time you can make it work out... Everyone screws up... The difference is knowing how to fix it

I'm guessing most people see the topic and just think "Oh gee... A new pump... Good for you... Now will someone please tell me what nutrient mix to use so I can grow a pound every 2 days? Does anyone know why my plants are turning spotted and the leaves are curling under? I don't have a camera and I'm not sure what Ph I'm running... But the spotts!"

Hehehe that's kind of cold... Had more then my share of nute problems and they can be damn hard to figure out... One looks like the other and when you get more then one going it becomes damn near impossible.... Best damn thing I EVER learned was to just dump the solution, feed them something week for a day, and then start off fresh... The stuff is just too cheep to spend a bunch of time second guessing whats swirling around in your buckets.

I also noticed that one one of the pages McMaster has one of those air fed siphon nozzles like you and treath have been talking about... Probably not an atomix or anything... But it seemed pretty similar with the adjustment knob and all... That is one of the lame things about McMaster... You never know who actually makes the stuff until you get it in the mail... Sometimes it's obvious... And you do have to love the nice illustrations... But it can make judging fit and finish a bit of a problem.

T.M.H.