4 Site RDWC with RES, Water Cooled 457W LED, 3.5X3.5 [WIP]

So just finished planing the rest of my room and thought it was time to do a write up.

First off
Budget:
Water cooling parts for LEDs come out to about $200 USD


Parts for the RDWC:
Mostly had other then 1 extra bucket, some pipe a pump and fittings.
Come out at $100USD but bought it locally so dont have screen shot of parts.


Already have the LEDs so the only extra price there is going to be to extend some wiring and make brackets to attach to water blocks.
4X CREE 3070
1X Citi 058-1825

Safety:
Ontop of fuses and breakers have the LED drivers AC wire up to a relay which requires the water pumps RPM to be higher then 800rpm to trigger on.
$8 worth of parts

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Room layout:



Pictures sort of explain everything.
Main thing is the water cooling is there so heat can be remove straight out the exhaust in summer, Then dumped back in the room during winter.

Return to res bucket will be raised to the height I want to maintain the other buckets at which will be about half way. This will also make flushing and draining easier and allow me to run lower total volume while they arnt drinking too much to save on total nutes used.

Middle LED Citi 058-1825 ran @ 257W will remain off during veg.
Plants will be trained towards the middle. 2 sets of toppings and 4 weeks veg should achieve good coverage.

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First parts are starting to arrive but as you can see on the Ebay parts list some have a bit of a wait.
Next proper update will be when I have all the parts but feel free to ask and questions or point out any where I can improve on my room setup.

Your pump may struggle. you've got a lot of 90* turns and if it has to pump against gravity it may not work.

ya from your specs you pump is going to be working really hard better off getting a bigger one if you can find it.

Specs on the pump said it had a 3M head lift height.
Accounting for all the hops and radiator mount point I have about 1.2M head.

hey you can always use it and if you need more get a bigger 1 later

majins said:

Specs on the pump said it had a 3M head lift height.
Accounting for all the hops and radiator mount point I have about 1.2M head.

Click to expand...

1.2 m head PLUS all the added resistance from the high number of right angles in your setup. I really doubt you will get any flow with that pump tbh.wouldn't be surprised if you need a pump 2 or 3 times the power.

Food for thought I have a 700 liter per hour pump rated at 10 watts and with zero head it comes out at barely a trickle after going through 6 cooling blocks flow stops completely if I even put like 1 foot of head on the setup

Granted though fluid flow rate through your system in my opinion is the least of your concerns as long as there is flow. airflow through the radiator will have a far greater impact on efficiency

what size piping on are you doing on the buckets?

Shugglet said:

1.2 m head PLUS all the added resistance from the high number of right angles in your setup. I really doubt you will get any flow with that pump tbh.wouldn't be surprised if you need a pump 2 or 3 times the power.

Food for thought I have a 700 liter per hour pump rated at 10 watts and with zero head it comes out at barely a trickle after going through 6 cooling blocks flow stops completely if I even put like 1 foot of head on the setup

Click to expand...

Guess ill see when its all ready to be tested but I feel it will be fine since Im using the same pump on my PC and that is far more restrictive loop being 4 high restriction GPU blocks and 1 high restriction CPU block though 2X 360 radiators. with 1M head height.
The blocks im using on the LEDs look to be very low restriction.
But in the case its not enough I have a 2nd pump I was going to keep as a back up in case of failure that I can always add into the loop.
From my experience the water flow rate doesnt have to be much, When I was dialing in the overclock on my computer I found slower flow rate actually cooled better then having the pump going full speed.
Probably from spending more time in the radiator if I was to take a guess.

JimmyGrow said:

what size piping on are you doing on the buckets?

Click to expand...

38mm, (1.5inch)

Blocks have arrived.
Bracket designed and should be cut out tomorrow.

Brackets made up.
Going to be a time of time involved in cutting the LEDs off there old heat sinks since I used thermal adhesive on all the 3070 chips. But atleast its not as bad as cutting a IHS off a CPU.
Still waiting on Fans to arrive for the radiator. And need to pick up some angle alloy bar to make frame up.

Shugglet said:

Your pump may struggle. you've got a lot of 90* turns and if it has to pump against gravity it may not work.

Click to expand...

You may want to think about a chiller, whether it's a diy or bought. Root rot is a bitch to deal with.

Dont skimp on either of your pumps. If you can afford to spend a few extra bucks, go bigger. I spent a lot of time figuring out the correct sized pumps for the 4x4 I'm designing. From all the advice and formulas, I'm going to use either a Danner Supreme 1200 (gph) or 1800 (gph). And for the air pump I'll be using an Alita 80 LPM. These might seem like overkill (at least I thought so), but when talking to the pros on RIU, and using the formulas to determine what was optimal, that's what I came up with. The choices were also confirmed. Not saying that's what you should get, especially with a budget, but it should show the importance of these two components.

https://www.amazon.com/Supreme-Danner-ASP02718-18-Water-Aquarium/dp/B006OOO8PO/ref=sr_1_1?s=pet-supplies&ie=UTF8&qid=1455055516&sr=1-1&keywords=danner+supreme+18

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006H68U5I/ref=twister_B019RJ5OIW?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

JSB99 said:

You may want to think about a chiller, whether it's a diy or bought. Root rot is a bitch to deal with.

Dont skimp on either of your pumps. If you can afford to spend a few extra bucks, go bigger. I spent a lot of time figuring out the correct sized pumps for the 4x4 I'm designing. From all the advice and formulas, I'm going to use either a Danner Supreme 1200 (gph) or 1800 (gph). And for the air pump I'll be using an Alita 80 LPM. These might seem like overkill (at least I thought so), but when talking to the pros on RIU, and using the formulas to determine what was optimal, that's what I came up with. The choices were also confirmed. Not saying that's what you should get, especially with a budget, but it should show the importance of these two components.

https://www.amazon.com/Supreme-Danner-ASP02718-18-Water-Aquarium/dp/B006OOO8PO/ref=sr_1_1?s=pet-supplies&ie=UTF8&qid=1455055516&sr=1-1&keywords=danner+supreme+18

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006H68U5I/ref=twister_B019RJ5OIW?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

Click to expand...

Never had to use a chiller and iv been running DWC for a few harvests now. I just change the res twice weekly.



Past crop has finished and been trimmed. Its just hanging now in the room drying. 5 hours to cut and trim up with 2 of us.
Estimates are looking at 1.5lb once its dried with it coming in at 13lb wet. Extra 257W of light made quite a difference.

So got on to laying out and have come up with it like this being the easiest to plumb up.
Just need to get the riviot gun out and secure everything then trim off the excess on 1 side.






Should hopefully have it wired up and leak test it over next weekend. Then move the clones into the room.

Flushing it now, Need to make bracket up for radiator and pump to mount too as well as a little support bar for the first long feed bit of pipe since it cant support it self when full of water and pump off causing it to slightly kink.
Flow looks very good with only 7V power adapter. 12V will be more then enough flow

https://vid.me/ESGC

1 Harvest completed using the lighting setup and 4 site RDWC.
Didn't really document it since had way to much going on in my life. But have just started next seasons grow and will try to fully document it and have made some changes.

First change is I got a new bigger tent.
6.5X4X4 ft
It was a 4X4X6.5 but I have put it on its side to give more horizontal area.
Ill be keeping the same light since it did wonderfully other then the res needs to be topped up again after 4 weeks and cant see any leaks.

Second change iv ditched the 4 site and gone to twin 3.2X1.9X0.8 ft under bed storage containers.
Will have 3 plants in each one.

Issue I had with the 4 site was the Plants got heavy enough to break the lids then fall in and tip the bucket over.
The storage containers lid is much stronger and will be SCROG'ed for some extra support.
The two containers will still be RDWC and connected using my existing hardware.

Final change is the tent isnt inside my house anymore.
Since rules have relaxed and your allowed more then 4 plants now I dont have to hide them inside so I can have my 4 out door plants going.
Also I have automated a lot more of the measuring and logging.
I have EC,PH,Temp and Humidity sampled ever hour and logged to a spread sheet.
As well as a 24 hours IP Cam stream hooked into my home security system which should give me some nice time lapse videos come the end of this season.

At day 15 all ready. Looks like iv missed the boat for setting up RDWC between the 2 tubs since first one already filled out the screen quite a bit and my clones for the 2nd tub only just showing roots.
Here is my plan for a 30 day veg and the datalogging so far.


2nd tub ready to have clones put in and trained.



And the tent.


Ones in pots transplanted today from solocups about 24 days old from first sign of roots.
Middle one my mother plant.
Can see clones under bowl.
And DWC plants in tub started 15 days ago from rooted clone.

Switched to Flower today.


Did a shit load of thinning out of the under growth since it wont see any light, Couldn't even see the stalk before I started so surprised to see its massive.




Here is how the res has behaved over the VEG period.


Blue line = What the reading was.
Red line = What I adjusted it to.
Yellow = Average between reading and adjustment.


Power draw is getting a bit out of hand. Sitting on 602W while the heat exchange and dehumidifier are running and iv still got another 200W of lighting to switch on in a weeks time when the last flowering plant finishes up from last lot (Slow sativa strain from a random seed)

Flowers have started to show on Day 14 of 12/12. Not sure why but stretched went on for a extra 5 days compared to the last 10 times iv grown these clones which has really messed up my SCROG height.
Wanted to have 12inch from the lights by the time the flowers show and right now im at 9 inches.




Massive dip in EC and PH on day 5 of 12/12 which was the last day I ran veg only nutes.
Day 6 switched to 80% flower and 20% veg nutes.
Day 12 switched to 100% flower nutes.



Have power draw sitting on 780W with 1 LED dimmed slightly since iv had to change the arrangement of them to get good coverage.