Get a Harvest Every 2 Weeks

VictorVIcious said:

I am sure that all sump pumps meant to pump water out of a crock and put it on the ground outside need a check valve. ...

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Good to know.

You don't need to adjust your height on the fly to make sure you get overflow and there is not any purpose in doing so unless you just like the sound. A 500 gallon/ hour pump will pump the same amount of water in a given time period all the time.

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Yes, but the same amount of space isn't always available for the water--the roots will eventually fill up the cups and less water will be needed to reach the same flood level. I'd rather it go somewhere other than out the bottom of the cabinet and onto the appliances below.
With the overflow I can run the timer for the same amount of time--always-- and the water will always reach the same level--and if the overflow is adjustable I can vary that level depending upon the needs of the plants (higher when they first go in...) I don't need to constantly fiddle with the flood time as the cups fill up faster.

You are making a project out of a job. Throw that check valve away and let the system run, measure the height of the water, when its were you want it, about 1/2 the height of your pots is adequate, set your timer to run that amount of time. It will always pump that amount of water in that amount of time. KISS . VV

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I'm not dealing with all that, myself. I just wanted to point out that a looped system will accomodate pumps that a single fill/drain line will not. Including external inline transfer pumps or sump/utility pumps. I'd agree it's unnecessary for most situations.

Well, I like the idea. It covers the problem of an overflow tube, and extra drain for that. Especially if your res supplies more than 1 tray, they will fill at different times so you have to run the pump long enough for all trays to fill, and most would overflow into the overflow drains.

Kinda like the multi-bucket system with a level controlled in all by the level in one bucket.

HTH

Maccabee said:

I've been running the system for a couple weeks (without any plants in it) to make sure it's sound. So far, so good. Soon I should have some clones ready to go in. We'll see how it goes.

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i would love to see an actual pic of the thing up and running, that would be great... or maybe you dont have a camera, idk..

I don't, and I'm afraid to try and wedge myself into the corners I'd have to in order to take pics with my notebook. I'd probably smack it into something and crack the screen.
My cell phone cam is too crappy to produce useful pictures, really.

I'll see if I can borrow one from someone in the family.

Al B. Fuct said:

WDWYFL, I happen to be a distributor for hydroponics equipment. I checked one of my supplier catalogues and I find this notation under the listing for RW floc I buy:



It'd be a pretty good guess to say that the sort they sell and hence the sort I have is 'absorbent.'

I've always thought that this sort of floc holds too much water, prompting my shift to Fytocell. It's possible that a mix of absorbent and repellent RW floc might be a better solution to excessive absorbency of the Grodan floc than Fytocell. Fytocell has some serious drawbacks; it's messy, doesn't clump and it floats.

I'll look into sourcing some repellent type floc and have a try. Thanks for asking this one. Perfect example of why I bother posting this stuff. I occasionally get great tips like this.

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have you gotten a chance to try this yet. I think I might go this route considering the fact I'm having a hard time finding fytocell.

Hello Al, have just noticed your pruned plant pics, this is something I am trying to get to grips with.
Any chance of a breakdown as to how you do yours ?

much appreciated

I couldnt find anywhere with the fytocell. I am going to try putting hydroton then some coconut put the clone in the rockwool and then place hydroton on top and see if that works!

bigal10 said:

have you gotten a chance to try this yet. I think I might go this route considering the fact I'm having a hard time finding fytocell.

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havin the same problem with finding the fytocell to so im gonna try this to, or maybe try a perlite and rockwool mix...

DaveM said:

Hello Al, have just noticed your pruned plant pics, this is something I am trying to get to grips with.
Any chance of a breakdown as to how you do yours ?

much appreciated

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at the end of week 1 and week 3 in the flowering cycle he CHOPS everything from the BOTTOM THIRD of the plant. EVERYTHING and this allows air flow and fuuler growth on the top end. i think if you check his gallery he even has a comparison for you to see.

insanestang4life said:

I couldnt find anywhere with the fytocell. I am going to try putting hydroton then some coconut put the clone in the rockwool and then place hydroton on top and see if that works!

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i to considered this, starting in rockwool cubes then putting about 2" of loose rockwool in the bootom of the pot and fill the rest with rocks and place the rooted colne in there. however cleaning or disposing of rocks may be out of the lazy question. might be leaning to a rockwool perlite mix, or repellent/absorbant mix of rockwool. good luck tho stang..

Originally Posted by DaveM
Hello Al, have just noticed your pruned plant pics, this is something I am trying to get to grips with.
Any chance of a breakdown as to how you do yours ?

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yep

cmak40 said:

at the end of week 1 and week 3 in the flowering cycle he CHOPS everything from the BOTTOM THIRD of the plant. EVERYTHING and this allows air flow and fuuler growth on the top end.

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spot on, thanks.



Please pardon the cooked leaf tips- a bit of heat damage which happened before I installed the cooltubes. Plant on left is properly pruned for SoG. Plant on the right is one which I inadvertently missed pruning.



Note annoying little buds on improperly pruned plant. Just as many leaves to trim off on these lower branch buds as on the uppers, but it is characteristic of the growing habit of cannabis to produce its largest buds on the tip of the mainstem with smaller and smaller ones as you move down the plant. May as well not grow that part of the plant.

BUDGI posted a comment to my pic gallery, suggested the 'Fresca Sol' water cooled cooltubes.



I think these are great stuff and they would give you viable options for a powerfully lighted op when you just don't have the practical ability to sustain moving about 200CFM worth of air through air cooled cooltubes.

However, the makers say that you need 50gal (189 litres) of dedicated water reservoir per 1000W light. I simply do not have room for 378L worth of reservoirs to cool my pair of 1000s in the flowering area. I also prefer not to have to maintain the water cooling system. It surely would need periodic maintenance, topping up the cooling water tank/s, etc. However, I would bet fungal growth would be minimal due to circulation of the water past a strong UV light source. Seen several water sterilisation units which use essentially this arrangement but with a UVC fluoro lamp.

These look like a great solution for ops where you just can't conveniently dump cooltube air anywhere, but there's some trade-off in convenience compared to air-cooled cooltubes.

Sorry Al, I just realised the mistake. I was looking at the COP photo of pruned plants. I have read your thread and understand the pruning when doing the SOG. I am growing the plant normally not SOG.
Any idea whose that crop was, he may help <weg>

thanks

No prob, Dave.

Unfortunately, I suspect the grower who owned those plants may not be so easy to contact these days.

The cop photo:



The way you get plants like those is to lop the mainstem, encouraging branching. You might veg for a couple of weeks before initiating flowering, but I suspect it'd work OK just by lopping at the beginning of 12/12.

Cheers Al

I have one question about the hydro system that I couldn't find using the search (still haven't gotten around to the whole thing.) Exactly how does the water pump turn off when the tray is correctly flooded and how is the level controlled while the tank is being flooded?

What are the essential components to the pumps in a flood system? I'm guessing pump, timer, tray fitting, tubing, and...

so youre always in 12/12 right? do you skip the veg nutes? what is your feeding schedule like? what products do you use?
great post, not enough sog info out there.

Kuji said:

I have one question about the hydro system that I couldn't find using the search (still haven't gotten around to the whole thing.) Exactly how does the water pump turn off when the tray is correctly flooded and how is the level controlled while the tank is being flooded?

What are the essential components to the pumps in a flood system? I'm guessing pump, timer, tray fitting, tubing, and...

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See here:

Simply Hydroponics - System types

royalewithcheese40 said:

so youre always in 12/12 right? do you skip the veg nutes? what is your feeding schedule like? what products do you use?
great post, not enough sog info out there.

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Thanks for that.

All your queries' answers are in the first few pages of the thread.

Yes, the flowering area runs 12/12/365.

The mums run veg nutes. They are under 24/0 lighting and are flooded 2x/day. I use Canna nutes.

So there's no mechanism that blocks the water from reentering the resivouir, it just goes back by itself? This means that the tray is constantly flooded for those 3-5 minutes and the water returns to the resivour freely, right? I was under the impression that the tray was flooded, water sat there for a minute or so, and was then released back by a valve or something.

Thanks for the link btw.

Kuji said:

So there's no mechanism that blocks the water from reentering the resivouir, it just goes back by itself? This means that the tray is constantly flooded for those 3-5 minutes and the water returns to the resivour freely, right? I was under the impression that the tray was flooded, water sat there for a minute or so, and was then released back by a valve or something.

Thanks for the link btw.

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exactly...there is an overflow set to the height you want or the height of how high you want the table to flood. so when the pump turns on it flows up into the table and fills contantly while the pump is running till it hit the overflow at which time it will run back in. now when the pump stops. becaus ethe overflow is 2+ inches from the bottom of the table the pump itself lets the water flow backthru it to drain thus "flood and drain" its very simple and shouldnt need any more explanation than that. it only needs to be watered to get the medium wet, youl probably flood a couple times a day depending on your medium but it just has to get wet.

Kuji said:

So there's no mechanism that blocks the water from reentering the resivouir, it just goes back by itself? This means that the tray is constantly flooded for those 3-5 minutes and the water returns to the resivour freely, right?

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yep!

I was under the impression that the tray was flooded, water sat there for a minute or so, and was then released back by a valve or something.

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nope, no valves (unless you're Maccabee, then there's several ).

It is the overflow tube which sets the max level. It is the trickery of a centrif pump that allows water to gravity feed backward through it once power to the pump is shut off which allows water below the overflow tube level to return to the res tank.

Thanks for the link btw.

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No worries. One of my faves. Great info for new hydro system builders.