The new pump...

TMH
Your system is looking like its coming along well! I had a pause in my building process due to getting off of opiates... Its been three weeks now and I am feeling better, actually feel like getting back in there and start building again. Its amazing what 5 years of morphine and oxycontin and whatever else i could get my hands on will do to you. Anyway, I just spent a lot of money on Eric Clapton tickets(Front Row!) so its still going to be a couple of months before i can get mine setup. But yall keep up the awesome work and I'll post my progress when I actually have some and not just parts laying in my room

mad hatter: love the craftsmanship, but the strainer should be on the suction side of the pump with the cup down.

travish413 said:

TMH
Your system is looking like its coming along well! I had a pause in my building process due to getting off of opiates... Its been three weeks now and I am feeling better, actually feel like getting back in there and start building again. Its amazing what 5 years of morphine and oxycontin and whatever else i could get my hands on will do to you. Anyway, I just spent a lot of money on Eric Clapton tickets(Front Row!) so its still going to be a couple of months before i can get mine setup. But yall keep up the awesome work and I'll post my progress when I actually have some and not just parts laying in my room

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Wow man, congratulations! That's no small feat, I'm glad your feeling good and things are going okay.

Enjoy the concert and take your time planning what your going to do.

T.M.H.

laughingduck said:

mad hatter: love the craftsmanship, but the strainer should be on the suction side of the pump with the cup down.

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Thanks man!

I figured it should be on the output, the pump is not self priming so I didn't think it would be able to start up with the strainer on that side...

The system is going to be drain to waste so there really won't be anything worthy of filtration going into the pump... It's really just keeping any rust from the pump out of the lines and nozzles.

That and I'm pretty sure I could make apple sauce with that pump if I wanted to

T.M.H.

tree farmer said:

wow 140 psi you were getting out of that thing. man you dont need a different pump if that thing can pump up to that pressure.

get the accumulator and set it for around 80-100. that should fire those nozzels real nice. and that pump should be able to pump the accumulator to those pressures easily.

that is surprising that the pressure has went down that much. i know i wouldnt rest until i figured out which component was doing it. or if it is the extra piping.

do you have the model number of the pump id like to look at the specs. i went to harbor frieght but didnt see one that looked quit like yours. is that thing around 1 hp.

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Well the 140 was measured with a gauge from harbor freight too, so maybe that's their legendary quality.

I'll play around with things a bit, I can tweek the peak-hold feature on the electron gauge... I might have just been seeing a spike before.... But one way or the other I'm getting to the bottom of it.

I've worked the pump over pretty good, it started as this:

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=1479

25 foot total lift, 333 GPH, 1/2HP.

I was really only looking for a more silent pump, but it sounds like the pressure tank with take care of that problem.

T.M.H.

The Mad Hatter said:

Thanks man!

I figured it should be on the output, the pump is not self priming so I didn't think it would be able to start up with the strainer on that side...

The system is going to be drain to waste so there really won't be anything worthy of filtration going into the pump... It's really just keeping any rust from the pump out of the lines and nozzles.

That and I'm pretty sure I could make apple sauce with that pump if I wanted to

T.M.H.

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i do agree with the idea of the filter down. i think thats the way thierr suppose to be positioned. dont know this for sure but have never seen one horizontal. now as far as where the filter should go i have mine right after the pump but before the accumulator. the idea is to catch anything going to the nozzels and that includes something coming off the pump. i use to have 2 filters one before the pump and one after the pump but the pump didnt work as well having to suck thru the filter so i removed it. now that i have an elevated res it probably could go back in and work fine but after one run with the single 1 micron absolute filter i only had 4 misters clog and that wasnt even completely. i just removed them and put in new ones. 16 dollars no big deal. changed the filter after the first run. still looked good but figured i changed all the tubing might as well replace the filter.

i installed the new nozzels and man they fire nice. only half the water as the first ones i had. when you try to blow thru one by sticking it in your mouth you cant even get anything to blow thru. the other ones i had you could blow a little air thru. i hope they dont clog easier but the guy told me they dont. anyway he said if they do just soak in descaler overnight and take a tiny needle and stick it in the orifice and there good to go. we'll see.

one thing to make sure of though is that your filter housing can withstand the pressure youll be sending thru the system from the accumulator. my housing is rated for 125 psi with 100,00 cycles from 0-100psi. i saw a video of a housing explode and it isnt pretty. a constant pressure rating isnt the same as when your going from o to say 100psi instantly. some filter housings cant handle that kind of cycling. although mine doesnt see the solenoid firing cycles because its before the accumulator so even though it could handle the constant cycling its not subjected to it. something to think about.

tree farmer said:

i do agree with the idea of the filter down. i think thats the way thierr suppose to be positioned. dont know this for sure but have never seen one horizontal. now as far as where the filter should go i have mine right after the pump but before the accumulator. the idea is to catch anything going to the nozzels and that includes something coming off the pump. i use to have 2 filters one before the pump and one after the pump but the pump didnt work as well having to suck thru the filter so i removed it. now that i have an elevated res it probably could go back in and work fine but after one run with the single 1 micron absolute filter i only had 4 misters clog and that wasnt even completely. i just removed them and put in new ones. 16 dollars no big deal. changed the filter after the first run. still looked good but figured i changed all the tubing might as well replace the filter.

i installed the new nozzels and man they fire nice. only half the water as the first ones i had. when you try to blow thru one by sticking it in your mouth you cant even get anything to blow thru. the other ones i had you could blow a little air thru. i hope they dont clog easier but the guy told me they dont. anyway he said if they do just soak in descaler overnight and take a tiny needle and stick it in the orifice and there good to go. we'll see.

one thing to make sure of though is that your filter housing can withstand the pressure youll be sending thru the system from the accumulator. my housing is rated for 125 psi with 100,00 cycles from 0-100psi. i saw a video of a housing explode and it isnt pretty. a constant pressure rating isnt the same as when your going from o to say 100psi instantly. some filter housings cant handle that kind of cycling. although mine doesnt see the solenoid firing cycles because its before the accumulator so even though it could handle the constant cycling its not subjected to it. something to think about.

Click to expand...

Trust me on this one, the filter can be positioned in any orientation. Generally they do go up and down though it's not required. There is enough of a seal between the inside and outside of the element that nothing is getting past. Think about it, if it's going into system that's nominally pressurized at 40+ psi (home water system) and there is a gap or flex or anything you will get blowby. Now a strainer with a mesh basket might be a different story, but I've seen these used for years in all sorts of orientations.

I'm not just being stubborn for the sake of it though I'm looking to reduce as many bends in the system as I can, it's arguable or course, but I'm not sweating it

I do appreciate the advice on the pressure rating though... Hopefully having a tight band on the pump control like Atomizer was talking about will help reduce the shock... Because I can immagine one of those going really badly... Frankly I'm sure it would be much worse then an accumulator tank going... And accumulator is more then likely going to pop on a seam... The filter houseing though is more likely to explode. Some sort of scatter shield might be prudent there... I'll look into that when I frame the little pump tower in... I was going to leave it as-is... But I figure if I'm going to stick the accumulator on there then it's going to need some more support.

Likely I'll put together a little aluminum frame off the base of the pump that extends out and supports the various components in some way.

I've been trying to get a new vid up on youtube... For some reason though the damn thing keeps on coming out all screwed up... I wish they would provide prescice specs so I could just encode it properly myself... But good news and bad news... Good news is I tested out on cycles of 0.5sec and it works rather well... As does pointing the spray bars up... Though I can't honestly say they dribble that much anyway, the solenoids tend to hold the lines pretty well (which becomes evident when I pop on off and the water runs out). Bad news is that removing the flow gauge does not seem to have added more then a few psi to the system... Though it does make the response slightly more crisp.

I'll post something up when I get the vid to work... I have to say, I really did not expect it to work quite this well, and I'm really excited to see it with the accumulator in place.

Oh yeah... The other thing I did was add a 10 second priming spray at the start of the program to flush any air out of the lines... I'll be fielding with that a bit more to see if I can make it shorter... And perhaps just make it a manual thing since the lines seem to hold so well once they have been flushed.



Cheers,

T.M.H.

New vid up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S7hpV7BBm4

Captions pretty much cover it, but I added a prime command that runs the sprayers for 10 seconds when the program first starts to flush all the air out of the lines. Dropped the spray time to 0.5 sec (still running a quick off time for the sake of testing). I'm in the process of refining the code for the pump control right now, but once that's done I'm going to play with the timings a bit more and see just how short I can get that.

What do you guys think about firing the nozzles up from the bottom of the buckets? Assuming leaking is not an issues (and my testing thus far indicates it won't be) this would midigate a number of issues including eliminate the need for ADVs.

Cheers,
T.M.H.

Hi TMH
It might be my dodgy eyes or crappy monitor but i don`t see the mist in the vid

I found the best way to test nozzles is to video a nozzle firing close up and load the vid into virtualmoddub, its a free program. (http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtualdubmod/files/)
Cut both ends off the vid by stepping through frame by frame to leave only the misting pulse. This will tell you the exact misting duration from start to finish accurate to 100th of a second and includes all the real time pressure variation/run on delays etc
Collect all the water from one nozzle using the same timer setting. From the exact mist duration and nozzle liquid measurement you can calculate the nozzle output for a given misting pulse. It can turn out very different to the nozzle specs or the timer setting.
For example, TF`s old nozzles delivered 8.6ml of actual liquid with a 2 second pulse instead of the expected 4.7ml..very strange as it suggested a 15.6LPH nozzle flowrate.
The nozzle spec should be fairly accurate (8.51LPH), so in reality the real life 2 second timer pulse was closer to 3.6 seconds at the nozzle including pressure variation and mist run-on

Atomizer said:

Hi TMH
It might be my dodgy eyes or crappy monitor but i don`t see the mist in the vid

I found the best way to test nozzles is to video a nozzle firing close up and load the vid into virtualmoddub, its a free program. (http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtualdubmod/files/)
Cut both ends off the vid by stepping through frame by frame to leave only the misting pulse. This will tell you the exact misting duration from start to finish accurate to 100th of a second and includes all the real time pressure variation/run on delays etc
Collect all the water from one nozzle using the same timer setting. From the exact mist duration and nozzle liquid measurement you can calculate the nozzle output for a given misting pulse. It can turn out very different to the nozzle specs or the timer setting.
For example, TF`s old nozzles delivered 8.6ml of actual liquid with a 2 second pulse instead of the expected 4.7ml..very strange as it suggested a 15.6LPH nozzle flowrate.
The nozzle spec should be fairly accurate (8.51LPH), so in reality the real life 2 second timer pulse was closer to 3.6 seconds at the nozzle including pressure variation and mist run-on

Click to expand...

the misting looked very good on my monitor. very crisp and short enough to not drench the roots by the looks of it. although only real world test will determine for sure.

the problem with the bottom up idea that i can see is if you achieve what your aiming for (fine fluffy roots) it might not take very long for that nice mist to get choked off. of coarse again thats something you can probably adjust for and i cant say for sure that will happen just something to think about.

if i had to worry about the choices between some dribble without ADVs or misters getting choked off id go with the dribble. cause i dont have any ADVs on mine and as ive stated i do get a little dribble on a couple nozzels but nothing that seemed to hinder the root development in any way.

id love to have the crispness ive seen in atomizers videos with advs but its just not practical on this tree system.

also looking at the length from the spray bar to the end of the nozzel if you would come from the top down how far down in the bucket do you think the nozzel end would be. if its quit away down then it might not give you the dispersion like the bottom up design would.

what size net pot you thinking about using on top?

you gave me an idea atomizer. i have not yet put a cup under the new nozzels to see what is actually coming out. must do that im curious now. although looking at the mist firing into the open chambers sure seems like alot. i guess its cause i havent seen an open chamber in a long time and have maybe forgotten what the misting looked like then.

Atomizer said:

Hi TMH
It might be my dodgy eyes or crappy monitor but i don`t see the mist in the vid

I found the best way to test nozzles is to video a nozzle firing close up and load the vid into virtualmoddub, its a free program. (http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtualdubmod/files/)
Cut both ends off the vid by stepping through frame by frame to leave only the misting pulse. This will tell you the exact misting duration from start to finish accurate to 100th of a second and includes all the real time pressure variation/run on delays etc
Collect all the water from one nozzle using the same timer setting. From the exact mist duration and nozzle liquid measurement you can calculate the nozzle output for a given misting pulse. It can turn out very different to the nozzle specs or the timer setting.
For example, TF`s old nozzles delivered 8.6ml of actual liquid with a 2 second pulse instead of the expected 4.7ml..very strange as it suggested a 15.6LPH nozzle flowrate.
The nozzle spec should be fairly accurate (8.51LPH), so in reality the real life 2 second timer pulse was closer to 3.6 seconds at the nozzle including pressure variation and mist run-on

Click to expand...

Good call man... I know vdub well... I actually use it to recombine the audio in all those vids so I don't have re rerender it in after effects...

I had actually planned to make the time code in the corner go red when it was running, but I got lazy

Need to get me a graduated cylinder too cuz' I do want to know how much I'm actually dumping out there...

Looks like when the bar is pointed straight up the cycle is visible from:
00;00;23;10 - 00;00;24;06

26 Frames, at 30FPS I'm going to ignore the fact the the final vid is rendered at 29.97FPS for the sake of decimal places... You know... Save an electron... Save a tree

So... 26/30 = .86 sec per shot when set to 0.5 sec on...

That is the full time the spray is visible, both starting and until I can no longer see anything at the tip of the cone... And it's not easy to see... Just look for the door to get whiter... Looks like around 00;00;23;25 or so the pressure starts to drop because the cone angle starts to narrow again indicating that the solenoids have closed and pressure in the line is dropping... Really got to get that second pressure sensor hooked up so I can plot it...



Cheers,
T.M.H.

I used the body of a 10ml syringe with my finger over the end. A chunk of black poly behind the nozzle shows up mist quite well if you place the camera pretty close to the nozzle.

tree farmer said:

the misting looked very good on my monitor.

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My recent pc upgrade renewed everything except the monitor..its on the list

I`d recommend using a nute syringe for catching the mist, nothing escapes and it gives you an instant measurement. I stick the nozzle in where the plunger normally goes and close off the other end with a finger. Sounds similar to an expresso machine.

tree farmer said:

the misting looked very good on my monitor. very crisp and short enough to not drench the roots by the looks of it. although only real world test will determine for sure.

the problem with the bottom up idea that i can see is if you achieve what your aiming for (fine fluffy roots) it might not take very long for that nice mist to get choked off. of coarse again thats something you can probably adjust for and i cant say for sure that will happen just something to think about.

if i had to worry about the choices between some dribble without ADVs or misters getting choked off id go with the dribble. cause i dont have any ADVs on mine and as ive stated i do get a little dribble on a couple nozzels but nothing that seemed to hinder the root development in any way.

id love to have the crispness ive seen in atomizers videos with advs but its just not practical on this tree system.

also looking at the length from the spray bar to the end of the nozzel if you would come from the top down how far down in the bucket do you think the nozzel end would be. if its quit away down then it might not give you the dispersion like the bottom up design would.

what size net pot you thinking about using on top?

you gave me an idea atomizer. i have not yet put a cup under the new nozzels to see what is actually coming out. must do that im curious now. although looking at the mist firing into the open chambers sure seems like alot. i guess its cause i havent seen an open chamber in a long time and have maybe forgotten what the misting looked like then.

Click to expand...

I guess there is no real reason I can't have both set up... I have enough leftover parts at this point...

As for the length I would just run them in the bottom through grommets. I've had a bucket filled with water for days with the level several inches over the nozzles and got no leaks.

Had not really decided on the net pots... Seems like it does not make much of a difference so I was going to go with the little 2" ones... But I also have 4" and 6" hanging around... I even have 2 of the 5 gallon size lids with the 6" pots built in.

I was frankly leaning toward the 2" because I can get a soilless plug that fits them nicely locally... Can't recall what they were... Recycled rubber and coconut fiber is what the guy said...

Rapid rooter grow plugs apparently... Recycled rubber my ass... And at $12 for a bag of 50 I got ripped off :-0

i use to use those rapid rooters in my lp systems. they do degrage over time and go into the system. i wouldnt dream of using them on this sytem cause things got to stay cleaner cause there is no high flow to wash shit out. especially if i was still in recirculating mode. now DTW probably could handle it but i still dont want the particles laying in the bottom of the chambers. i hate hydroton also. heres a pic of my newest idea.

tree farmer said:

i use to use those rapid rooters in my lp systems. they do degrage over time and go into the system. i wouldnt dream of using them on this sytem cause things got to stay cleaner cause there is no high flow to wash shit out. especially if i was still in recirculating mode. now DTW probably could handle it but i still dont want the particles laying in the bottom of the chambers. i hate hydroton also. heres a pic of my newest idea.

Click to expand...

Nice... Water softener pellets right?

The Mad Hatter said:

Nice... Water softener pellets right?

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there used in the fish industry as a biofilter media. they are weighted so they are almost as heavy as hydroton but dont hold much water like hydroton. i hope they work cause i am fed up with trying to clean both hydroton and lava rock. i need something clean right out of the box. they kinda lock themselves together with all the little prongs sticking out. im hoping with the roots going thru them everything will lock together into the netpot. maybe it works maybe it dont. gotta try something that will work and wont mess with PH.

Hey man. Nice one!
Looks like your really goin' for it. I didn't get a chance to read your whole thread, but this looks to be a TAG system, correct? Very good!
Can't wait to follow up on your work with a little more detail. Thanks for sharing!

MoN3yb4Gs said:

Hey man. Nice one!
Looks like your really goin' for it. I didn't get a chance to read your whole thread, but this looks to be a TAG system, correct? Very good!
Can't wait to follow up on your work with a little more detail. Thanks for sharing!

Click to expand...

Indeed... Although we tend to break the distinction down between high pressure aero (HP) generally 80psi and up, low pressure aero (LP) generally cutting off around 40 psi... And the other system designs like bubbleponics and such...

So many good system designs... No sense in knocking anyone's work