Waterfarm Mods & Tips

The problem I had when using a stand along WF was with the hydroton. The small pcs. that fall into the bottom of the bucket. Some stay in suspension near the bottom, and when draining they plug and slow the flow of the water, almost stopping it. An air stone would almost guarantee a clog.. With the stand alone WF you just blow into the drain tube and it clears.
I'm planing a 3 bucket grow in modified WFs and I'm using the filters that are used in bubbler's to prevent clogs. The the filter needs to be trimmed to fit tight in a 5/8" long pc of 1/2" ID blue vinyl hose. That short pc of hose goes on the part of the 1/2" barbed connector that sticks through, past the grommet ontheinside.....



You'll need to make a change in the way you put on the three way fitting on pumping columns. Rotate the tee 90* and use a hole the brown tube went in.. Funny thing, the brown tube is slightly bigger, so you need a couple wraps of Teflon tape for a snug fit.. Don't push the pumping column past the side opening in the tee, that's where the water goes over the side of the stand pipe. I haven't made the stand pipe support yet , but it is a very necessary part of the set up.

I can't seem to get the pics in the order I want..

This post will be edited in w/pics later.

To say this is a modified WF is stretching it a bit.. I'll only use the pumping column and hydroton.. Using an 5 gal igloo for a WF isn't the cheapest way to go, and this setup takes two. 25$ each at Chinamart. It adds about 4.5 gal to the 3.5 gal in the grow chamber for a total of 8, with about 5 gal available to the plant. The plan is to start with 65*f water and a frozen 2L water bottle in the reservoir, and then run for week, with frequent checks, and frozen water bottle changes.. I'll run it in my spare bathroom at 80*f room temp on a 12/12 heat cycle and we'll see what happens. I have high hopes..
Most of the through container parts and insulation come from Home Depot. I'll make a list...The rest of the parts, online, or a hydro store. I can't post a link, but, Greentree Hydroponics is the cheapest WF parts store. When you buy the complete WF pumping column, the grommet that comes with it fits the hole in igloo perfectly. Like it was made for it.. The only other fittings you need are two 1/2" straight barb connectors, and one.1/2" barb Tee and a plastic valve to plumb in a drain hose.. The Tee will go in line at the reservoir for the drain. The 90* 1/2" barb that comes with a complete column doesn't stick out of the igloo far enough to be used alone. The hole is somewhat recessed.
The screen support on this one is 1/2" PVC, 24"x30", and is for a friends 400 watt grow. A 30"x30" is about as large a screen as I would use.
The orange column supports, and the shelf I couldn't resist making, are from the bottom of a HD 5-gal bucket.
The stand pipe needs the top support because if it were moved from side to side, that could cause a leak where it enters the reservoir.
The holes were drilled with a 3/4" hole saw. Measure up 2-1/2" up from the bottom on the outside. You can not drill the hole straight through. It needs to be at a slight upward angle,just a little. Put a ruler inside of the igloo and let it stick out and you can see the angle of the inside wall. Drilling at a slight angle will compensate so the washers will lie flat on the inside and outside.....

What you see in the pics is a dry fitted complete single plant system for show and tell. I'll edit in a list of parts and assembly pics later. I only live 50 miles from the new hottest place on earth and have a real problem with reservoir temps...

I am having trouble also getting my pump that I hooked up to ciruculate properly. When I crank the orifice down so that it doesn't overfill the first bucket, the pump stops pumping. It must be getting clogged. So then I opened it up a bit and drilled a few holeds in the hose to let more water out and that didn't seem to work either. I went back to the pumping column again for the time being but my boyfriend is going to try some things so if he comes up with something I will let you know. Why do you want the water to pump so fast anyway? Are you having problems with Can't help with the chiller issue. I am going to use a chiller with mine but only have an 8 bucket system and 2-600 bulbs but don't need it yet. I have my res outside the room so it stays plenty cold right now.

The WF is designed to pump water from the last bucket into the reservoir.. Not from the reservoir to the buckets. A gravity leveling system, such as 8 WFs can't handle the increased water volume of a water pump, not without changing the 1/2" tubing to a much larger size.. I only use air pumps so I can't advise you on how to overcome your pumping problems.. You're designing a new system before you ever get the one you bought working... You started changing it, now you need to keep changing it till you get it to work.. Or go back to the pumping columns.. I don't understand the need for a water pump. I've ony tried to increase the recirculating speed of the water by adding two more water pumping columns..... Funny how changing one thing can fuck everything else up..

howdy mytwhyt, i admire your focus and hard work creating your modified waterfarm. Its rather slick looking. I and i can tell your very crafty and a talented engineer. I never had a problem with hydroton going into the root bucket. Did you modifiy your extra drilled holes too big causing the hydroton to fall through them. I never had a pump clog problem thank good ness.
I havent attempted connecting 2 waterfarms yet .
Good luck with everything. and thanks for the heads up and suggestions.
Peace
Amber

Subbed to come back n read through. Good mods

I can't speak for her but i was trying to increase the water flow because with my chiller the temp in the res is 65. Once the water travels all around in series through my 10 buckets it is 79 in the final bucket before coming back into the res. It doesn't circulate the water fast enough to keep temps consistent.

I must admit I did drill the holes a little larger than they should have been in my first farms... Now that I've switched to baskets I have the same problem. The solution was to pick out the largest pieces of hydroton and layer the bottom of the basket with them... Even the smallest pieces don't fall through the side openings.. Here's my last grow without an attached reservoir and no recirculating.. AK48 She's drinking a little more than a gal. a day. It's in 24"x42" screen. Camera angle doesn't do her justice. Day 58 12/12

Tdubb, You could change the system so buckets 1&10 are taking water from the reservoir and buckets 5&6 are plumbed to return the solution to the reservoir..You could make that return tube 3/4". With the extra pumping columns, and the same water not having to pass through all 10 buckets to get back to the reservoir should help keep the temp of the return water lower...

For the buildup i soak mine in h2o with peroxide 30min and it's mostly all gone

I have not got over the mod Heath has on a w/f. Tree was the word.
I did not read every page here,but I saw some good looking mods.

i need to make a lid for my aqua farm to turn it into dwc (hydroton is a waste imo)....any ideas
???

Lemon king said:

i need to make a lid for my aqua farm to turn it into dwc (hydroton is a waste imo)....any ideas
???

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they should have the lids at your local store If not google search 'ROPAK' thats the company that makes the buckets they will send you a sample pack out if you BS into thinking your buying some. I am a huge fan Of deepwater drip systems at the moment I have the 16xl from CCH20 and it top feeds 2x's a day ,Im diggin it !!

Lemon, if you don't like hydroton and want to do dwc, try one of the dwc threads.. This one's about waterfarms that use it... Your dislike for hydroton will have an echo there....

mytwhyt said:

Tdubb, You could change the system so buckets 1&10 are taking water from the reservoir and buckets 5&6 are plumbed to return the solution to the reservoir..You could make that return tube 3/4". With the extra pumping columns, and the same water not having to pass through all 10 buckets to get back to the reservoir should help keep the temp of the return water lower...

Click to expand...

Super long delay for some follow up here, but as they say- better late then never. MYTWHYT, I really appreciate your tips about reworking the plumbing in addition to adding multiple pumping columns. Both proved to be good solutions for one 4 bucket Waterfarm setup, but nothing seemed to work for the 10 bucket setup. 2 additional waterfarms were added to a waterfarm 8 pack bringing the total up two ten, and are setup in two rows of five. I've only gone through one grow with this setup, and early on it became clear the single pumping column was not recirculating things at a fast enough rate. I have a chiller running in line pumping water out of the control bucket, into the chiller then the cooled water returns to the brain. The issue was the cool water recirculating so slowly had little impact on buckets 5-10. A temp could be 65 in the brain bucket and between 65-67 in 1-5, but shit got wild in the second row and water temps, PH and PPMs could be drastically different and effected the growth of those plants in row 2. I've grown before and I know that its a bit like cooking because its not a perfect science, but when nutrients being delivered to the plants are so different due to things not recirculating properly its gotta get fixed because it does effect yield.

So just a little run down of how that turned out for me. Two of the ten plans ended up being hermies and one was an accidental auto flower seed the breeder must have mixed in, so i was reduced to 7 plants. The yield ended up being about 2 & 1/2 lbs which wasn't good but wasn't bad either for a run that literally seemed to have a problem at every turn.

Now I'm in between harvests and before I even think about starting another crop I need to fix the setup. I was thinking of upgrading all the skimpy stock 1/2 inch tubing with 1 inch tube, and add a small pump in the res to really make this a recirculating system to keep the nutrient solution more consistent throughout. What I'm wondering is if anybody else has done this? I'm also wondering what type of fittings i should use for the upgraded pluming. The 1/2 fittings that pop in on each bucket that came stock with the setup were amazingly easy because they just pop in and no caulking is needed. Going up to 1 inch I gotta widen the existing prefabricated holes to make way for the 1 inch fitting. I know there are a million ways to do this and am no expert plumber so I'm looking for the easiest most painless way possible. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

I will be putting my babies under a V-scrog soon and have been getting in the practice of refilling the waterfarm through the top with the help of a funnel. My question is when it comes to using pH down, how do I get that into my solution effectively? Obviously I can't drop straight onto the hydroton (or can I?...doesn't seem right), should I just pour a few drops in a bowlful of pH'd water and then pour that in through the hydroton? Or should I drop it directly in the blue drain tube? I have done the blue tube once before and I didn't like that because it seems to effect only the water in the blue tube too long for my liking, giving me exaggerated low pH readings from my drain tube. Once the net is on these guys I wont be able to lift them up to access the rez, so I really need to figure this small, but annoying part out!

kush try collecting a bigger sample thru the tube. the tube only holds a small amount.

So you are saying, collect a large sample (like a cupful or bowlful) test it for pH and then add pH down to that bowl/cup and pour it back in through the hydroton?

no....what you said is you didn`t like the sample that was in the tube..........twist the tube down ward, till you have water flowing and get your sample that way......i always toss samples.......seeing it was for testing i guess it wouldn`t hurt to pour it back in, i toss samples simply out of habit.