Tripp's hillbilly flooded tube copy

This is my low budget stateside copy of the great Heath Robinson's flooded tube vertical. I am currently into the 2nd week of flower and the growth rate is insane. This is my first attempt at hydro, it feels like I'm cheating somehow. My soil grows have all been pathetic...I'm tired of drooling over online bud-porn and wish to have some of my own. I started with a notebook and a close review of Heath's thread. Then a trip to Lowes and I started cutting pvc. The first piece of advice I can give is to make a straight frame FIRST. I pretty much put up 2X4s and quickly cut pvc based on Heath's thread. Then I duct-taped everything to see how it all came together. Buy lithium grease for the pvc fitting or you will be in for a workout. If I had spent more time on the frame I would have had a much easier time fitting-nothing seemed to want to line up correctly at first.
Another problem was my circular saw was too small for 4 inch pvc, I had to rotate the tube with one hand while running the saw with the other. Not easy when you are alone with 9 feet of tube sticking out. That's all for now, more to come!

more pics please
love the frame
please note it takes time to dial everthing in for hydro
so dont give up, it may take a few grows to master a setup
what size light r you going to use

After levelling the frame and adding braces for support I cut more pvc. Ended up making quite a few runs to lowes and harbor freight. I also needed to come up with an alternate way to hang the pipes, as the clamps used in the original were not available. I didnt like the j hangers at lowes so I improvised with large tie wraps..they work very well.

Man I'm so glad to see this thread rolling. I've had Heaths rolling through my dreams and I wish I had the card count to roll this system. I guess all I would have to do is get ten more patients so that I could build my 2.2 gpw super secret vert pipe. Gotta say though it does look like that self joining pipe heath used was pretty sexy compared to the pipe types we have over here. Although I did spot some 6 or 8 inch interlocking pipe like heath used at a water pipe specialty shop. I keep asking heath if he's given the sure to grow hail a shot in any of his systems but to no avail I had to test it myselft to find out its pretty sweet not rincing the hygroton. Algae however apppears to be the first enemy. How many mothers are you rockin to come up with the plant count required?

love this wood frame and the ties are a gr8 idea

I'm sure you've already debated the notion of tilting the net pots out a little bit. I wanted to see if you were putting in the dam like heath did too?

By far the worst part of this project was the glue. I used an old body shop respirator and tried to do as much as I could in an open garage before moving it all back to the vert. Just nasty work. The worst part was the day after I finished I found an online supplier of euro soil pipe in pennsylvania...D'OH!!!!!
The euro soil pipe is gasketed and doesn't require glue. My next build will use this stuff.
After it was all together I covered as much of the tubes as I could with aluminium tape from lowes. The walls and roof are made of dow construction foam. (Fan fold foam in the radio control world). Its cheap and easy to cut/use. I then spray adhesived mylar to the whole thing and made sure it was nice and dark inside. I made a mylar flap at the first 90 degree down, which is where you can enter the vert. I started with a small 396gph pump and a 1/2 inch tube at the endcap....not nearly enough flow. So i added a 633gph to the res with garden hose and stuck it in an open site.
I also had to knock out the half-moon dams at the end of the runs because the roots were slowing everything down, had some yellowing. After a few teaspoons of hydrozyme and the dams gone all was well again.
I'm not going to use dams at all, just let the clones have nice long roots before putting them in the vert.

so you surgest not useing damn at all just let the roots grow long enuff

im wondering how you would keep the tube flooded without the dams in the early stages. wouldnt just be like a white water NFT?

trippgordon said:

This is my low budget stateside copy of the great Heath Robinson's flooded tube vertical. I am currently into the 2nd week of flower and the growth rate is insane. This is my first attempt at hydro, it feels like I'm cheating somehow. My soil grows have all been pathetic...I'm tired of drooling over online bud-porn and wish to have some of my own. I started with a notebook and a close review of Heath's thread. Then a trip to Lowes and I started cutting pvc. The first piece of advice I can give is to make a straight frame FIRST. I pretty much put up 2X4s and quickly cut pvc based on Heath's thread. Then I duct-taped everything to see how it all came together. Buy lithium grease for the pvc fitting or you will be in for a workout. If I had spent more time on the frame I would have had a much easier time fitting-nothing seemed to want to line up correctly at first.
Another problem was my circular saw was too small for 4 inch pvc, I had to rotate the tube with one hand while running the saw with the other. Not easy when you are alone with 9 feet of tube sticking out. That's all for now, more to come!

Click to expand...

Sounds Dangerous ,In the future just use a hand saw , it will cut like butter

IAm5toned said:

im wondering how you would keep the tube flooded without the dams in the early stages. wouldnt just be like a white water NFT?

Click to expand...

im guessing the root mass gat so dense
they started actting as damns themselves

maybe, try making a damn slot so that you can insert and remove as needed, at the start of the grow you could have a real high damn like a 3/4 moon damn. gr8 for starting clones right in the tube. then when they root insert a 1/2 moon damn then when its time to flower or when the roots are at there thickest go no moon

thats what i was thinking.... hard to make that rotating collar without the ring/seal fittings though.
whats sucks, really bad, about the ring/seal, is that it aint cheap

how did i miss this scribed

IAm5toned said:

thats what i was thinking.... hard to make that rotating collar without the ring/seal fittings though.
whats sucks, really bad, about the ring/seal, is that it aint cheap

Click to expand...

that is prolly why heath made it using that moving ring thing because when the roots get big you may not need a damn at all

but that "damn slot" idea is not a bad sub. and a hell of a lot cheaper (its all about saveing right)
plus it allows you to use you tube system as an all-in-one (clone, veg, flower)

That 5hit said:

that is prolly why heath made it using that moving ring thing because when the roots get big you may not need a damn at all

but that "damn slot" idea is not a bad sub. and a hell of a lot cheaper (its all about saveing right)
plus it allows you to use you tube system as an all-in-one (clone, veg, flower)

Click to expand...

Yeah the moving damn is fine but believe me the roots just explode in a very short time when they hit the running water...I wasnt able to completely remove the damns anyway, that plumbers goop stuff is permanent, I just stuck a sharp knife in the last open site and sawed off as much as I could. I used sour cream lids. I will design the next one to just flow open.
The picture here is from March 1st, the first week of 12/12 and since I was using mostly bagseed there are still males in this picture.

still very nice

it does not look like you have done much prune ing

I changed most of the res today with great value distilled water from walmart. I also had to chop 12 males from the tubes, they were mostly sativa anyway, which is too lanky for this setup. I have already had to use fishing line to tie the remaining females to the roof. They were starting to stretch right into the light. I found a really nice purple wreck clone on the far side of the vert, I have never had these grow like this in soil and am including a pic from when I was standing in the vert. This may be the proper strain for this, I will know in a few weeks. I added some new kush and PW clones on the left and am including a pic. I have been using Ionic nutes from day 1 and it is utterly simple. I bought a truncheon and have been running 1.0 EC the whole time, with PH between 5.8 and 6.0. I found that 1.0 EC is really not that much, I think it comes out to about half what is recommended per gallon on the bottle. The plants obviously are quite happy so thats how I'll keep it. The vert floor is dirty in the pics because of the newly pulled males, otherwise I like it really clean.....some hydroton got into the res as well which were cleaned out. The res is a lowes rubbermaid storage bin.

That 5hit said:

it does not look like you have done much prune ing

Click to expand...

I haven't really done any....this is my first experience in hydro and I've never grown more than 3 plants at a time so its a bit overwhelming. Heath said to cut the lower weak growth but do you have any pruning advice?? There are branches everywhere here.....its just now starting to show little white hairs and buds so I dont want to mess anything up!

i would do more tieing back
maybe even get a screen for them
cutting away lower growth is a + make each plant concentrate all energy on the main colas