hydroponic Going to Hydroponicw

[frosty]

 
I followed your old thread where you did this and did it myself (I am in the same area -- it gets hot).
 
I took five 5-gallon buckets, cut them to about 2/3 of their height, dropped 2 gallon fabric grow pots in each one (which leaves around 3/4 of an inch on each side for breathing room), then I have a 27 gal. reservoir pump water/nutrients into each bucket via 1/2" pvc pipe. The water drains back into the reservoir via gravity (the buckets are elevated). It makes for efficient use of the water since it doesn't take much to fill up the plant buckets. It looks something like this
 
                    |  |      |  |      |  |      |  |      |  |
____________________|__|______|__|______|__|______|__|______|__|
\             /
 \-----------/
               res                     bucket        bucket         ...             ...
 
For "soil" I used 50 / 50 sphagnum peat moss and perlite with 1 tablespoon of lime per gallon. I actually only need to fill up the res about once per week, even during the summer, but my plants only get direct sun til about noon and my reservoir doesn't get much direct sun. The pump runs once per day for 2 minutes to water the plants. The buckets get about 3/4 of the way full and then the pump shuts off and the water drains out in about 2 minutes.
 
It has worked really well, although I only got one good wave of peppers before the summer heat came on. I'm hoping some fruit set as it starts to cool off over the next few months. I only have habaneros growing in them and they don't seem to tolerate the summer heat well.
 
The only problems have been the "elements"..... bugs, heat, storms. But that goes with any outside setup.
 
I also tried DWC with 5 gal buckets and while that worked fine, I didn't have much luck getting pods on there. I don't know if it had to do with the heat or what. Anyway, it was too much maintenance refilling them so I gave up on those.
 
The flood and drain method above is low maintenance, which I love (duh). It is also VERY quiet, unlike DWC.
 
Thanks btw.

I hope no one minds the minor digression from the thread. 
You made some changes I thought of and some I didn't.  I may tweak your design and do another glog next year.  When you think of the costs of watering, amending clay or building raised beds you may have come up with a very efficient way to grow in our area. Buckets are free. Tubing and a pump are cheap. I don't know how much it costs to run an aerator. 
 
If you had grown super hots you could sell two plants and paid for your whole system. Maybe one plant.
 
Everyone told me you couldn't do outdoor hydro. 
 
Now I'm off to design ver 3.0

 

[LawrenceJ2007]

Ok no you're completely fine! more info for us!

 

[fuxtik]

You made some changes I thought of and some I didn't. I may tweak your design and do another glog next year. When you think of the costs of watering, amending clay or building raised beds you may have come up with a very efficient way to grow in our area. Buckets are free. Tubing and a pump are cheap. I don't know how much it costs to run an aerator.

I remember you mentioning that it would be nice to be able to water a smaller area, like not having to flood an entire container when the plants themselves don't take up that much space. That's why I thought of the buckets. Well I basically ran into the same dilemma myself. Originally I had a setup similar to yours but the plants started getting so big that I had to space them out more, and I didn't want to have to have a huge reservoir (or multiple reservoirs) to serve them.

I had a small little pump I was using to circulate water in the reservoir but I ended up using it for something else so the water just sits in the reservoir. It might help if I had some airstones in there but it hasn't been a problem yet. I'll check it every few days and give it a little blast from the hose to mix things up if I need to. I hose out the reservoir once every few weeks.
 

If you had grown super hots you could sell two plants and paid for your whole system. Maybe one plant.

Funny you mention that... I'm actually growing four yellow 7 pod brain strains inside under a 400 watt hps light using the same method. Without the weather and bugs to screw with them, they are doing GREAT and growing super-fast. They are only about 6 weeks old though. Maybe the crops will pay off, though I pretty much do it for my own amusement.
 

Everyone told me you couldn't do outdoor hydro.

Yeah that's all I kept on reading -- that the reservoir would get too hot and the plants wouldn't be able to make it and absorb any nutes, etc.
 

Everyone told me you couldn't do outdoor hydro.Now I'm off to design ver 3.0

Do it! I'll be anxious to see what you come up with!

I'll post some pics of my setup later.


..... that all said, I did have a couple man-made disasters which came from me screwing with the programming on my timer. One day I accidentally forgot to set an off time -- when I got home from work all of the buckets were full of water and my pump was just pumping air (which can break it, apparently). It had been sitting that way for 10 hours. All the plants and hardware survived though.

.... but then a few weeks later I decided I was going to change nutes in the morning so I turned off the timer. I forgot about it til about 1pm and my plants were all shriveled and droopy. They lost a lot of leaves and looked like shit for a while, but they are growing back. So be warned that the pics are not indicative of how they should currently look.

That brings up a point... there's no failsafe in my system if for whatever reason the pump doesn't shut off or there's no power and the plants don't get watered. I think I am going to put in an overflow system for my inside setup... that is a disaster waiting to happen. It would be easy to do actually... just drill some holes on the sides of the buckets, attach PVC, redirect to reservoir...
 

Ok no you're completely fine! more info for us!

*thumbs up*


FWIW I have only been using Floranova Bloom for nutes. The water is ph-balanced to around 6-6.5 ish. I just approximate the nute strength and ph.

 

[Jeff H]

 
 
Yeah that's all I kept on reading -- that the reservoir would get too hot and the plants wouldn't be able to make it and absorb any nutes, etc.
 

 
 
Someone needs to tell my scorpion that outdoor hydro won't work. It hasn't quite gotten the message yet. 
 

 
 
Flora duo nutes 50:50 at 700ish ppm 

 

[Vegas_Chili]

 
 
Someone needs to tell my scorpion that outdoor hydro won't work. It hasn't quite gotten the message yet. 
 

 
 
Flora duo nutes 50:50 at 700ish ppm 

That's a beautiful beast you got there . I'm using the same nutes, I tried it on one plant already but idk if it's ok or not. Do you use a specific dose or do you measure the PPM? Might be a stupid question, but I thought I'd ask.

, Walter

 

[Jeff H]

That's a beautiful beast you got there . I'm using the same nutes, I tried it on one plant already but idk if it's ok or not. Do you use a specific dose or do you measure the PPM? Might be a stupid question, but I thought I'd ask.

, Walter

 
Well, my specific recipe is 1/2 cup A, 1/2 cup B and 1/4 cup Cal Mag+ and enough water to fill up the reservoir 15ish gallons- maybe more but I never measured. total ppm is usually 900 or so but 200 of that is the crap in my tap water. With my 10 plants all full grown, the ppm doesn't stay that high for long. It will quickly go below 600 and can easily get below 300 before I change nutes every 10 days or so. 
The plants do great without tons of nutes. I've actually done more damage than good over the winter with too high a nute concentration. 

 

[Vegas_Chili]

 
Well, my specific recipe is 1/2 cup A, 1/2 cup B and 1/4 cup Cal Mag+ and enough water to fill up the reservoir 15ish gallons- maybe more but I never measured. total ppm is usually 900 or so but 200 of that is the crap in my tap water. With my 10 plants all full grown, the ppm doesn't stay that high for long. It will quickly go below 600 and can easily get below 300 before I change nutes every 10 days or so. 

The plants do great without tons of nutes. I've actually done more damage than good over the winter with too high a nute concentration. 

Nice, I did just a gallon mix to try on one plant. I did 1Tbs of each A and B, and the plant seems fine. Maybe I can kick it up a notch. I have CalMag+ as well that I never used, so this is something I'll try. If anything goes wrong I'll just get a PPM meter.

Which PPM meter would you recommend?

Thanks for the help, I know this will help others as well .

, Walter

 

[fuxtik]

. . .
I'll post some pics of my setup later.
. . .

 
Submersible water pump sits in reservoir and  pumps water out through 1/2" pvc pipe.

 
A single line of pvc pipe runs underneath each bucket.

 
I have "T" connectors (and an elbow at the end) with a 1/2" threaded tubing adapter (found at Lowe's or Home Depot). I drilled a hole in the bottom of each bucket and slipped a 1/2" rubber grommet in there (found online or in hydro stores). The tubing adapter goes through that to feed water into the bucket. The grommet grips the adapter tight enough that no water leaks out the bottom. Originally I used only pvc & adapters without the grommets but I had problems with water leaking when the bucket filled up.

 
The tube and grommet stick up about 1/4" from the bottom of the bucket. This may not be necessary, but I cut some plastic to put underneath the pots which elevates them off the surface of the bucket (found at Lowe's... not even sure what it's for). I figure it gives a little breathing room on the bottom for the roots to grow and reach for. Plus since the grommet sits a little above the bottom of the bucket, there's some leftover water at the bottom of the buckets after watering. So by elevating the pots I keep them from sitting in it. The amount of water is really probably negligible though.

 
And the pot sits in the bucket.

 
 
One other thing that was important was making sure all the buckets were level and at approximately the same height, so they filled up to consistent heights between them.

 

[LawrenceJ2007]

Nice systems everyone! Also nice Scorpion up there, did you find it hard supporting it once it became bigger?