Aero/NFT Grow in Tent w/ CO2, AC, Dehumidifier, and DIY Chiller

AKGrowAreo

AKGrowAreo

Well-Known Member
letdown shifty said:
Now your thinking is right on track with mine, and I'll be working out the details when I setup the new grow. I was thinking along the lines of 55 gallon food grade barrels for my res, with 3 installed. 1 for week 1-4, 1 for 5-7 ( maybe 8 ), then a flush res. Working out details in my head.
-Shifty
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Lets keep each other informed of our mods since we are both in the process of building. I broke ground on the new room last night. It'll be finished by this weekend! Check out the pic! 7' x 11' is what the final plans ended up as. Cant wait for the 8' ceiling!IMG_3704.JPG
 
ThaMagnificent

ThaMagnificent

Well-Known Member
AKGrowAreo said:
No worries on all the qs.

That would be the my pump relay. Its a rather ghetto version of an HID hub that allows you to activate as many as 7 pumps at a time with out putting all that amp load on your expensive cycle timer. The cycle timers are rated to somewhere between 9 amps and 18 amps, so when you start up more than one pump at a time you are pulling 7 to 9 amps per pump and if you are running more than 2 pumps on a cycle time that will be enough amps to quickly FRY your cycle time and potentially flip the breaker. Mine is built from an HVAC 50 amp double pole contactor ($9 bucks on Amazon) that acts as a relay and some other parts I had laying around. There are very primitive instructions posted by @andyman somewhere in the first 200 pages of @StinkBud 's "harvest a pound every three weeks."
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so the aqua pumps pull that much power just to start up? The specs for the 400gph say 24watt, but you're saying they draw a couple amps just to turn on every 4 mins on a timer? I was wondering how you could run multiple pumps on the same cycle without having to buy multiple timers
 
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letdown shifty

letdown shifty

Well-Known Member
So about a half hour playing on the tablet, finished with this prelim drawing. 2nd floor divided into flowering room, and room for cloning & veg. 16'×12' flower room will be divided by panda film into 6'×12' areas with a 4' walkway. Thinking ill find a way to sink the reservoirs into the floor. Best I can do with my mental state. New project 160223232704.png
 
AKGrowAreo

AKGrowAreo

Well-Known Member
questiondj42 said:
My big issue is the pump doesn't come close to draining the res.
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That is a true issue my friend. To aid in this issue I was able to put ball valves in between my rails and my main line to the pump so that when I close those two valves and open my valve to the hose 100% of the water pressure goes to pumping out the res and mo water goes into the rails. This will still leave you witha half inch or so of water so I have a cheap shop vac to suck out the rest.
 
AKGrowAreo

AKGrowAreo

Well-Known Member
ThaMagnificent said:
so the aqua pumps pull that much power just to start up? The specs for the 400gph say 24watt, but you're saying they draw a couple amps just to turn on every 4 mins on a timer? I was wondering how you could run multiple pumps on the same cycle without having to buy multiple timers
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So yeah they do draw up to 9 amps at start up and yes that will damage your timers. Some go out in a day when overloaded, some take a year to die, some light onf fire and kill you and your entire family. Just kidding, but not really cause that could actually happen.

Unless all this makes perfect since, don't even mess with it cause you could electrocute and kill yourself if you do it wrong, no joke!!! I am honestly hesitant to even explain this because I would feel horrible if someone tried and got hurt. So if you are not 100% confident in this please just buy a prebuilt version of one of these (its pretty much just an HID hub, search google), or hire an electrician to build it for you.

If you do understand all this, then you can build it yourself for tens of dollars rather than hundreds of dollars off the shelf.

So trying to explain this all in layman's terms...you cut the middle of a cord on a heavy duty power strip and strip the wires. The contactor/relay that I was explaining above has two sides with 2 connections each, and 2 sides with 1 one connection each. Connect your positive and negative wires to one of connections on one of the douple sides, then the other end of the power strip gets connected to the other end of the contactor the same way. The grounds get grounded, duh.

On the other sides of the contactor there are 1 connection point on each side. Grab a cord from a lamp or something, cut it, strip it and connect the positive to one side and negative to the other. This cord you just added will act as your "trigger cord," and what this does is keeps the power to the strip disconnected from the power source unless the trigger cord is plugged into a good power source.

So plug your trigger cord into your cycle timer, then you plug your power strip into your power source, plug your pumps or whatever you want to run into the power strip and now you can operate high amperage devices using your low amperage timers. This will work for running multiple lights, timers, or whatever. You can also get contactors that will run 240/220. Pretty fucking cool, huh?

Contactor Link - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004Z0RLL2?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_search_detailpage

ONCE THIS IS BUILT THERE WILL BE LIVE WIRES AND CONNECTIONS EXPOSED. YOU NEED TO HOUSE ALL THIS IN A JUNCTION BOX OF SOME KIND. NEVER ALLOW THIS TO GET WET!

You mentioned that you run 1 min on and 4 min off. That will work, but many others including myself and @superstoner1 have had greater success with 80 seconds on and 8 minutes off. Keeps your nute solution cooler by a few degrees and dries out the roots better and in theory will encourage them to search for water and nutes, thus grow at a faster rate. I would recommend trying it. Its definitely worth paying the extra $50 to get the adjustable timer. There is much more research to be done on the subject.
 
AKGrowAreo

AKGrowAreo

Well-Known Member
letdown shifty said:
So about a half hour playing on the tablet, finished with this prelim drawing. 2nd floor divided into flowering room, and room for cloning & veg. 16'×12' flower room will be divided by panda film into 6'×12' areas with a 4' walkway. Thinking ill find a way to sink the reservoirs into the floor. Best I can do with my mental state. View attachment 3615284
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Dude, so sick! One suggestion for you though, if you are running co2, you may want to consider throwing up a wall with some drywall and studs instead of panda film. Reason being that you will be way more efficient at cooling your flower room that way. My current AC is ver inefficient because the tent material does not insulate well, just like panda film doesn't. That why I am building the room.

Just a thought. You have probably already considered that.
 
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