40+ lbs with 12 Plants in 2 Rooms on a Flip

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Gwhiliker

Gwhiliker

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Ya I think I want to try one 10k and one 3100k in each fixture and see how that goes, but after i get a normal product down a few grows and know what the difference is and not just speculating lol. Then I'll probably do one half of the table with one 10k and the ok ther leave alone to compare when I do. Or something, I have a lot of room for experimenting in there.
 
ttystikk

ttystikk

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Renfro said:
There are so many ways to spice up the Mac n Cheese, that sounds like a good one. Still though, I don't eat it much, just once in a while when I have a craving from childhood and then I want to have it like I remember it, plain jane. lol I am the type that eats a cheeseburger with nothing but cheese on it though.


You planning on hanging it vertical with a bat wing reflector? I love side lighting. I have a bunch of LED's I put together to replace 400's that I use on the ends of my rows.

View attachment 4705526

Save some watts, make less heat and give more even coverage. After I finish chopping room B, I will hang those and have them ready for next round. I have one already running and like the way it's working. Still have to do the power cords for these 7 but I am waiting until they are hung so I can get the lengths right as some will be a little longer than others but none will be as short as 6 or 8 feet.
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Those lights look sexy, bro. How many Watts? What color temp?
 
Gwhiliker

Gwhiliker

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theres a bit of reading to find what I'm looking for, but are your nutrient charts based off a 30-gallon res with RO water? do you by chance have a chat for tap water and around a bout idea of whats in your water? i know it's in here but ill be damned if I can remember where
 
F

F80M4

Well-Known Member
Renfro said:
Well a unit that small wouldn't use 240 volt power here in the US. A 40 pint unit is the smallest they make I think. 500 watts could be about right. Dehumidifiers are basically small AC units with the condenser coil located indoors. I have a Quest dual 205 that requires a dedicated 20 amp 120 volt feed, above that their line goes to 240 volt. It pulls 13.2 amps at 120 volts (1584 watts) and is rated at 205 pints per day. Of course air temperature and humidity have a lot to do with how much it will actually pull. It is ran to a floor drain so I dunno how much it pulls other than to say "enough". lol
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You can use the water from the quest bro
 
Renfro

Renfro

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So I put in some work breaking down the Ebb & Grow controller I bought to reverse engineer. As I had suspected it has some proprietary electronics internally, so I decided to use the controller on a larger sized container as my goal was to build an ebb and grow system that would utilize larger plant sites. This way I can obtain a deeper flood and have a larger root mass. I will use the 10 gallon carlisle bronco trash cans that I have been growing in with peat based mix. This will require a pretty large capacity reservoir and it will need more gallons per minute of pumping capability. I noted their pumps have the intake on the bottom of the pump, this allows the system to drain to a lower level as the pump is responsible for returning the nutrients to the reservoir between flood cycles.

Here is an image of the inside of the controller "bucket" unmodified.

20201021_145217.jpg20201021_145244.jpg

As you can see there are three float switches on one side of the site.

Two switches are located down low and are used to detect level during the pump down (returning the nutrients to the reservoir). The system is in this mode most of the time, so adding water to a plant site between flood cycles would trigger the upper of those two float switches to activate the pump to return the added fluid to the reservoir. The lower of those two switches turns the pump off when the level has reached the low limit.

I am assuming the upper float switch is a backup switch to cause the system to pump down whenever the nutrients hit that high limit. The two floats that slide up and down on the plastic rods are responsible for the maximum flood depth. So during a flood cycle if the upper switch is activated by rising water level it will stop the pump and if the water drops low enough that the lower of those two switches drops the pump is activated to add more nutrients from the reservoir.

All in all it's a pretty slick setup. They definitely did not make it easy to break down, gluing the wires from all the float switches into the strain relief fitting took some patience to deal with and not damage the float switch wires.

I documented each switch one at a time as I disconnected them. This had to be done so I could take the float switches out of the holes in the controller bucket. It wasn't really required for the bobber style switches but I documented their connections anyway.

Here are a few images of my completed 10 gallon bucket controller. I still need to drill the holes to run 3/4" or 1" to the sites but that's all that remains other than drilling the lid for fittings to the reservoir. A few zip ties also for the float switch wires to tidy that up.

20201021_171811.jpg20201022_120159.jpg

I had to figure out how to mount the bobber float switches so I got creative with some stainless steel angle brackets and some carbon fiber rods of the right diameter (3/8"). It's very stable and actually works better than I thought it would.

I am figuring that I will run multiple pumps in parallel to move the larger volume of nutrients unless I can find a larger pump with the bottom feed design that also meets the requirements for growing.

For shits and giggles here is a shot of the controller logic board, the "brain" IC doesn't even have any markings.

20201021_145259.jpg

My biggest concern with the system is root clogs. Running the same buckets with the peat based mix I don't have a problem with roots getting down into the bottom bucket, if they do it's just a little and they don't try to clog the drain fitting. There is about a 3 inch air gap between the little bit of remaining nutrients and the bottom of the upper bucket with the plant.

I am considering running perlite as the medium unless someone can talk me into something else. Anyone have any thoughts on the matter? I just don't want to wash that much LECA. lol
 
myke

myke

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Oh my. What have you done? Is this for a test unit or your switching your rooms? Haven’t been keeping up.
 
ttystikk

ttystikk

Well-Known Member
Renfro said:
So I put in some work breaking down the Ebb & Grow controller I bought to reverse engineer. As I had suspected it has some proprietary electronics internally, so I decided to use the controller on a larger sized container as my goal was to build an ebb and grow system that would utilize larger plant sites. This way I can obtain a deeper flood and have a larger root mass. I will use the 10 gallon carlisle bronco trash cans that I have been growing in with peat based mix. This will require a pretty large capacity reservoir and it will need more gallons per minute of pumping capability. I noted their pumps have the intake on the bottom of the pump, this allows the system to drain to a lower level as the pump is responsible for returning the nutrients to the reservoir between flood cycles.

Here is an image of the inside of the controller "bucket" unmodified.

View attachment 4721978View attachment 4721977

As you can see there are three float switches on one side of the site.

Two switches are located down low and are used to detect level during the pump down (returning the nutrients to the reservoir). The system is in this mode most of the time, so adding water to a plant site between flood cycles would trigger the upper of those two float switches to activate the pump to return the added fluid to the reservoir. The lower of those two switches turns the pump off when the level has reached the low limit.

I am assuming the upper float switch is a backup switch to cause the system to pump down whenever the nutrients hit that high limit. The two floats that slide up and down on the plastic rods are responsible for the maximum flood depth. So during a flood cycle if the upper switch is activated by rising water level it will stop the pump and if the water drops low enough that the lower of those two switches drops the pump is activated to add more nutrients from the reservoir.

All in all it's a pretty slick setup. They definitely did not make it easy to break down, gluing the wires from all the float switches into the strain relief fitting took some patience to deal with and not damage the float switch wires.

I documented each switch one at a time as I disconnected them. This had to be done so I could take the float switches out of the holes in the controller bucket. It wasn't really required for the bobber style switches but I documented their connections anyway.

Here are a few images of my completed 10 gallon bucket controller. I still need to drill the holes to run 3/4" or 1" to the sites but that's all that remains other than drilling the lid for fittings to the reservoir. A few zip ties also for the float switch wires to tidy that up.

View attachment 4721980View attachment 4721986

I had to figure out how to mount the bobber float switches so I got creative with some stainless steel angle brackets and some carbon fiber rods of the right diameter (3/8"). It's very stable and actually works better than I thought it would.

I am figuring that I will run multiple pumps in parallel to move the larger volume of nutrients unless I can find a larger pump with the bottom feed design that also meets the requirements for growing.

For shits and giggles here is a shot of the controller logic board, the "brain" IC doesn't even have any markings.

View attachment 4721979

My biggest concern with the system is root clogs. Running the same buckets with the peat based mix I don't have a problem with roots getting down into the bottom bucket, if they do it's just a little and they don't try to clog the drain fitting. There is about a 3 inch air gap between the little bit of remaining nutrients and the bottom of the upper bucket with the plant.

I am considering running perlite as the medium unless someone can talk me into something else. Anyone have any thoughts on the matter? I just don't want to wash that much LECA. lol
Click to expand...
Interesting! Why not just a simple pump from reservoir on a timer and a sump switch on a separate pump?
 
Renfro

Renfro

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ttystikk said:
Interesting! Why not just a simple pump from reservoir on a timer and a sump switch on a separate pump?
Click to expand...
My whole plan was to look at the GH design on the controller and then be able to make a simple setup with a timer and double throw relay that would switch modes with float switches wired in to set the limits. I didn't figure they had a logic board, I just thought it would be a few relays or the like and that simply copying it would be easy enough. That said it's not a terribly bad deal at $210 considering you get the two pumps, 5 float switches, the timer and logic box, all the fittings and tubing to go to the reservoir. I figured they probably solved all the problems with such a setup, why re-invent the wheel lol. They definitely put some thought into the system, probably fixing issues I had not anticipated.

Anyways, I will see where this takes me as I am classifying it as an experiment lol.
 
ttystikk

ttystikk

Well-Known Member
Renfro said:
My whole plan was to look at the GH design on the controller and then be able to make a simple setup with a timer and double throw relay that would switch modes with float switches wired in to set the limits. I didn't figure they had a logic board, I just thought it would be a few relays or the like and that simply copying it would be easy enough. That said it's not a terribly bad deal at $210 considering you get the two pumps, 5 float switches, the timer and logic box, all the fittings and tubing to go to the reservoir. I figured they probably solved all the problems with such a setup, why re-invent the wheel lol. They definitely put some thought into the system, probably fixing issues I had not anticipated.

Anyways, I will see where this takes me as I am classifying it as an experiment lol.
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I'll watch to see what you come up with! In my experience, I've found that engineers tend to overcomplicate a solution.
 
Renfro

Renfro

Well-Known Member
So I am going to try a new mix. I have a bunch of bags of the DNA Mills coco / cork that I need to use up but I don't want to run straight coco again.

3 Parts coco/cork
2 parts coarse perlite
1 part coarse vermiculite (this should help hold more water and decrease the frequency of watering a little.)

I might test a mix with a little more vermiculite in it as well, that shit holds a lot of water. Maybe a 3-2-2 mix.

Any thoughts?
 
Renfro

Renfro

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So I made 3 different mixes to test this run using the DNA Mills Coco / Cork.

I will use this mix on one row and on the odd ball plants.

3 Parts coco/cork
2 parts coarse perlite
1 part coarse vermiculite

One row will get this mix:

3 Parts coco/cork
3 parts coarse perlite
1 part coarse vermiculite

The center row will get this mix:

3 Parts coco/cork
2 parts coarse perlite
2 part coarse vermiculite

The center row is where they drink the fastest, maybe that extra vermiculite will help. I expect that center row to be pretty thirsty since it will have the 1500's on light rails moving down both sides. I really have no clue what the watering frequency will end up like on these mixes but I am fixin' to find out lol. Might end up wishing I had added more vermiculite to all of them.

Since I have the hookup on the Perlite I may try some straight perlite with some vermiculite perhaps. Maybe test straight perlite against perlite with some vermiculite? I might play with that some in veg first.

I have installed the light rails and 1500's in room B, changed out 5 of the six 400 watt HPS row end lights for 240 watt 6 cob setups that will give better coverage with less watts and less heat, allowing me to run the 1500's. I am considering moving the carbon filter thats in the corner so I can swap that 400 for a LED as I have three more of those fixtures built.

I have a few more fans on order as I am changing things up in there to facilitate even better air movement.

All in all this run will be a real experiment, always learning and trying new things keeps me from getting bored and frankly I am tired of fighting the pH on the different peat based mixes that are available and that is a variable even with the same product and different batches. I will be running the divine gelato 3 in the rows and probably mimosa for the 2 odd balls. Also considering giving the chem gro 4-20-39 stuff a try. See if they like that, but first I think I will stick with the GH just to figure out the new medium mix and then try the chem gro on a row to see how it compares.

Got some new cuts from my homey, one is the Pancakes. Probably be giving these a try in room A, I will be staggering these again.

Happy growing folks!
 
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