Fencepost Flood for perpetual lollipop SOG?

Sounds crazy?
I built a room at a friend's place with many great features but have been doing boosted fluoros over Rubbermade DWC with some success. I want to step it up and have been considering a 4 x 4 flood table. I like the simplicity. What I don't like is that it becomes a fixed asset - high work and cost to build then little room for adjustments. Also, I don't like haveing to buy and discard tons of media (rock wool or air stones and such).
I do like some of the set ups using fence posts or larger gutter downspouts with sparybars inside. Check out Stinkbud's fence post set up. What I don't like is that spaybars clog. Even spraybars that are just drilled holes without the spray nozzle tend to clog.

I am thinking use 4 x 4 fenceposts and make each their own flood chamber plumbed just like a flood table. Water goes in, fills them, and the ebb and flow drain mechanism is inside to control overflow and water release.

Make sense?

Better yet if using black tubing and not rigid PVC piping, each fence post become modular and mobile for adjustments.

This is not a pie in the sky post. I have practiced with bagseed and have several fem seeds coming from Attitude. I am serious about the step up. Got several decisions to make and welcome this forum's help.

The attached photo is a fence posts set up but with internal spraybars. The one without plants is Stinkbuds' with spraybars. Think something like this but plumbed for ebb and flow.

Another reason for thinking Fencepost Flood Chambers is labor. I want to develop a system that reduces labor and time commitment per cycle. I am thinking 'reproducible and scalable'.

sounds cool, I used these posts before they sold accessories to use them in hydro. I couldnt keep my aero solution cool enough without a chiller and that was a deal breaker for me, at least for aero, but those posts were cool to use

And you can also set it up as a NFT system without the use of sprayers or timers but chem's right, I think a chiller is a must to maintain root temps below 70. I use totes but basically same ideal and love it but am switching to individual pails next run for moveability. Also superstoner has a couple of good threads

do these system work well for cannabis?

i know one user of this forums is quite keen on them, but many other are a bit skeptical...

DrGhard said:

do these system work well for cannabis?

i know one user of this forums is quite keen on them, but many other are a bit skeptical...

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Well there aren't many that run them, I drilled out 4 with 6 holes in each but never ran them. Always worried about the roots blocking shit.

there is a lot of speculation of sprayer clogging or roots blocking shit, but if you actually read through stinkbud's or superstoner1's threads, the people that have actually built and run them do not have those problems.

TCH said:

there is a lot of speculation of sprayer clogging or roots blocking shit, but if you actually read through stinkbud's or superstoner1's threads, the people that have actually built and run them do not have those problems.

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I had issues with sprayers blocking lol. I ran sprayers for two years and had a few plug up from root material but it was not a huge issue as I built in redundant nozzles so if a couple plugged up it didn't matter. And as for roots your right I have never ran the rails but my trays do get massive root mats that in a rail would fill it so yup I shied away from running them.

TCH said:

there is a lot of speculation of sprayer clogging or roots blocking shit, but if you actually read through stinkbud's or superstoner1's threads, the people that have actually built and run them do not have those problems.

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Have you ran spray nozzles?

Budley Doright said:

Have you ran spray nozzles?

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only in a cloner setup. But this exact thing was speculated on and addressed multiple times in the thread. I am only talking about in the fence post setups. not my personal experience, just what I read of countless others addressing the subject.

I copied the spraybars I saw in a hydroponic store that were just 1 inch PVC with small holes (like 5/64 inch) so the water spray was actually a stream. The stream would hit against the wall of the fencepost tube and spatter thus drenching the roots. I asked and they said the holes were laser bored to make them smooth. I copied this in my rubbermaid tote set up so the PVC wrapped around the edge of the underside of the lid so it sprayed to each suspended basket and spatters off the baskets. When I drilled I made sure not to leave any frayed pvc around the hole that would catch materials.
Seems to work pretty good as long as the pump intake is protected with layers of polyfiber material. I have two streams focused on each hanging basket in case one does clog. I don't have problems but a clog occurs every blue moon. I had to do this because neither the 250 or 500 gpm mag drive pumps would push hard enough though the mini sprinkler heads and create a spray pattern. It makes me wonder how much pressure is needed to make those mini sprinkler heads effective.

TCH said:

only in a cloner setup. But this exact thing was speculated on and addressed multiple times in the thread. I am only talking about in the fence post setups. not my personal experience, just what I read of countless others addressing the subject.

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Ya I know they said they didn't have any issues and not sure what they did to stop it, I even put silk screen on pump intake and I ended up having to clean it once or twice a run, which would be easier in a separate res, not so easy in my setup. I think the reason they aren't very popular is the simple fact you can get as good or better results running different systems without the drawbacks of sprayers and roots.

Well ive run Hybrid Areo/ Nft sytems for years, ie. Stinkbuds set ups and only had one sprayer clog ever. Sprayers clog because your not filtering you water before you run it through you spraybars or you have a tremendous amount of bacterial and or alge growth in your system. One of these best features of an Areo/Nft combo is even if a sprayer clogs your plants will not suffer as the NFT will feed them just fine, in fact i never knew i had a clogged sprayer till i cleaned the system after i harvested. I pulled 2.2-2.6 lbs per 1000 watt HPS consistently with this system. i turned a crop every 11 weeks.
BTW i was a moderator on the Stinkbud forum.

Oldgrowth said:

Well ive run Hybrid Areo/ Nft sytems for years, ie. Stinkbuds set ups and only had one sprayer clog ever. Sprayers clog because your not filtering you water before you run it through you spraybars or you have a tremendous amount of bacterial and or alge growth in your system. One of these best features of an Areo/Nft combo is even if a sprayer clogs your plants will not suffer as the NFT will feed them just fine, in fact i never knew i had a clogged sprayer till i cleaned the system after i harvested. I pulled 2.2-2.6 lbs per 1000 watt HPS consistently with this system. i turned a crop every 11 weeks.
BTW i was a moderator on the Stinkbud forum.

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Are you still running the system?

Also did you never have issues with roots clogging the outlets on the tubes? I guess I would be wise to read the stinkbud threads. I just saw to many issues that could happen so I never hit the switch. I have 6 posts drilled and ready to go but leaning away from a flooded system for a bit.

Budley Doright said:

Are you still running the system?

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yes among other methods

Budley Doright said:

Also did you never have issues with roots clogging the outlets on the tubes? I guess I would be wise to read the stinkbud threads. I just saw to many issues that could happen so I never hit the switch. I have 6 posts drilled and ready to go but leaning away from a flooded system for a bit.

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Nope never a clog from roots,,,, i run 5'x5' ranch post vinal posts where here is plenty of room for large root masses
i dont concider an Areo/NFT combo a flooded system... i run 3-5 min on and 15 min off ....the rails drain completely a min after the pump shuts down ....... the rails never fill with water... when pumps are running there maybe a 1/4 inch of water in the rail

I consider all systems that flood the roots with water flooded but that may be a wrong analogy. Are you chilling the res? And yup that's what I have are 5" posts as well. I run stacked totes now 38"x26"x8" so really not much different in theory than rails and with the roots being 6" deep by the end I was just amazed they wouldn't clog a rail lol. I've asked that question before about root issues in rails and a few answered that they actually trimmed the roots at the rail outlet. If that is required, I do take what I read here with a grain of salt lol, then I can say that that is not a great thing. I guess I will need to try it sometime but next run is going to be something using square pails but not sure what system.

I am curious, Oldgrowth or Dudley, are you using the rails for small plants or for larger ones?

I haven't used mine yet and just drilled them out so far.