I have no ventilation system as off now. Just a Rubbermaid Utility Storage Closet, that I keep the door cracked on.
eek. Fix that. Add a thermostat for air temp when you put in an exhaust fan. Your temps may be OK one day but not the next depending upon ambient temp if you don't control your air temp with a thermostat.
What are your views on soil?
Mostly sand and bullshit.
Obviously, one can grow plants in soil (!) but hydroponics has some big advantages. It adds flexibility in changing nutes abruptly, as we do in raising cannabis when changing from veg to flower. Feeding with a recirculating water based solution allows one to oxygenate the solution and thus the plants' roots much more than occurs in soil. Dissolved oxygen to the roots has a direct relationship to vigor and final yield.
Can you send me a link to where you describe your tables more.
Not really- they're not that complex, just 820mm^2 trays on square tubing stands, above the res tanks. What specifically do you need to know?
10 sq ft??? How much dedicated space do you think?
Depends upon how much light you want to run and how much work you want to do. If you're only supplying your own smoking needs, you might be able to do that with 4 sq ft, 4 plants per sf and a single 400HPS.
What do you think of DWC buckets???
Great stuff due to high levels of root oxygenation, not so practical in SoG due to the high plant counts used. Gets mechanically complex with individual buckets when you have a lot of plants. When a common aerated res is used to beat that problem, roots from neighbouring plants will knit and stop plants from being portable within the op. DWC is deceptively simple. It is not for beginners.
DWC is highly dependent on constant aeration of the nute soln. An aeration failure lasting more than a few hours can be disastrous. Without an air supply, roots will drown, killing the plant (or all of them).
Air supplies in DWC should be doubled for redundancy- 2 separate air pumps and 2 bubble curtains per bucket on separate air circuits. Air pumps do fail periodically and bubble curtains clog with nute salts.
Mains AC power failures lasting more than about 6-8 hours are DWC growers' biggest threat. If you lose power often, DWC may not be the way forward for you, unless you find some means of emergency power supply to your air pumps. Uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) for home computers can be used for AC power backup. Cheap UPSs have rather small batteries, but they are usually 12V, meaning a 12V car battery or preferably a 12V deep-cycle marine battery can be directly substituted for the smaller 12V battery that came with the UPS, giving many hours (or even days, depending upon battery capacity) of AC power backup.
How tall is your flood tank with res together?
About 700mm (~2.5ft). This could be a lot lower if I used broader, shorter storage tubs (say, those intended for underbed storage) as reservoir tanks.
