Outdoor hydroponics Mike Young style.

First off, I know this is a weed site, so I'm gonna say right away that this is a veggie grow. Can't have neighbors peering in at my shit. that being said, if a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video should pretty much cover it. Confucius fuckin says! Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIBo0BLdzUc

Always lookin for feedback. Or if you just wanna talk shit, I'm cool with that as well.

Thats fing cool mike! Im looking forward to seeing the results even though its not weed! Im a sucker for all types!

that is beautiful Mike Young, it's not about just weed for me, it's about the passion to grow! the only thing that I would change would be having a bigger res dug into the ground to keep cooler. the larger the volume of water the easier to maintain temps. BTW I am building a big 45'x16' greenhouse, the skeleton is already in place, I will be placing the cover on it very soon, when I can get me to hire a worker for it

WAY cool man. keep us posted please. love to see how that thing works out.

zem said:

that is beautiful Mike Young, it's not about just weed for me, it's about the passion to grow! the only thing that I would change would be having a bigger res dug into the ground to keep cooler. the larger the volume of water the easier to maintain temps. BTW I am building a big 45'x16' greenhouse, the skeleton is already in place, I will be placing the cover on it very soon, when I can get me to hire a worker for it

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I would kill for a greenhouse that big. I didn't build the one in the video, unfortunately. It's on the small side. I had absolutely no interest in the thing a year ago. Now I'm obsessed, or possessed, or just downright crazy. Zem, what will you be using as a res? I like these drums because they're pretty cheap, and could easily be pulled for either cleaning or swapping. I have no idea what to expect dealing with 100+ gallons of nutes. It was pretty bizarre adding 2 cups of dyna-gro yesterday. I'm used to dealing with much smaller volumes/indoors.

A worker, nice! I dunno if you ever watched that show "how it's made"? They like to use that word alot when referring to grunt work, lol.

ScoobyDoobyDoo said:

WAY cool man. keep us posted please. love to see how that thing works out.

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Certainly will do. Thanks for actually giving it a shot. I should've just said there was gonna be pictures of old man balls in this thread by opening with "this will be a vegetable grow". Oh well. Call it a filter.

Mike Young said:

I would kill for a greenhouse that big. I didn't build the one in the video, unfortunately. It's on the small side. I had absolutely no interest in the thing a year ago. Now I'm obsessed, or possessed, or just downright crazy. Zem, what will you be using as a res? I like these drums because they're pretty cheap, and could easily be pulled for either cleaning or swapping. I have no idea what to expect dealing with 100+ gallons of nutes. It was pretty bizarre adding 2 cups of dyna-gro yesterday. I'm used to dealing with much smaller volumes/indoors.

A worker, nice! I dunno if you ever watched that show "how it's made"? They like to use that word alot when referring to grunt work, lol.

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Mike I will use that geomembrane stuff used to make ponds. I don't pull out that, I make good drain-holes where I can clean it all inside. I use bulk chemicals in parts for fertilizers which makes it economical for me yes I need a worker because it is big and the doc would not recommend me such harsh work right now because it would hurt my back, this is the only pic of it i have yet still being built. I love "how it's made'

Looks good Mike
I dont think you`ll have any real probs with temperatures with that flowrate. If you get a lot of rain, watch for the drums lifting out the ground. Paint the top of the drums brilliant white (water based acrylic) or cover them with panda film, that`ll keep a lot of the heat off. You can add a small fan to actively draw air from the ground tube when its hot but not too sunny

I have 2 varieties of tomatoes, jalepeno, red bell pepper, cilantro, & doubled up on basil. I like to cook, and I basically got pico de gallo growin out there, lol. My greenhouse can quickly get upto 120 if I don't have the fan running & the door open. Those bring it down to 100. That's when it's 80 outside. This has me a bit paranoid, as it will get 100 outside for brief periods, and while the plants love it, roots do not.

Yesterday I extended my cooling pipe by 15' giving me a total of 30' of 4" perf pipe. I noticed the air in the pipe is a great deal cooler, but I fear I'm not making the best use of it. As atomizer mentioned, "hot days" but no sun to draw air through the system... Yep, I definately get those. I need to add a fan, but don't really wanna spring for the tech to make it work only when needed. Would like to add something that ran continuous, but ever so slight. It makes more sense to me to have the fan on the far end of the cooling tube as to not directly dry out the roots by having a fan a foot away or so. The fan being at the end (intake) far away from roots sounds like the way to go, but more of a pain in the ass getting power to. So, I don't know what kind of fan to use to slowly draw cool air through the pipe, but was hoping to get some advice. I may just start with a small computer fan, and see what the gets me.

Here's a few pics taken today.



The cilantro is doing best, followed bt the tomatoes & peppers. Basil has been a little slow off the start. Perhaps too hot. My res temps were a solid 65 until a few days ago. Now they're gettig close to 70. I gotta construct the covers for the barrels still, but haven't decided how I want em just yet.

Looks good man. You should order some Australian "ducks foot" its bud but it grows differently than normal bud.

Hi Mike
That veg is growing pretty fast. A pc fan might be enough as you only need some gentle air movement, as long as it can overcome the static pressure (not much at low flowrates) it`ll be fine.
You could use a normally open, disc thermostat to control the fan..if you can find one with the right temperature range. The lowest ones i can find over here close at 25C and open at 15C. You could run one fan constantly at a low level and hook the disc stat to a 2nd fan in case the root zone ever makes it up to 25C

It was hot as hell today, and my root zone got just above 80. In a panic I grabbed up a fan and made do. I bought a cheap 1 watt solar panel in thinking I could use it to power the fan, although I'm not sure it's gonna have enough power to get it done. Batteries need to charge. Got an extension cord & a 9v transformer for the time being. I also bought a photo sensor in hopes to use it to turn the fan off at night, but realized it was a on at night, off in the day. Is there a quick re-wire I can do, to reverse it? I could probably order one, but the only photo sensors I could find today were of this format.

quickest fix is to plug the transformer into a 24hr mechanical timer. A thermostat might be better than a photo sensor on a warm night, if you can find a velleman distributor a VM137 thermostat module should do the trick. Hook the fan and a 12v solar panel to the board and extend the sensor into the chamber. Dont forget to put the module in a waterproof box.. tupperware is cheap

edit: If the photo sensor has a relay in it you could replace it with a change over type (SPDT or DPDT) which will give you the choice of day or night depending on which contacts you use.

I had alot going on over the weekend, and decided to remove the drippers before I left and just let the lines free-flow into the netpots. Seems to have made a world of difference. I was worried about this at first, as I thought the increased flow would warm my total volume of liquid faster, but my insulation job seems to be doing the trick. It was 100 in the greenhouse today while my nutes were at a nice 64. If problems persist, I'll do something about it, but for now I'd just assume leave it as is. Here's a shot through the root chamber after increasing the flow. I've since fixed the light leak on the ends that this photo so clearly points out. Oops, hehe.

1 month in, and my thumb is still mostly green.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWZLmtJVuNk

This is bound for havoc once the pests get in...

Very cool.

Get in where? Root chamber, not possible. Aside from a few aphids diggin on my peppers, I don't have bug issues. 40' away I have about 20 lbs of honey bees. I don't know how many that is, 10s of thousands maybe. I think they keep things in check for me, though I'm not entirely sure about that. They are quite amazing little creatures.

Mike Young said:

Get in where? Root chamber, not possible. Aside from a few aphids diggin on my peppers, I don't have bug issues. 40' away I have about 20 lbs of honey bees. I don't know how many that is, 10s of thousands maybe. I think they keep things in check for me, though I'm not entirely sure about that. They are quite amazing little creatures.

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Was just kidding, keep those roots cool.. Good luck