Considering trying DWC..first time

been doing some reading and I'm interested in trying this. Is using distilled water going to be an issue? Also I'm a little confused on water levels I need to keep in the bucket. How much of the roots get to sit in water? I've been using AN nutes in soils but would like to stick with them for this adventure. How do water chillers work exactly? Just an in/out on them to circulate the water between chiller and bucket? Any other big pointers anyone can give me for my first shot at this?

I'd suggest giving a single 5 gallon bucket with a net pot lid and an air stone and pump before diving in with chillers etc... grab the necessary items (air pump, stone, hose, bucket and lid) and sit thag 5 gallon bucket with about 3 to 3.5 gallons of the same water you'd be using to grow with and set it up and let it run for a day or 2 in the intended grow area and see what your water temps range round about... if u can keep them around 70, 65-68 is ideal...but see how things pan out like that before busting a nut and buying a chiller... you will need one eventually if u decide to stick with it one way or another; a chiller of any sort is probably the most important item in any active hydro grow... dwc generally doesn't require it as people usually run bigger resivoirs in cooler areas like a nice cool basement floor, but it will be an inevitable and unreplacable tool if you do stick with hydro... I would personally stay away from circulating nutrients etc directly through the chiller as most hobby type chillers recommend but rather use stainless wort coils (used for making beer) and setup a resivoir specifically for water that circulates through a closed loop system via your chiller and a cheap general type hydro pump... if you ever expand you can just add a pump and wort chiller coil along with a thermostatic controller to let the chiller and pumps know when to go on and off which u can get on amazon cheaply...

I can explain the chiller concept a little better if u like but I think as long as your grow area isn't way to hot you should be able to do a grow without a chiller and probably build a diy 5 gallon bucket dwc setup for like $30 or less... probably way less... but it's tough to chill single buckets which why I say to hold off on the chiller until your sure your gonna stick with it... even if your gonna stick with 1 bucket/res, you shouldn't push nutes through the chiller because should any of you plants sitting in the nutes ever get root rot (which theoretically shouldn't happen if your chilling your water) or any other disease that can be passed from plant to plant will at best be a pain in the ass to get completely out of the chiller... this is why I'll never do the single chiller to a single res type system no matter what type of hydro I use.... if you keep your chiller on a closed loop, the water in that loop will never come in contact with your plants nutrient solution which is the best way imo... it's more complicated, more expensive, and will take up more space but if done right, be hard to improve upon...

Last and certainly far from least; keep all organic based products out of your dwc res if you decide to go for it... the last thing you wanna do with non-recirculating dwc (rdwc) is go with organic nutrients... I'm sure there are people out there doing it very successfully but it's hard to do and not recommended especially for a hydro newbie... I've grown soil for years before getting back into hydro recently because I did all the things I suggested you don't do; and I'll say that even with a fairly good know how of everything, there is still definitely a learning curve that you gotta get straight on before you start throwing cash at problems... you'll be out a whole bunch of $, spent more time suffering through headaches than need be so take it slow n give a bucket a single run before getting knee deep in $$$ hydro gear...

I will say after my days of organic soil which I was more than happy with but due to a move; my locale isn't friendly to bags of soil going in and having to store dirt as people are just too close and worse; nosy... so hydro is much better for my living arrangement now.... but I am enjoying the change of pace/way of growing in hydro but it took many years of truly getting patient before I could attempt what im doing now...

It's worth a try but start small and cheap for a taste before you go big and make sure it's for you...

As far as nutrient selection, method or whatever I'd suggest the Lucas method and at half strength to start without any additives as dwc doesn't need a very high ppm/ec, same for most hydro grows aside from drain to waste systems can be ran higher but 99% of the bottled recommendations are waaaay to high so keep that in mind...

Good luck, hope it works for you cuz I'm liking it myself...ask me if I feel the same when the summer months start hitting and I might tell u different but I'm glad I got the chance to try it again, but as I said it took years of derty growing patience to even be close to partially successful at it... I been going for a few months n still have kinks to work out but they're working out quickly now...

whitey78 said:

I'd suggest giving a single 5 gallon bucket with a net pot lid and an air stone and pump before diving in with chillers etc... grab the necessary items (air pump, stone, hose, bucket and lid) and sit thag 5 gallon bucket with about 3 to 3.5 gallons of the same water you'd be using to grow with and set it up and let it run for a day or 2 in the intended grow area and see what your water temps range round about... if u can keep them around 70, 65-68 is ideal...but see how things pan out like that before busting a nut and buying a chiller... you will need one eventually if u decide to stick with it one way or another; a chiller of any sort is probably the most important item in any active hydro grow... dwc generally doesn't require it as people usually run bigger resivoirs in cooler areas like a nice cool basement floor, but it will be an inevitable and unreplacable tool if you do stick with hydro... I would personally stay away from circulating nutrients etc directly through the chiller as most hobby type chillers recommend but rather use stainless wort coils (used for making beer) and setup a resivoir specifically for water that circulates through a closed loop system via your chiller and a cheap general type hydro pump... if you ever expand you can just add a pump and wort chiller coil along with a thermostatic controller to let the chiller and pumps know when to go on and off which u can get on amazon cheaply...

I can explain the chiller concept a little better if u like but I think as long as your grow area isn't way to hot you should be able to do a grow without a chiller and probably build a diy 5 gallon bucket dwc setup for like $30 or less... probably way less... but it's tough to chill single buckets which why I say to hold off on the chiller until your sure your gonna stick with it... even if your gonna stick with 1 bucket/res, you shouldn't push nutes through the chiller because should any of you plants sitting in the nutes ever get root rot (which theoretically shouldn't happen if your chilling your water) or any other disease that can be passed from plant to plant will at best be a pain in the ass to get completely out of the chiller... this is why I'll never do the single chiller to a single res type system no matter what type of hydro I use.... if you keep your chiller on a closed loop, the water in that loop will never come in contact with your plants nutrient solution which is the best way imo... it's more complicated, more expensive, and will take up more space but if done right, be hard to improve upon...

Last and certainly far from least; keep all organic based products out of your dwc res if you decide to go for it... the last thing you wanna do with non-recirculating dwc (rdwc) is go with organic nutrients... I'm sure there are people out there doing it very successfully but it's hard to do and not recommended especially for a hydro newbie... I've grown soil for years before getting back into hydro recently because I did all the things I suggested you don't do; and I'll say that even with a fairly good know how of everything, there is still definitely a learning curve that you gotta get straight on before you start throwing cash at problems... you'll be out a whole bunch of $, spent more time suffering through headaches than need be so take it slow n give a bucket a single run before getting knee deep in $$$ hydro gear...

I will say after my days of organic soil which I was more than happy with but due to a move; my locale isn't friendly to bags of soil going in and having to store dirt as people are just too close and worse; nosy... so hydro is much better for my living arrangement now.... but I am enjoying the change of pace/way of growing in hydro but it took many years of truly getting patient before I could attempt what im doing now...

It's worth a try but start small and cheap for a taste before you go big and make sure it's for you...

As far as nutrient selection, method or whatever I'd suggest the Lucas method and at half strength to start without any additives as dwc doesn't need a very high ppm/ec, same for most hydro grows aside from drain to waste systems can be ran higher but 99% of the bottled recommendations are waaaay to high so keep that in mind...

Good luck, hope it works for you cuz I'm liking it myself...ask me if I feel the same when the summer months start hitting and I might tell u different but I'm glad I got the chance to try it again, but as I said it took years of derty growing patience to even be close to partially successful at it... I been going for a few months n still have kinks to work out but they're working out quickly now...

Click to expand...

Awesome!! Thanks for the response. I'm indoors in a tent. I use LED lighting and a 3x3 tent. I was going to do exactly what you said and start off slow and cheap. Maybe one bucket in the tent along side the soil pots to see how I like it. As is my tent sits 68-72 degrees with light on. I would imagine over time the water would level out at room temp? Thanks again. This is still early planning. ~4weeks left on current run. Popped some seeds in soils for next round I'll more than likely leave in soil. Prob grab a cut from one of those and toss in a dwc.

Smashedz28 said:

Awesome!! Thanks for the response. I'm indoors in a tent. I use LED lighting and a 3x3 tent. I was going to do exactly what you said and start off slow and cheap. Maybe one bucket in the tent along side the soil pots to see how I like it. As is my tent sits 68-72 degrees with light on. I would imagine over time the water would level out at room temp? Thanks again. This is still early planning. ~4weeks left on current run. Popped some seeds in soils for next round I'll more than likely leave in soil. Prob grab a cut from one of those and toss in a dwc.

Click to expand...

Sounds good... sounds like you got a handle on things...

A few more suggestions would be feed them lightly, I didn't catch if u we're gonna run seed or clone but depending if your planning on running a clone you can obviously start with a slightly higher ec but that's something you'll have to figure out when u get there... but the Lucas formula is simple and doesn't leave much room for fuck ups... kiss as they say... it's a 2:1 ratio of (2 bloom 1 micro) the bloom and micro parts of GH's 3 part formula... the "standard" amounts are 8ml micro/16ml bloom per gallon but obviously fresh clones and seedlings can't handle all that but the 2:1 ratio still applies... I have my vegging mothers @ 4/8 and theyre blowing up.... but again the amounts are all strain specific, some need more; some need less... that's for u to figure out but dwc in particular needs less in general because the roots reside in the solution, it's not like being flooded every so often or top fed at certain intervals; they have it all the time so on one hand it's as simple as it gets; on the other catastrophic overload is less than an hour away after adding it; there's not a whole lot of buffer time, which is true on all hydro methods but more so with dwc as per the reasons above... h202 is a good idea to have on hand; I used to try n use it to keep my resivoirs sterile but that's kinda pointless but it does work well to keep oxygen levels up if your temps start going beyond 70, but is not a cure for high temps... I like to add a little nowadays to my dwc buckets and I especially like it for cleaning my hydro things that need cleaning... much better than bleach but still probably not ideal... but it is ideal for a little extra o2...

Yeah temps will eventually even out to your grow room temps but I insulate my resivoirs and buckets with this reflective insulation I find in the Home Depot wood area somewhere... it's like Mylar with bubble wrap in the middle so it's not all kinds of bulky and naturally likes to go around circular things as it comes in rolls in various widths and lengths... I would personally just do the sides and if you wanna get crazy; the lid... obviously so the lid will still separate from the bucket when u have to check ph/ec/change/add solution...

I'd also somay if you are going to grow them side by side with soil plants, if and when you plan to open the lid of your dwc setup, or water your soul plants... remove the dwc bucket as it's easy for stuff that is beneficial to your soil plants to jump on over to your dwc bucket and cause you problems.. hydro is best grown in a sterile, bacteria free environment, soil obviously contains all kinds of it and the more the better so keep that in mind...

Other than that; I'm going home to FINALLY.... build a few of these (link below) as I've had the stuff to build them forever I just haven't gotten to it... however if u do decide to go with something like this, they listed the wrong size hole saw for the uniseal so if you happen to do it, get the proper sized bit... the purpose for me is I like the part of not having to expose the roots to light to check my ph and all that, but the bigger the plants get the more of a pain in the ass it becomes to lift the lid etc... you can use this concept to link multiple buckets or even bigger square totes or whatever container you like as long as its light proof (that's a part I didn't mention, everything including your air lines need to either be black or somehow made lightproof or else algae will become an issue, and I mean any light leak at all... a pinhole is too much).. but one of my future/current mothers is probably a month and a half old and is already on the verge of her roots being too much for the bucket as I, in my infinite newbile wizdom several years ago purchased bucket lids with 8" mesh pots built in, which are also about 6" long/deep causing me to only be able to use 3 to 3.5 gallons max of nute solution so when a plant gets as big as the one I was talking about, she's pounding down a half gallon or more a day... so it doesn't give you much of a window of slacking... so this is where the 2 bucket system comes in and doubles the amount (it'll be less eventually when the roots completely take over the bucket which does happen)...

Anyhow if u have any other?'s just make sure to quote me in your post as sometimes I don't get on here for awhile or if I do just briefly but if I see the notification I'll definitely see it and reply...

http://hightimes.com/grow/how-to-build-a-two-bucket-dwc-system/