Ok Boodadood- I've caught up and read each post here, so I am on the same page as you with your setup. You cad skills and fluid dynamic knowledge are impressive, btw and I like the way you've designed your main control center. I am posting this here, only to help. I don't need to feed my ego nor do I get off on arguing with others who think differently than me, I only am a perfectionist who has tried my damndest to filter and seperate all the misinformation from what I believe is the best info in regards to aero. The other disclaimer is that I do not yet have my own setup put together and running yet. So- understand the following advice is purely for your own good should you chose to even take it, and if you don't, I wont be the least bit upset either, but I imagine you may have a constant issue of never achieving the true aero results if you don't listen to this. I also mean this for forsakenlion as well, and anyone else following along. First off, almost everyone in the world does not have a setup that pushes aero to it's maximum potential, but rather uses some or all of the components of aero to fancily reproduce NFT (abbreviation for "nutrient film technique"- the old school original hydroponics stuff). This includes Richard Stoner. Perhaps when working with Nasa- or in his own personal setups, he has stuff better dialed in, but the commercial units he sells cannot possibly create good fuzzy roots and therefore allow one to use significantly lower levels of nutes and enjoy all of the other benefits we associate with HPA like an economical drain to waste. In the Genesis units, I can easily surmise the chamber size along with the sprayers and timing would soak the roots just as good as any NFT setup. That being said, I do not believe 5 gallon buckets are large enough to ever achieve the best results either due to the very small fraction of mist that needs to be spread around, while not oversaturating the roots and heading back down the NFT road (the mechanical limitations of the components would never allow a short enough mist cycle to make it work). Don't get me wrong, Cavadge's thread is a testament that a halfway aero system can do quite well, but I'd basically compare it to the best possible NFT environment. For most people, that would be enough good results, but for anyone going through the trouble of buying and building the HPA setup, why not take care of all the fine details and go all they way? There is only one thing that seperates half ass from excellent HPA- and that is just the right amount of air and nutrient saturation to the roots. Those things are controlled by:
1) DROPLET SIZE (which requires the right pressures and nozzles) and
2) CONTROL OF THE MIST TO PROVIDE THE PROPER SATURATION (which requires an accumulator, correctly sized chamber, and precision timer/solenoids that are dialed in correctly and have short runs from solenoid to mist nozzles using small diameter tubing). Everyone always tries to get around some of the details, because they don't understand the emphasis that has to be placed on proper saturation and coverage of the roots which will spur them to grow in the super efficient fuzzy way that gives us all the special benefits of proper HPA. Alot of smart people before you and I have also tried to get round the accumulator and what not, but honestly, there really is no way to do it so far, and believe me, we've all contemplated it. The easiest way to get the best results, is to follow the way others before us have gone to get the right results, and perhaps only then try to improve on it afterwards, but you need a baseline to start from. I have seen alot of pics by now of all kinds of aero system's root results. To date, the only people I have ever seen consistently have the roots I was looking for are Atomizer, tree farmer, and G-love. That's it- literally in the whole world of aero in terms of grow sites like these, or even ads for commercial systems. Anyway, the advice I chose to follow, and is documented in my thread comes from these 3 people, who also have the same emphasis on mist control and basically all do things nearly the same way. I believe that is what seperates them from the rest of the world. Have we ever even seen any pics from Stoner? I can guess what they'd look like by the specs of his systems. Anyway, I just had to throw this advice out there, because I see alot of "thinking" going on, and with every thought it seems the blueprint is falling farther away from exactly what I was trying to tell people needed to be a certain way based on my own research and filtering.
Anyway, I really am excited that there are quite a few others pursuing this as well, and I really don't care as long as you guys are happy with your results. I just want to make sure that if you guys are trying to get the particular results I was speaking of, then you'll also have to follow the recipe very closely, paying attention to the majorly important details. Thats the way I understand it. The ony reason I took the time to write this long post was because I'd like to see everyone intersted be happy with their setups, and to get it right the first time. I hope soon I can backup my points with the results from my own build
.
