Easiest way to chill multiple res

Im at the point where simplier is better. I wish i was moved towards a serup that didnt have to add into a bill to work correctly. Electricity is very expensive in my state as well.

Home depot + few bags of perlite + a bag of pebbles + a few buckets = maybe $20-25

Take said bucket and drill a small hole two inches from the bottom.

Pour in pebbles until it covers the hole you drilled by about a 1/2 inch

Pour in some perlite and plant

Water / feed until water starts to weep out the hole

Your done, go about your business and enjoy life, you might not ever touch a meter up/down again once you find your water/nute mix qualities. For me mixing dynagro nutes per the label with tap water gets me right at 6 ph @ .9 / 1 EC. If you want really simple try the above but use the maxibloom @ one scoop per gal via lucus formula. I was doing that at it was great but the dynagro test looked just more healthy so I switched over. Like I said I'm still very new but I'm finding I was over complicating things..everything from over feeding to fancy nutes / additives to meters & pumps. What I wanted was just some pain relief medicine and a bucket with a hole in it is turning out to be very effective and simple for me at this stage in life.

taproot said:

Home depot + few bags of perlite + a bag of pebbles + a few buckets = maybe $20-25

Take said bucket and drill a small hole two inches from the bottom.

Pour in pebbles until it covers the hole you drilled by about a 1/2 inch

Pour in some perlite and plant

Water / feed until water starts to weep out the hole

Your done, go about your business and enjoy life, you might not ever touch a meter up/down again once you find your water/nute mix qualities. For me mixing dynagro nutes per the label with tap water gets me right at 6 ph @ .9 / 1 EC. If you want really simple try the above but use the maxibloom @ one scoop per gal via lucus formula. I was doing that at it was great but the dynagro test looked just more healthy so I switched over. Like I said I'm still very new but I'm finding I was over complicating things..everything from over feeding to fancy nutes / additives to meters & pumps. What I wanted was just some pain relief medicine and a bucket with a hole in it is turning out to be very effective and simple for me at this stage in life.

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Yup thinking that would work but I would probably auto water due to being away a bit. How often you watering? How big are your buckets?

I water every day or every other day but my buckets are 2.5 quarts...those little blue buckets at home depoet. I used two gallons last run and watered every three days. Auto water may be cool but I prefer to lift the pot a little to see how much she is drinking so I can delay watering until she is running on empty...which is a light pot You get the feel for the differences after awhile. A good soaking until water runs out the hole; then weight until the pot is light then repeat. I'll admit the active hydro does seems to grow faster but not by a factor that seems to justify all the extra work and expense. So, yeah you can't leave a traditional hempy for days on end while your on vacation but I'd rather not leave while growing a batch anyways. Bigger pots allow for more time between watering; a lot of people run the ole 5 gallon buckets from sprout to finish with awesome results. Tonight I got to feed the garden so it's mixing and ph'ing / tds / check temp and all that shit for the dwc run but my hempys just get watered until the hole starts weeping.

I got away from indoor soil pretty quick due to lack of control and the fungus gnat hordes lol. Big choice but lots of plus's and minus's in straight hydro and I'm sure there are a few with the perlite as well. It's the heat of res's and space that are my biggest issues.

taproot said:

The holes would be drilled into the fridge itself ..likely on the top or side. The thing is you have to make sure and not hit the refrigerant lines or the gas will all leak out and junk the fridge. I'm basing this on the beer fridges diy/s I've read, I think people smear a baking soda past on the outside and let it run and it turns the paste a different color where the gas lines are because they are hot. Maybe a magnet...not sure as I've yet to do one first hand. But, it seems like it's not very plausible for large volumes to water to chill.

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What do you think about using the mini fridge to cool the air that bubbles in the pot? I have 8-5gal pots ,using a commercial air pump running 8 top feed farm kits and also bubbling the 8 pots . Air coming out of pump is warm to hot and pot water temps are around 70⁰f(in fall). I was thinking of running a 25' 3/8 hose coiled in the fridge then to my manifold or drawling air from fridge to pump air intake to cool the pump ... things to ponder. I care for water recirculating systems

Does it matter that the reservoirs are the same? or do they need to be seperate, with different TDS / feeds? If they can be the same, your absolute best way is to turn them into a R-DWC with some simple crossovers and pumps, and then fork out the money for a chiller. The initial outlay is more than going to pay for itself with the extra yield you will get from not having sickly plants, let alone losing a harvest all together. Chillers don't run all the time either. The pump runs, but it only turns on enough to maintain a set temperature. After the initial cooling on day one, it will just flick on and off every hour or so for a few minutes.

If you have to run seperate TDS in each bubbler and can't turn it into one big system, getting multiple chillers is a lot of money, so I would go with the suggestion of changing to hand watering hempy,.

Skunkmannn said:

What do you think about using the mini fridge to cool the air that bubbles in the pot? I have 8-5gal pots ,using a commercial air pump running 8 top feed farm kits and also bubbling the 8 pots . Air coming out of pump is warm to hot and pot water temps are around 70⁰f(in fall). I was thinking of running a 25' 3/8 hose coiled in the fridge then to my manifold or drawling air from fridge to pump air intake to cool the pump ... things to ponder. I care for water recirculating systems

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Meant to say I DON'T care for R-DWC

Skunkmannn said:

Meant to say I DON'T care for R-DWC

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I'm not a huge fan. Too many moving parts for my liking. f+d with an external res would be the better option, but if he already has the bubblers and doesn't want to buy/make a new system... adding a couple of pumps to turn it into recirculating is cheap, and then just buy a chiller. Overall, the best and easiest way to fix it is throw some money at it!

HighFlow said:

I'm not a huge fan. Too many moving parts for my liking. f+d with an external res would be the better option, but if he already has the bubblers and doesn't want to buy/make a new system... adding a couple of pumps to turn it into recirculating is cheap, and then just buy a chiller. Overall, the best and easiest way to fix it is throw some money at it!

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Highflow I'm the one with the 8 bubble pot setup (individuals ) I was just asking if anyone tried cooling the air supply to the air stones as a means to cool the water temp. I'm going to try some redneck engineering with a mini fridge and some PVC hose I have to cool down the temp of air coming from a commercial (102w) air pump. It's kinda warm so if I can lower that temp by 5-10⁰ it should lower the water temp in buckets . Maybe I'll set it up this weekend.

Yeah makes sense. I know when I used a waterfall for my bubblers I had to put it on a timer, 15 on 30 off otherwise it would heat up like hell. Air pumps are better for sure as water conducts heat 7 times faster than air but chilling the intake i'm sure will work well. All airpumps are not made equal by the way. I've one I run on some of my mothers and it is super quiet and barely any heat, compared to the old ones I used to use. Tetra I think it's called. Also, you could use multiple smaller ones and cycle them on and off. I'm sure there's some physics to say that one big pump servicing multiple bubblers is gonna get hotter.. but I don't know. I know for sure if you give any one pump more than it can handle, the resistance is gonna make it run hotter.

HighFlow said:

Yeah makes sense. I know when I used a waterfall for my bubblers I had to put it on a timer, 15 on 30 off otherwise it would heat up like hell. Air pumps are better for sure as water conducts heat 7 times faster than air but chilling the intake i'm sure will work well. All airpumps are not made equal by the way. I've one I run on some of my mothers and it is super quiet and barely any heat, compared to the old ones I used to use. Tetra I think it's called. Also, you could use multiple smaller ones and cycle them on and off. I'm sure there's some physics to say that one big pump servicing multiple bubblers is gonna get hotter.. but I don't know. I know for sure if you give any one pump more than it can handle, the resistance is gonna make it run hotter.

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Yeah, it came with active aqua 8 outlet pump but no strong enough to bubble and run water columns for top feed . I still have seedlings so can't cover the top yet to reflect. I didn't compare temp differential between the pumps . Maybe I'll do that before butchering the mini fridge . The water colunms are the farm kit plumbing for the GH waterfarm

Best thing I ever did was build a chiller for my 3-40 litre res’s. I did ok using hydroguard but it was banned here and in the heat of summer I was fighting rot without it or a chiller.

Budley Doright said:

Best thing I ever did was build a chiller for my 3-40 litre res’s. I did ok using hydroguard but it was banned here and in the heat of summer I was fighting rot without it or a chiller.

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Are you recirculating or doing each individually? Those probe chiller look good but at 120-130 each it's a little much to do each pot , at least for me

Going sterile or modifying a small simple dehumidifier with digital thermostat with temp probe. I used to run a chiller but get same and/or even better results without.

My rez temp is between 75-77F.

Wastei said:

Going sterile or modifying a small simple dehumidifier with digital thermostat with temp probe. I used to run a chiller but get same and/or even better results without.

My rez temp is between 75-77F.

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Wastei..
I'm still trying to find someone who has cooled the air feeding the air stones to drop resz temps before I butcher this mini fridge I have. Need to drop temp maybe 10⁰ at most to stay below 70⁰in summer .. I'm at 69 now without any cooling going on . That's why originally posted here but nobody has replied that has tried cooling the air some air feed.

Wastei said:

Going sterile or modifying a small simple dehumidifier with digital thermostat with temp probe. I used to run a chiller but get same and/or even better results without.

My rez temp is between 75-77F.

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In the summer I was running at 80 but my room was not cooled either so for me it was easier to chill the water than the room. Being a refrigeration mechanic I used a window shaker and made it into a through the wall chiller but also ran glycol ground loops in fall spring and winter. I like to build shit lol. I no longer grow indoors and just plant a few outdoors now. I got excellent results running at 70-72 water temp and never worried about having to dose with anything....I’ve got 5 gallon jug of H2O2 if you live close by lol.

Skunkmannn said:

Are you recirculating or doing each individually? Those probe chiller look good but at 120-130 each it's a little much to do each pot , at least for me

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I was running seperate res’s but used seperate pumps and heat exchangers for each.

Budley Doright said:

In the summer I was running at 80 but my room was not cooled either so for me it was easier to chill the water than the room. Being a refrigeration mechanic I used a window shaker and made it into a through the wall chiller but also ran glycol ground loops in fall spring and winter. I like to build shit lol. I no longer grow indoors and just plant a few outdoors now. I got excellent results running at 70-72 water temp and never worried about having to dose with anything....I’ve got 5 gallon jug of H2O2 if you live close by lol.

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Thanks bud but I never even considered using H2O2. To strong oxidizer to be safe IMO. One fuckup and you're screwed.

That's why I use chlorine, plants can actually use it instead of just getting a little extra added oxygen for 12 hours.

Skunkmannn said:

Wastei..
I'm still trying to find someone who has cooled the air feeding the air stones to drop resz temps before I butcher this mini fridge I have. Need to drop temp maybe 10⁰ at most to stay below 70⁰in summer .. I'm at 69 now without any cooling going on . That's why originally posted here but nobody has replied that has tried cooling the air some air feed.

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How are you going to cool compressed air? Seems impractical for our application, most shy away from air period. If your butchering a mini fridge, why would you try and cool air when you can cool water, put a coil in the fridge, pump water threw it, I didn’t read this whole thing.