my gravity fed air atomizing aeroponic system

Had fun catching up on your thread... Good to see you guys and your current projects. I still have pretty much everything I need to produce my AA chamber- It's a slight joke by now- but I really hope to get it going someday if I could find the time and motivation to do it... -I know it was asked a long time ago oxanaca, however in case you still hadn't realized- the avatar pic is from G-love's threads. Hopefully it looks more like a tribute than a plagiarism, because that was how it was intended...

Trichy Bastard said:

Had fun catching up on your thread... Good to see you guys and your current projects. I still have pretty much everything I need to produce my AA chamber- It's a slight joke by now- but I really hope to get it going someday if I could find the time and motivation to do it... -I know it was asked a long time ago oxanaca, however in case you still hadn't realized- the avatar pic is from G-love's threads. Hopefully it looks more like a tribute than a plagiarism, because that was how it was intended...

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Hi TB
Here`s one that could be tagged as "Throw me a lifeline, i`m drowning! "

hope i didnt bore you to death, its like 23 pages of errors and my thoughts out loud. are you still planning on growing outside, if so i applaud you, dealing with temperatures that swing from 60 to 100F sucks.

as a note. my plants have doubled in size since i bumped the EC to the 1100 to 1300 range up from 600. that was apparently the reason for the slow as hell growth. also the two potted plants that i found that had aero roots are producing aeroroots again.(they were hydro roots for a few days but they have reverted back)

im going to experiment with net pots and rockwool and see if i cant get some tomatoe plants to give me some aeroroots

so heres my game plan for my full scale system. what do yall think, eventually i want to be able to exert a lot of control over the system using a smart phone. im thinking lots of sensors, cameras and lots of redundancys i can turn on and off. for instance if i had a solenoid go bad i would have a shut off that i can turn off to stop the solenoid and another solenoid that i could switch to using a relay. also i would like to have 3 different timers that i can switch back and forth to if i noticed my current setting were not working.

air conditoned greenhouse/outdoor chamber. it will be huge to justify the air conditioner

Looks like being a huge setup if it warrants nute dosers, dont forget ph
It`d be cheaper to condition the air and water temperature of the nutes before delivery. If you went overboard and used a chiller to cool the air/water en route, it would still be a lot cheaper to run than AC
Cool mist delivered once a minute will keep a well insulated chamber fairly stable temperature wise. Its an easy one to test on a small scale.

im thinking i will add sodium hydroxide or phosphoric acid to either my part A or part B concentrate, i will test out different ECs and add different amounts of ph adjusters till i hit the target 5.7ph. and record my additions so if i need to create 100x 800EC A+B stock solution set, i will know i need to add for an illustration 20 grams of 85% phosphoric acid to 5 gallons of part B. which already has mono pottasium phosphate.

i think i will eventually build my own chiller to cool all the nutrient and compessed air. i worked on refridgeration units of a short while, when i went to school for diesel technology, in my refridgeration class. hopefully it will help me out however i have forgotten almost everything they taught me, i like to know exactly what my equiptment is doing if possible

sorry if my recent posts dont make complete sense, i only have a few brief moments on here between jobs.

oxanaca said:

so heres my game plan for my full scale system.

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You'll probably need a mixing valve for the Dosatrons for anything under 600PPM. In about a week we will be unveiling a frame mounted system similar to what you have drawn. It will have a built in 1200 GPD R/O, room for 1-6 Dosatrons, two 90 gallon storage tanks (one for R/O and one for mixed solution) and a built in chiller. We designed it to run up to 100 32 s/f trays.

Here's a pic of our prototype.



Here's a pic of the 1,200 GPD R/O setup we are sourcing from an OEM manufacturer

sweet setup dude. it looks like were using the same RO filter housing, only you have two.
i actually have two dosematic injectors, i thought they were dosetrons (the names confused me) they are about 10 years old(gifts) but running smooth. i can get them serviced for free once a year if i go to this certain convention.

i did a little experiment 4 days ago. i tryed a new fertillizer, it was peters professional 20-10-20, with calcium nitrate mixed in.
yall are gonna think im crazy but i brought the EC up to 1050uS. and then i added some calcium nitrate. i was trying to bring it to 1300 but i was a little overzelous and ended up with 2200uS. i didnt have time to make more RO water so i just went with it and my plants dont seem to mind im going to run out in another 36 hours i think ill drop down to 1500EC just to be safe.

also i have managed to grow true aero roots in my system. about a week ago i found some plants that had velvet roots growing out the bottome of their pots in a tray so i put the pots over over holes in my system and the roots temperarily died off and two days later they came back. the pots are watered everyday, and every day the roots get bigger, i wonder if eventually i can stop wattering the soil. i believe using net cups with rockwool chunks might be the best way, you were right atomizer. you need very specific conditions to start aero roots but once they have showed up it doesnt seem that hard to maintain them.

Sounds like any plants with the roots showing are fair game for AA experimentation
I`m no different, i rescued some tom seedlings that popped up in the dirt garden unexpectedly. Now they`re cannon fodder for a 20gal HPA/AA hybrid cloner experiment.

hpa and AA. that sounds awsome.



check out his compressor i was looking at. i think i could run quite a few nozzles on it, its $1K though


on the silent side though, my friend just messed up his mini fridge. he was cleaning it and punctured a copper line, and bleed the freon. so im going to use the compressor and turn it into a small silent compressor but im going to build it so that i can use it for a vacuum pump as well. ive always wanted one of those.

buy the way im confused about something, if you have a minute.
if i have an 0.3cubic meter tank loaded to 12 BAR. how many cubic meters of ambient air is in the tank. is there some sort of equation or something?

That compressor puts out a helluva lot more air than a bambi with the same kind of price tag.The mini fridge comp likely wont have much of an output, maybe 6 - 6.5LPM if your lucky but what do you want for the money..its a cheap fun project . Try not to spill any of the oil as you`ll need to know how much was in it.
Pretty straightforward equation (not accounting for temperature),
tank volume (ft3) * (final pressure - start pressure / atmospheric pressure)
300L is 10.596 cubic feet * (176.4 - 0 /14.7) = 10.596 x 12 which is 127.15 cubic feet or 3.600 cubic metres

Assuming the compressor does 15.8cfm from 0 - 176.4psi, it`ll take 8 minutes to fill the tank

thanks for the formula

heres a picture of my latest roots, they looked better yesterday. fluctuations of temperature havent helped



heres a movie

[video=youtube;wMbB91_tOEI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMbB91_tOEI&feature=youtu.be[/video]

Thats the problem with the big halide in the sky, its a tad unpredictable. I find the best chamber temp is around 66F but its not easy to maintain in full sun. Now your roots are getting bigger they may need a bit more moisture. The mist pulse in the vid looks pretty short, is it enough to fill the chamber?

it is enough to fill the chamber but only if its been closed for at least a few pause and mist cycles, and it is cool with no air movement. i actually bumped it up slightly after the video was shot.
there is a ton of air movement in this greenhouse,at the moment, an i am embarassed to admit my chamber isnt completely sealed between the lid and chamber, im going to fix it tomarrow though.
im sure in the video you noticed that the solar coleus plants on the right wall of the chamber arnt doing so good. i presume this is because the mist is being sucked out along the gap of the chamber/lid, and the plants in the middle are sort of sheltered as they are farther away, also the plants in the corners above the nozzles are definitely deprived of water.

i figure i have another month before my climate becomes inhospitable to aeroponic adventures and my buddy stops trying to keep this place cool.
here are some things i want to do before then

*start cooling my compressed air with the cooler in the video, and see how much this effects chamber temp with out adding top insulation, i think its to late to implement that without damaging my plants
*seal up my chamber tight
*find a way to control the runoff so that i can periodically test it. i think the roots are ready for that.
*make panda plastic hats for on my neoprene collars

i dont know if i ever mentioned it but ive never grown hydroponically before. now that ive done Atomized aeroponics it just seems so stupid and inefficient to ever change ph or ec ever. the only kind i would like to try is DTW rockwool drip system. although it seems like eventually i could buy an AA system with all the money i would have to give to the rockwool man.
just fill up the reservoir and let it spray for a few days and repeat

The compressed air cooler will make a big difference. I gave my inline nute cooler a test with air today, 92.4F in = 66.4F out.
The coolbox didnt have any water in it during the test but the air inside was 67.8F. If your wondering about the extra 1.4F drop, it was the water vapor condensing out of the air
Dont forget to fit a drop leg after the cooler to collect/drain the condensate or it`ll be pushed through the nozzle.

The rockwool man is rich enough already. With drain to waste, homebrew nutes and r/o, you can get to the point where you can almost throw your meters away

i sealed up my chamber nice and tight this afternoon. and im glad you had such great succes with the nute cooler, im going to have mine up and running by thursday, i wont have time until then.