Question: Hand-fed 32 oz drippers for bloom, question about automating irrigation for veg areas.

Apostatize

Well-Known Member
I've been hand-feeding because my initial attempt at irrigation with a reservoir, pumps, height and other variables, was a pain in the ass, requiring a lot of adjustments, arising from a plant-to-plant disparity in watering (drought, flooding).

Now that I've settled on watering in bloom using square 6", 32 oz FLoraFlex drippers (which allow for hand-feeding or 1/4" tubes...), I want to run tubes/pumps in veg areas. One of the problems is my plant #s vary so much ... I'll still end up watering some plants if I'm holding too many for a few weeks here and there. That's ok, automating most in veg would be helpful.

To avoid adjustments and pump/timer failure problems, I want to create redundancy:
1) separate reservoir + tubes for early veg, late veg nutes (2 pumps/reservoir);
2) for each loop, I want to try running a pump from each end ... each would go off once/24 hrs and 12 hrs apart.
- in effect, a closed loop. no problems with timer/pump failure, less likely to have overall disparity in water volume because you're coming at it from 2 directions?

I'm asking because I don't want to waste a lot of time on this. I'm fine hand-feeding, just want to be a little more efficient and free up more of my day....

Key information: Grodan blocks, top-feeding, drain-to-waste.

Thanks!
 
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kingromano

Well-Known Member
why that closed loop thing ?

you just need 2 reservoirs. you will pump in the first one to your grow area, then recover the runoff in the second one.
i like to have them outside of the room

with rockwool you will do several shots per day. a few minutes each time. never h24

if you use RO water/ non chlorinated water you need some stirring pump in each bucket (around 1watt per gal ..)
 

kingromano

Well-Known Member
1621196792608.pnggardena bro :blsmoke::cool::blsmoke:
1621196765842.pngwith 3x5mm tubing to feed the plants
1621196847169.pnganti return valve in the 1st res, to avoid your aspiration line to discharge between the feed.
1621197037600.png
to install the drippers. very important if you dont want leaks everywhere
1621196977196.pngfilter,optionnal
:blsmoke::blsmoke::blsmoke:

only use plastic fittings, no metal
 
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Apostatize

Well-Known Member
Thanks! I probably should've kept the hand-feeding and irrigation topics in separate threads. But I do appreciate the recommendations if/when I revisit irrigation.

Running perpetual bloom: one out, one in. two dedicated bloom tents. i like to move plants around, depending on strain, physical composition/i've trained them etc. (e.g., compact or large; lollipopped, not topped; or topped and lollipopped). sometimes, i'll move them to finish them off in a particular spot, in a particular tent. quirky, makes sense to me ... but it isn't conducive to running irrigation....

I hand-feed with a wand (basically, one dedicated for early, late veg; and bloom phases i'm currently using). recently, i bought square 32 oz drippers. probably need more of them to achieve what i have in mind.
- each 32 oz dripper comes with 4 discs. they're either 3 holes/disc, 1 hole/disc, or no holes.
- to achieve the slow drip i want and reduce feeding time to once a day, maybe even 1.5 days, i'm requesting a combo of 1 hole and 0 hole discs (2 of each per dripper).
- just trying to save time. they do well with hand-feeding, i'm on it.
- i just want to be able to bill more hours during the day and spend less time watering, though I don't currently want to try automating
irrigation with tubes/timers (for me, it was wasteful and time tweaking was time i wasn't focusing on plants -- there's only so much time
in a day).
 
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