True HP Aero For 2011

konagirl420 said:

Stopping by to say hi, keep up the good work!

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Bump that! I'm still lurkin too, nice to see all the new projects online.

Trichy Bastard said:

Here's a quick little article that explains some things about why our methods of growing should be the best in regards to healthy roots and short internodes... http://www.hydroempire.com/store/hydroponic-plant-parts.php
I don't know how reliable the source is, but I liked what I read...

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What do ya think about those ideal root zone temps? Seem a little high to you guys?

Mike Young said:

What do ya think about those ideal root zone temps? Seem a little high to you guys?

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Somewhat- although as Atomizer recently reminded me, different plants have different ideal rootzone temps. Those sound perfect for tomatoes which apparently like slightly higher temps than cannabis. It's probably something that even varies from strain to strain if you want to get real technical. I wish they liked temps around 85-90 then I'd be set lol...

So, on the side, I have been playing around with all sorts of different methods of cloning. All have worked, and it seems I can get roots to show in about 5 days, which seems quick enough. But something has been nagging me in the back of my mind- and that's that I have seen some really beautiful clone roots in the past, and couldn't quite remember where, or why I've been obsessing. I finally remembered what it was in the back of my head and it was Cavadge's HP cloner. It produced some of the most beautiful clone roots I have ever seen. So I decided I am going to try my hand at the same. The good news is his was quite complex, but seeing as how I have 90 psi main house pressure out of the hose bib, that's where I am going for simplicity. Cavadge had quite alot of the red cloud tops nozzles spraying up from the bottom in his setup, but I imagine it was way overkill and plan to run a ring of 1/4" line around a 5 gallon Lowe's bucket with perhaps 2 or 3 of the same nozzles spraying up around 6 inches below the top of the bucket running right off my water hose and put some neoprene pucks in the lid. I'll put a timer and solenoid inline and start out with cycles around 60 seconds every 5 minutes and just dump the water in the bucket once per day on the plants in my yard. I don't think it will make much waste water with the low flow of the nozzles and especially only running so few of them. I'm excited and hope to have some especially good clones starting out soon. I'll keep things posted here on the progress.

2-3 seconds every 5minutes would be plenty, it`ll only use 2-3 litres a day. 90psi is nice for a cloner, i have 75psi out of the tap here but its a tad cold at 50F (10c) so i had to run a coil through a heated res (picnic cooler + aquarium heater) to warm it up en route. Yours is probably at an ideal temperature straight from the tap The 50F comes in very handy for cooling the outdoor chamber feed without needing to run a chiller.
Here`s my rough looking mains water cloner, 60 x 2" netpots, single netafim nozzle assembly with a 4 bar adv fed via a solenoid (located underneath the cloner)

Atomizer said:

2-3 seconds every 5minutes would be plenty, it`ll only use 2-3 litres a day. 90psi is nice for a cloner, i have 75psi out of the tap here but its a tad cold at 50F (10c) so i had to run a coil through a heated res (picnic cooler + aquarium heater) to warm it up en route. Yours is probably at an ideal temperature straight from the tap The 50F comes in very handy for cooling the outdoor chamber feed without needing to run a chiller.
Here`s my rough looking mains water cloner, 60 x 2" netpots, single netafim nozzle assembly with a 4 bar adv fed via a solenoid (located underneath the cloner)
View attachment 2177688

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Looks great, love the vibrant colors ... It's good to know I'm not the only one with the same idea. I'll assume it gives good results... My water pressure is great for most things, although I'm always expecting some plumbing appliance to fail after enough plumbers told me I should crank it back. The showers are worth it imo ... I do have a few waterhose blowouts but try to remember to keep them turned off at the spigot when not in use.

And yes, my tap temps are not good for cooling, but at least will be good for cloning.

The tub is made of two red HDPE trays, 600 x 400 x 100 deep. The blue bits are 4 pint (ldpe) milk bottle screw caps with a 1" hole drilled in the miiddle, they`re a perfect fit for a 2" netpot.
I use 10mm thick neoprene discs in the caps to center the clone and keep the light out. Each cap has a cut in it so it can be opened up which makes it easy to remove from the stem. The nozzle assembly screws into a 15mm JG stop end. The 15mm tube feeds up through a 15mm JG tank connector (drilled out) so the tube goes right through for easy slide height adjustment. A !2vdc solenoid with 15mm JG pushfit connectors fits on the bottom of the tube.

Nice, very nice... Can't buy anything nearly as well thought out or anything at all in terms of HP cloner for that matter

This is next on my list of thing to build

I know y'all must be gettin tired of seeing my roots, but over the past 2-3 days something awesome happened. New roots just shooting straight out whiter & fuzzier than any I've had, in such a high abundance. They are upto 3" long and look abso-fucking-lutely like what I want all over, lol. 2 sec/4 min. I think I may need to add another 4 nozzles at this rate. This thing is huge and i'm still veggin!

Mike Young said:

I know y'all must be gettin tired of seeing my roots, but over the past 2-3 days something awesome happened. New roots just shooting straight out whiter & fuzzier than any I've had, in such a high abundance. They are upto 3" long and look abso-fucking-lutely like what I want all over, lol. 2 sec/4 min. I think I may need to add another 4 nozzles at this rate. This thing is huge and i'm still veggin!
View attachment 2181814View attachment 2181815

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man mike those look awsome! I think the 2 sec is the sweet spot! I found keeping my on time there and backing off slowly in flower evn landing at 2/ 30 off! worked great

dickkhead said:

man mike those look awsome! I think the 2 sec is the sweet spot! I found keeping my on time there and backing off slowly in flower evn landing at 2/ 30 off! worked great

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There is no timed setting that works the same for everyone in aero. The point is to get the saturation just right given all the variables. That said, you might both have good results at 2 seconds, but it doesn't automatically mean the same results for everyone else. Just pointing this out in case someone sees it and thinks 2 seconds is a magic number for all HP setups...

Stellar roots Mike, I never get tired of seeing them

Well, I decided to put together something out of what I already had laying around. Ended up using a sterilite container instead of a 5 gallon bucket.

Very simple (6) site 2" netpot w/neoprene insert cloner, just hooked up my garden hose to a small length of JG line with 2 red cloudtops nozzles in the bottom pointing upwards towards the roots and controlled by a solenoid and timer set to 2 seconds every 5 minutes. I checked the chamber today and after 24 hours it was only a third full- perhaps 2 gallons or so of wastewater. I've been really, really busy lately, so luckily this only took about 15 minutes to make, and I already had all of the components on hand... I'll keep you guys updated on how it performs. I'll probably cut in some sort of drainage soon, because if the water level gets too high it will cover up the nozzles- but for now I am fine with dumping it everyday.



P.s.- this time I got ballsy- instead of cherry tomatoes, I used beefsteak- lol...

Edit: I just realized the cycle time was set at 2 seconds per minute, so now it should really go through little water at the new setting of 3 seconds per 5 minutes...

Trichy Bastard said:

There is no timed setting that works the same for everyone in aero. The point is to get the saturation just right given all the variables. That said, you might both have good results at 2 seconds, but it doesn't automatically mean the same results for everyone else. Just pointing this out in case someone sees it and thinks 2 seconds is a magic number for all HP setups...

Stellar roots Mike, I never get tired of seeing them

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yea I guess your right but 2 sec seems to be the sweet spot in my experience but could be diff for others.

nice cloner I need to fab one up asap

Go TB and the Aero crew

Hey fellas.. I'll start by thanking all of you. This whole thread is quite incredible and inspiring! Ive been getting parts together since I read cav's thread a while back and when I started doing research again I fortunately stumbled across this compilation of priceless knowledge and information! I will be incorporating a schneider electric PLC into my hp aero set up, for control and timing of solenoids and such, along with SSR's.. (minimal response delay time). The software for the PLC is downloadable free and they are pretty fairly priced units. red cloud tops, 5 gal accum, shurflo, JG fittings, You all know the digs... Everything that I know I have either read here or on cav's thread so I will undoubtedly be back when I begin to put all of the parts together with questions and probably some calcs for atomizer to verify when I start sizing the chamber.. lol.
I was also wondering about this pump for a HP cloner -- http://cloudtops.com/misting_systems_misting_nozzles/mistpumps.php
Keep up the good work!!!!

Well, today I find one of the 6 cuttings is sprouting quite a few root starts... Only on the 4th day of propagation - Nice

It may or not be too early to say I have finally settled on my chosen cloning method... So far I think it's looking pretty darn good.

AeroApprentice said:

Hey fellas.. I'll start by thanking all of you. This whole thread is quite incredible and inspiring! Ive been getting parts together since I read cav's thread a while back and when I started doing research again I fortunately stumbled across this compilation of priceless knowledge and information! I will be incorporating a schneider electric PLC into my hp aero set up, for control and timing of solenoids and such, along with SSR's.. (minimal response delay time). The software for the PLC is downloadable free and they are pretty fairly priced units. red cloud tops, 5 gal accum, shurflo, JG fittings, You all know the digs... Everything that I know I have either read here or on cav's thread so I will undoubtedly be back when I begin to put all of the parts together with questions and probably some calcs for atomizer to verify when I start sizing the chamber.. lol.
I was also wondering about this pump for a HP cloner -- http://cloudtops.com/misting_systems_misting_nozzles/mistpumps.php
Keep up the good work!!!!

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Hey welcome AeroApprentice... Sounds like you know pretty much what's up... Cav's thread was great for walking through the steps and build process, I think the one thing he could have done better in hindsight is have larger chambers. The pump looks okay, but I am not familiar with the sound level it may operate at. It does have brass fittings which are slightly more concern in a cloner as you might recirculate but to be honest there is so little throw away I'd just DTW on it as well unless it's particularly large. Also, I really believe if your main pressure is around 60psi or above I would just run off of that and call it good (maybe even no matter what the pressure is). No noise, and so much simpler. Mine has been working well so far and it only took a few minutes to cobble together out of cheap parts besides the timer which I already had. I am curious to see how your PLC build goes and look forward to hearing from you now...

Great job Tb

Argh, I had an issue with the cloner... There is a float level switch integrated into the timer that when opened turns off the timer to the solenoid. I should have jumpered the wires together for a permanent fix, but out of laziness I just used a rubberband on the float to hold it into the closed circuit position. The rubberband apparently broke yesterday and I thought it was a cycle adjustment that caused the timer to quit working that I had already fixed. The end result is around 12 hours of no spraying, and here is a pic of the damage... The tops are not wilting in the slightest, and I believe this is only a setback, not a total loss. Anyway, hope the roots go back to growing again now.




I've also adjusted the mistings to 3 seconds every 1 minute in hopes the roots grow thicker and stronger. Cavadge was misting for 20 seconds or so every minute with a ton of nozzles and the roots looked very good for initial clones. I figure good roots in the rockwool will fare better and then the new hp roots can grow off of those once they exit the rockwool.