Doobious
A good design for a recirculating DWC system I must say. The only weak point that could use even further improvement is addiding air pumps and air diffusers. Sure there will be a decent amount of oxygenation from the water splashing back in to the res. But it will never compare to the amount of O2 that could be introduced by having individual small pumps and diffusers in each bucket, or at least two large pumps and large diffusers in the res.
I have seen the difference in a side by side comparison between a DWC bubbler that was oxygenated by surface agitation (very similar to your proposed method) and one that was done by a powerful dual air pump with quality silica air diffusers. To say the least, both were quite healthy, both produced excellent quality, but the one done in the air pump/diffuser based bubbler resulted in a faster finish time and far more in terms of yield and just sheer mass, even though both were identical cuts from one mom. Throughout the entire grow the air pump based bucket just seemd to outgrow the other on a daily basis.
I cant remember the link but it discussed the amount of O2 saturation in the water in direct relation to bubble size. Since water running in to another body of water only produces very large to medium large sized bubbles, it would never really be capable of matching the saturation rate of a fine or medium pore air diffuser.
So by all means your system will work, but it could work better with air pump based oxygenation if you want to fork out the cash for the pumps and diffusers. I did not mean to put down this idea at all in any way, just wanted to pass along a little info which I gained from first hand observation. Overall I think it is a good design, and I like how you created the overfill pipe in the vertical position. I assume you are going to use bulk heads to make the holes for the fill and overfill tubes? They are real slick if you opted to use them since they create a perfect seal for the tubes. Anyways, good luck
420_sci
[This message has been edited by 420_scientist (edited August 28, 2000).] |