Dukey

Or how can I make a low maintenance DWC system using 2 grow buckets and a external resevior?

funkjunky2

i've come across a bunch of stuff on youtube

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sli phox

hempy simulates hydro and is extremely simple

Ripcords Hempy Guide

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GreenDragon2k

Hempy is not low maintenance. You'll be watering hempy buckets frequently once the plants are larger. Unless you were to setup a drip setup its probably the highest maintenance of all.

Ebb&flow with a very large reservoir would be perhaps the lowest maintenance. DWC with a very large reservoir would also be fairly low maintenance. If you add a float valve you could leave it for periods of a week or more.

Check out the bio-bucket guys they've got some good threads on interconnecting buckets.

I would reccomend using PVC and bulkhead fittings or uniseals, Tubing and grommits are unreliable. You could theoretically hook up a DWC bucket or two to a 50 gallon reservoir and leave them for quite some time.

Your biggest enemy is going to be roots clogging the drains and overflowing the buckets.

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Outlaw Grower

i use a recirculating coco drip system made out of a 3x3 tray witha 14gal res and find myself actually looking for something to do. i only gotta top up and ph is usually still spot on, with a larger resiviour i could see leaving this system for a whole week with no problems. btw i dont use drippers i just use 1/8 inch lines off a 1/2" main line so they dont clog, i just drip for 6 mins 3x a day in 3/4gal round pots 16 per tray

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Dukey

Thanks for the help. I have the buckets down but could you link to a resevoir that would work for this? I have been reading a grow book and they state that yes ebb and flo and DWC are very low maintenance.

GreenDragon2k

Theres tons of tanks on this website.

- Plastic-Mart -

I would use these things along with PVC to hook them together. Aquatic Eco-Systems: Uniseals®

aquatic-eco systems also carries float valves for automating your watering top-up but I would recommend leaving them turned off under normal conditions as you have to more frequently top up nutrients to keep the plants fed.

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Cannabis

You're kidding. Right?

Passive hydro is renowned for the lack of maintenance.
The reasons:
(1) no acoustics management.
No air pumps, water pumps, oversized fans to keep the room temps low. No air hoses that can transmit vibration to be managed/quieted, no water hoses, no bubbling sounds; minimal fan power = minimal vibration, minimal air turbulence noise.

(2)No aeration management:
Since there are no air pumps, no concerns for hoses that come off, & potential backfeed siphons creating leaks; no worry whether the roots get enough air to fend off pythium ever; no bungie cord hangs, no hose routing, no airstones to glue down, or clog, or come off the hose, no worries whatever. No concerns over air temps bubbling thru reservoir raising the temps.
No concerns. Ever.

(3)No pump/circulation management:
No pump to ever accidentally catch a rock and lock up, no pump to fail for any reason: there is no pump. No plumbing to run, no seals to leak, no hoses to come off barbs, or pump outlets stopping flow. No roots to get caught in drains, no overflows due to backflow siphons, no worries of any kind; no plumbing, no treading around hoses, pipe, being careful of creating leaks.
No concerns. Ever.

(4)No physical reservoir:
No height management to ensure appropriate flow, footprint around the grow, no insulation to mitigate heat trapping, no worries about leaks from a reservoir; such as tubing to keep it topped up, tubing going to float valve coming off & backflow/direct leak siphons.
No concerns ever.

(5)No chilling concerns.
No initial expense, no running yet more wires/fans/light management to ensure proper cooling of reservoir/buckets with chilling of any kind: it's all eliminated completely. No chiller footprint to accomodate.
No concerns: ever.

(6)No bioherd management:
No worrying about low pH destroying vivacity of the herd, no concerns about keeping the herd aerated, no concerns about keeping the herd fed, no concerns about distinction between infamous pink algae/appropriate herd, no asking oneself if the herd is big enough.
No concerns. Ever.

(7)Minimal pH management:
Since the reserve is minimized, and not aerated, the pH control is killer easy: indeed arguably the easiest and most forgiving in all hydroponics. pH can be altered to any degree with absolute assurance swing will be minimal, and that the next time watering is done, pH can be swung and set with needlepoint accuracy.
Since it's non-organic, there's No concern for bioherd health vis-a-vis pH as noted previously, above.

(8)Water volume management:
Since each individual batch can be mixed and poured on the spot, with one pH check, one ppm check, time spent on water volume management, is as easy as it can be made. There is no lower maintenance method. One mix, one pH check, one nutritional setting, pour, walk off. No reservoir changes, draining or hauling water. None.
Not ever.

(9)Salts/nutritional management:
Salts/nutritional management is as easy as it gets. If there's a problem or need to skew ppm/relative ppm, it's as simple as dosing a little differently the next time the mix is made. No ''waiting anxiously to see how bad it is going to get'' due to the expense/volume/work to alter the nutrition.

(10)Time management:

Since there is no assembly of plumbing, no tiptoeing around hoses, plumbing, checking for leaks, checking airflow, checking volume flow, checking temperatures, the amount of time spent is minimal: literally, as minimal as it gets. There's never any 'wasted time' spent doing chores associated with ensuring ''all systems go'' conditions. It's never any more complicated/time consuming than mix, check, pour, and walk off.
Not ever.

(11)Temperature management:
No such thing. There's no such thing as pythium concerns, dissolved oxygen concerns.
Not ever.

(12)General expense:
As low as it gets. Parts are somewhere between free, and as cheap as it gets. There aren't ever any backup air, water, chilling, leak-mitigation concerns.
Not ever.

(13)Emergency repairs and critical timING of those repairs' inconvenience:
Since there IS nothing to fail, there's never a 'late Sunday night' or "Christmas/Thanksgiving/New Years/Easter etc ''critical failure emergency'' situation. There's nothing to fail so there ARE no 'emergencies' of any kind.
Not ever.

(14)Ease of scalability in time between waterings:
If the typical passive bucket has a 2 inch depth, and a 2 inch depth gives two days for small plants/one day for large plants, then simply raising the hole one inch gives three days and for large plants, a stretched two;
if the buckets are each set into a cheap, secondary surrounding container such as a 99cent store dishpan or large, shallow bucket,

and the primary grow containers' holes placed at the very bottom, capacity can be e.a.s.i.l.y. doubled; even tripled if plant numbers are few enough to allow (space) and they can be set for a CONTINUOUS between-waterings period of 5 days no problem.

Even using low-suitability, low-stability tap water, pH can be set low initially, and the slow, steady climb of the pH actually used to the growers' advantage: covering both the low, and high, correct pH range, ensuring even LESS pH management/maintenance: it'll self correct, to a point. The premise isn't hypothetical: the stability of a covered, unaerated, mix has a predictable curve of rise, based on water hardness & method of pH management; and conveniently, the time curve of that rise is about: a week, a little more, a little less, before out-of-range conditions occur.
If you've really got to go out of town, (the above assumes pure tap water) then after all the savings in equipment noted in the points enumerated above, more than offsets the cost of buying say, ten gallons of distilled water to soften the mix, and slow the time curve of the rise. If one has r.o. water, that time curve can be set like a clock; and it doesn't matter how large the batch, more or less.

You could mix tap/ro in various proportions once, in say, three different 16 ounce plastic/coffee cups, check the rate of rise over a week or ten days, and pick the proportion that gives best response.

If plant counts are low enough, and space adequate, setting the hempy buckets in large dish pans, that come with lids, cutting holes in those lids to set the buckets into them, for algae and evaporation/humidity management.

The reserve of water for buckets established this way could easily be made to give a week, ten days, maybe even two weeks between waterings, depending on the size of the plants/metabolism conditions.

(15)In event that footprint in the grow room doesn't supply space needed for long term between watering intervals, a reservoir could be set up: and a water pump of the absolute minimum size put on the cheapest of timers: calibrated using a T and valve, regulating water flow so all plants are watered adequately every day, every two or three days, and a rudimentary but fully functional and adequate auto-watering mechanism be implemented.

How in the world one would come to the conclusion this is higher general maintenance than any other system, I can't begin to guess;

but I will definately take the bet that a primarily passive system is the lowest maintenance/cost system that can be deployed; and by a LONG shot.

There's just no comparison.

There's even more. When the amount of air that has to be moved is minimized the odor control demand is lessened.

Alluded to but not specifically mentioned perhaps are elimination of a pH controller; a compression chiller; air conditioner; a whole array potentially, of equipment, that simply need not ever come into the picture as part of a 'wish list' to trim the system out and lower the maintenance.

Finally, if one wanted to take exception to the #15, #14 pump/mini-reservoir theory, there's a way around all that, with deployment of nothing more than a single ''Smart-Valve'' which sets the water level at about 1-7/8 inches (effectively 2 inches) and a single, tube distributed tupperware bowl to act as a manifold for allowing the water level to be raised to 2", decline to effectively zero, then automatically refill: without power demand of any kind.

(16)No need for electrical power of any kind:
The smart-valve method eliminates need to provide electrical power. With one, for about 25 bucks i think, there's not any need for power, of any kind.
Not ever.

(17)No concern about timer resets/power outages:
When there's no need for power for a timer, pump, air pump, the power going out eliminated as a potential failure point. No failures/slowdowns due to power outages.
Not ever.

So... I'll take exception to the concept a lower maintenance system can be built than passive buckets.

GreenDragon2k

lol. I guess that depends on your definition of maintenance

I would call all the things your alluding to general setup, and design work, as well as a few reliability issues Not, a general day-to day maintenance requirement.

Once you've got a DWC system installed and running smoothly. Day-to day maintenance is practically none. Maybe idly check the pH, and add a few gallons of water or a cup of nutrients every other day or so.

Try hand watering 50 hempy buckets, and then try to come back tell me Hempy is low maintenance

Indeed, ebb&flow, dwc etc. are much more difficult to mastermind, install, setup, configure, and problems can be much more disastrous by an exponential amount.

Maintenance on a day-to-day basis however? I still think that hempy is going to require the most upkeep. Simple upkeep indeed, but none the less backbreaking if you have more than two plants.

Perhaps Dukey can tell us. Are you looking for a system a snap to setup and there is nothing to go wrong but you have to constantly water the plants every other day? Or are you looking for a system that requires very little daily work to keep going, something you can add water and forget about for a few days to a week if you have to?

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