Fully Automated Drain-To-Waste System For Coco

[Choco8]

This is a automated system for dosing, distributing, and disposing of nutrient for a small coco-based system.

It makes and distributes 12 gallons of nutrient twice a day, starting with a solenoid valve controlled by a timer which fills the tank to the proper level. The water first passes through a basic whole-house water filter which is positioned upstream of the solenoid valve.

After the tank is filled with fresh water, another timer controlling a circulating pump at the bottom of the tank and two air stones power on.
Then a Jecod Aquarium doser adds the proper amounts of nutrients to the tank in sequence using the doser's program, pulling the nutrient from these clear graduated storage tanks.

Yet another timer powers on a large sump pump in the nutrient tank that delivers the goods to 4 soaker rings through a 1/2" rigid pvc line that goes up the wall and across the center of the ceiling, where it splits and heads to opposite walls and down to a flexible hose leading to the feed rings. The plants sit in 3 x 3 trays which are elevated about 12" from the floor to allow drainage into a lowboy storage bin ( about 8" tall).

Now the final step - about 1/2 hour after each feeding ( to allow for drain-down), a small sump pump in each lowboy powers on, disposing of the waste nutes through a separate pvc line that runs along the perimeter of the room and snakes into a utility sink for disposal. These pumps power on for 2 minutes for the first drain-down, and again and hour later for one minute just in case there has been more drain-down. Float switches could also be used to accomplish this emptying.

 

[KinKrit]

So cool，like it

 

[Creeperpark]

No disrespect intended and to each his own. I'm ole school and can't seen to understand why you need a system like this. That has to be the most expensive and wasteful way to grow I have ever seen. When it comes to unnatural grow methods and excess waste you take the cake. Just to allow the waste to go into the sink twice a day is adding up over time. If you measure your water intake weekly, I bet its in the hundreds of gallons or liters per week. Is it because you can't get peat? Please forgive my ignorance ole school mentality.

 

[Growenhaft]

I like that very much

fine technology at the start. how much time and money did it cost you until everything went perfectly?

How did you manage to get the same amount of nutrient solution in every pot?

my automatic watering did not work so well. in order for the last pot to develop sufficient drainage,
twice the amount of water had to run through through others. (one pot 1.5l, the other 3l)

i had used this distributor. A 1/2 "pipe went away from each connection.
10 t-pieces were built into each of these. There were separate flow limiters (pressure reducers) on the protruding pipe to the pot.
Nevertheless, it was not possible to distribute the nutrient solution evenly. I needed a lot more nutrient solution than by hand.

it's a shame that it's already dismantled and I don't have a photo of it. but since it didn't work well i dismantled it and needed the parts for other projects.
that annoys me now because you could certainly have helped me.
It can't be that difficult to dispense the same amount of water into each of the 85 pots.
without investing in a lot of expensive magnetic switches.

they do a great job. Top

 

[eric2028]

No disrespect intended and to each his own. I'm ole school and can't seen to understand why you need a system like this. That has to be the most expensive and wasteful way to grow I have ever seen. When it comes to unnatural grow methods and excess waste you take the cake. Just to allow the waste to go into the sink twice a day is adding up over time. If you measure your water intake weekly, I bet its in the hundreds of gallons or liters per week. Is it because you can't get peat? Please forgive my ignorance ole school mentality.

It does seem that coco dtw uses excess water/nutes. And honestly it might. It’s highly efficient in other ways though. Consider you can use much smaller pots and much shorter veg times. So your saving labor, space and money. I personally started with peat several years ago. Peat is ok but if you really wanna get more hydroponic results coco is the way to go IMO. Get yourself a cheap effective nutrient mix and you ll never look back.

 

[star crash]

This is the most engineered small system I’ve ever seen ...holy cowWhat a luxury! Good on you

 

[unnamedmike]

Great system, and very clean build, thanks for sharing Im gonna stay around here copying ideas. Im automating my room with arduino, I go slow, but I go.

 

[Choco8]

No disrespect intended and to each his own. I'm ole school and can't seen to understand why you need a system like this. That has to be the most expensive and wasteful way to grow I have ever seen. When it comes to unnatural grow methods and excess waste you take the cake. Just to allow the waste to go into the sink twice a day is adding up over time. If you measure your water intake weekly, I bet its in the hundreds of gallons or liters per week. Is it because you can't get peat? Please forgive my ignorance ole school mentality.

I made this system because my wife had to move back to her mother's house 150 miles away. This automation enables me to be with my family.
Drain-to-waste is widely used and has lots of advantages over hydroponics, and is anything BUT "unnatural". I suggest reading up on it a bit.

As far as "wasteful", this system makes 24 gallons a day. 16 gallons are used by the plants. 8 gallons goes down the drain into a dry well.
The same amount of waste water would be generated by hand watering. This system cost me less than $500, a fraction of what many hydro systems cost.

I don't get why you are asking about peat. Isn't this the "coco" section of the site?

 

[unregistered190]

Pretty slick! Nice job

 

[Choco8]

It works pretty good too.

 

[dlxtpnuo]

I like the way plants have a self service bar.

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[Choco8]

As far as the cost of the system, it was relatively low in the world of automated hydroponics.

Here is a list of the components:

"Whole House" type water filter - $40- $80 (optional)
INLET VALVE - 3/4" Stainless Steel Electric Solenoid Valve 110VAC Normally Closed Air Water - $50 (Amazon)
NUTRIENT PUMP - Active Aqua AAPC1010 Utility, 1479 GPH/5600 LPH Sump Pump - $120
WASTE PUMPS - VIVOSUN 1150GPH Submersible Pump (4500L/H, 100W), Ultra Quiet Water Pump with 11ft High Lift - 2 of these @ $36 each = $72

Outlet Timer, 7 Day Wall Plug in Light Timer Outlet, CANAGROW Indoor Digital Programmable Timers - 6 of these @ $14 each = $84

DOSER- Jebao Aquarium Dosing Pump (DP-5) - $91
DOSER TANKS- Marinecolor Acrylic Liquid Storage Bucket 3 Rooms 4.5 Liters - 2 of these at $54 = $108 ( you could easily make your own clear graduated containers from 1 liter soda bottles. I just thought these looked really cool, OK?)

NUTRIENT TANK - Probably $40 or so for the main tank and the smaller one I sliced up. I can't find the model on Home Depots site, but there is a similar one with wheels.
It's a Husky storage bin ( 45 gallon I think), with a cutout in which I inserted a second smaller storage bin that been sliced in half horizontally so I could use the lid from this smaller bin to access the tank without disturbing the other plumbing.
VIVOSUN 317-1750GPH Commercial Air Pump 20W-102W - $45
AquaticHI 2 Pack Large 4 inch (100 mm) Cylinder Air Stones - 2 pack - $14
Hygger Mini Wave Maker - $70


PVC LowBoy Tables
3 Way Tee PVC Fitting -Grade SCH 40 PVC 1" Elbow Fittings - 12 of these @ about $3 each = $36 ( you can probably find them cheaper on the web)
1" PVC for table frames - 3 x 10' lengths @ $5 each = $15
1" PVC caps for leg ends -12 @ 83 cents each = call it $10

WASTE TANKS - 14-Gal. HDX Tough Storage Bin in Black - 2 of these @ $10 = $20

Waste and Nutrient lines - 1/2 PVC - probably 6 10' lengths, some elbows and stuff. PVC is cheap and the joints are reliable - Estimating $100 for all of it including the flood rings.
This cost doesn't include the copper fittings and pipe on the inlet side, probably another $75 to round it out to....

TOTAL SYSTEM COST - $1000 including the fancy-ass clear tanks so you can feel like a scientist. Lab coat not included.

 

[Choco8]

So of course I forgot some components. Here's one thing I forgot:

2' x 2' TRAYS FOR LOWBOY TABLES - I bought mine from GrowGeneration. 4 of these @ $36 = $144
You can make the PVC tables so that these set down into them so that about an 1" of the tray is gripped all around the perimeter.
Another cool trick which I stumbled on is making these fit in the tables to the right height so that a plastic milk crate can be snugly placed under the center of the tray, which would otherwise sag from the weight of a large pot of coco mix over time. A milk crate is ideal for this as it won't absorb water and quickly dries, and doesn't impede the flow of air, and is the right height for this setups drain scenario.

 

[tobedetermined]

The doser's are really slick. I saw those in commercial kitchens & laundries 30 years ago but I didn't know that they made affordable versions for small volumes.

 

[f-e]

I like that very much

fine technology at the start. how much time and money did it cost you until everything went perfectly?

How did you manage to get the same amount of nutrient solution in every pot?

my automatic watering did not work so well. in order for the last pot to develop sufficient drainage,
twice the amount of water had to run through through others. (one pot 1.5l, the other 3l)

i had used this distributor. A 1/2 "pipe went away from each connection.
10 t-pieces were built into each of these. There were separate flow limiters (pressure reducers) on the protruding pipe to the pot.
Nevertheless, it was not possible to distribute the nutrient solution evenly. I needed a lot more nutrient solution than by hand.



it's a shame that it's already dismantled and I don't have a photo of it. but since it didn't work well i dismantled it and needed the parts for other projects.
that annoys me now because you could certainly have helped me.
It can't be that difficult to dispense the same amount of water into each of the 85 pots.
without investing in a lot of expensive magnetic switches.

they do a great job. Top

What you describe is very typical of the drip systems we have available to us. Pressure reduction at the delivery point is the fix, but you need to supply that device with something to reduce. 99% of the pumps on offer won't reach the devices pressure setting, and so the device just sits wide open, like it's not there.

The problem is people spec pumps based on volumetric delivery. Which isn't relevant. Next they get a pump with more gallons, which is more of the same mistake. Eventually they get a pump so big the local fire department are looking at it with envy. At which point the thing is so big the power station is groaning and you just might get the pressure you need as a byproduct of fitting a ridiculously large pump. Or maybe not.

Most big online grow stores don't have a pump that works. It's a crazy situation. China has caught up now, but the stores are still lagging behind with their knowledge.


tobedetermined The jecod range of timed dosing pumps start at under $50. The actual pumps used just a few dollars. The fancy timer is nice though. Just this year we had a timer breakthrough though, with $10 One second interval timers (search thread titles) so with a $10 timer, a $3 12v psu and a $3 pump you can dose a single bottle out. Though it's just measuring feed. You will need a method of measuring out a tanks worth of water.



I didn't see the other thread was a duplicate.

 

[Growenhaft]

Das Problem sind Pumpen, die auf der volumetrischen Fördermenge basieren. ​

Welches ist nicht relevant. ​

Als nächstes bekommen sie eine Pumpe mit mehr Gallonen, was eher der gleiche Fehler ist. ​

Schließlich bekommen sie eine Pumpe, die so groß ist, dass die örtliche Feuerwehr sie neidisch betrachtet. ​

An diesem Punkt ist das Ding so groß, dass das Kraftwerk stöhnt und Sie möglicherweise den Druck bekommen, den Sie als Nebenprodukt beim Einbau einer lächerlich großen Pumpe benötigen. ​

Oder vielleicht nicht.​

the distributors shown come from the heating industry, for underfloor heating. they were operated with different pressure settings. the distributors were operated on 1 "pipes with a pressure reducer. the pump has a flow rate of 20k liters per hour and was reduced from 1 1/2" to 1 ".

With the smaller pump that only delivers 8k l / h, the results were even more different. it was operated without a pressure reducer because the output was increased from 3/4 "to 1".

difficult to explain in a foreign language. and when I see what funny things are being translated from English into German, I fear that funny things will also be translated from German into English.

I imagined that I would learn something of your language this way, I think that's very naive of me.
progress 0.0

 

[Choco8]

I like that very much

fine technology at the start. how much time and money did it cost you until everything went perfectly?

How did you manage to get the same amount of nutrient solution in every pot?

It was about $1000, and worked the first time with some simple valve adjustments to insure the same flow to each plant, which was also helped by using equidistant lengths of pvc tubing from where it split, and using an individual 1/2" valve to fine-tune the nutrient delivery to each plant.

 

[saitama]

I made this system because my wife had to move back to her mother's house 150 miles away. This automation enables me to be with my family.
Drain-to-waste is widely used and has lots of advantages over hydroponics, and is anything BUT "unnatural". I suggest reading up on it a bit.

As far as "wasteful", this system makes 24 gallons a day. 16 gallons are used by the plants. 8 gallons goes down the drain into a dry well.
The same amount of waste water would be generated by hand watering. This system cost me less than $500, a fraction of what many hydro systems cost.

I don't get why you are asking about peat. Isn't this the "coco" section of the site?

I like how people think prefacing things with "no disrespect" think it's okay to be as rude as they are. Back handed as heck.

Great system and very inspiring!

 

[CannaRed]

Excellent. I'm looking into an auto water and drain system. Going to get the little giant shallow pan condensate pump. It turns on an off by water level instead of a timer. It's expensive but small and seems to have good reviews. Going to use it to pump waste water out of tent to a Rez to be dumped.

 

[f-e]

Should find a condense pump for $20 Canna Red. I have one here I don't want. Fridge and aircon guys are forever changing them to make a job pay, but then fixing the old one as it was a garden pea stuck in it. eBay is littered with them. Also the Aspen standard. A mains powered 100ml per minute dosing pump with chemical resistant hose. That thing would shell them garden peas