Noobin up a PPK

[DamnUglyDogE]

Dang bro. . I feel for you... What a PITA..
Maybe bucket in bucket it a better option for the next run.

Any way you could find a larger bowl and place it under the main bowl to catch the over flow?
I mean leave the plant in its bowl and cut a hole in a bigger bowl for the tail piece and just put the catch bowl under the main.

Would catch the over flow and lead it to the bottom res.

 

[DaveTheNewbie]

Any way you could find a larger bowl and place it under the main bowl to catch the over flow?
I mean leave the plant in its bowl and cut a hole in a bigger bowl for the tail piece and just put the catch bowl under the main.

really tight thinking, but a PITA to plumb.

the current plant is to put less medium in the bucket so that slower draining is less likely to leak. Ill also look into making sure the buckets are level rather than leaning.

but fuck, if perlite is flooding, WTF can i do?

 

[otis33]

I've been having good results in my ppk with one brick of coco grow/ one bag of clay pebbles feed every three hours. I'm feeding@1ec and I may or may not increase that to 1.2 after stretch. and that's one minute every three hours. I'm not using Jack's yet, h&g cocos at home and h&g aqua flakes at the rental.

 

[otis33]

I just flipped the ones at home, but they have been vegging a couple weeks. we'll see how things hold up for the rest of flower

 

[disciple]

 

[DamnUglyDogE]

So let's come up with an effective way to control the flow amount
with a 1 minute pulse that has to much volume..

A lot of people(including me) have minimum 1 minute timers ..
Not really wanting to spend $50 + on another one. .lol

I tried placing a piece of small tubing inside my 3/8" tubing
Call it a restriction ring, I guess. .

Didn't work..

Going to try a small hose clamp tightened around the tubing tonight..
Trying and get 1/2 the flow and adjust from there.

Next will be a 1/4" syphon hose connected to the feed line drained into the lower res. .

As I write this. ..

Why not a on/off valve on the feed line,turned half way ... Humm. ..

I got lots of why nots... Lol. .

 

[Weed Killer]

Would an overflow pipe ?(flood table), that way any excess solution could return to the rez instead of the floor.

 

[420ish]

if you can not cut time any more,add a bypass line back to the res.when you have too much pressure and try cutting down flow with a valve there is alot of back pressure.it works better to have an extra line with a valve running right to res to give more control on your flow.it cuts down on the back pressure and really lowers the flow to where you want it.i have valves going to each plant and one that goes right back to res.by adjusting the bypass one that goes right to the res it lowers flow on the other four lines that go to my ppks.my system has only been running a week but that is how i got my flow good as soon as i started it.

 

[Big John]

Do you fill your containers to the brim with medium? I've been filling mine with a bit of space, 1-2", that allows a margin for error on the flood cycle timing. You still have to adjust flood volume downwards as the roots fill the container and slow drainage/ take up some of the porosity. And looking at those root mats I imagine your medium level will rise as the roots fill out the bottom of the container and push the perlite up.

If you cant find a 240v digital recycle timer that will allow to the second adjustment I'd try 420ish's advice, it sounds like it would work really well to me. Valves are key, I'm using the garden hose manifold d9 showed off in his thread and it would work great for this idea:

if you can not cut time any more,add a bypass line back to the res.when you have too much pressure and try cutting down flow with a valve there is alot of back pressure.it works better to have an extra line with a valve running right to res to give more control on your flow.it cuts down on the back pressure and really lowers the flow to where you want it.i have valves going to each plant and one that goes right back to res.by adjusting the bypass one that goes right to the res it lowers flow on the other four lines that go to my ppks.my system has only been running a week but that is how i got my flow good as soon as i started it.

This is a really good idea. You could run the bypass line above the water line and benefit from increased DO of the waterfall effect.

Though looking at your insane root mass it seems like your plants are doing fine on that account.

One question I have is with that massive tailpipe how long does it take for the water to fully drain out of the medium container after a full flood?

 

[DaveTheNewbie]

wow lots of really helpful input here guys, really appreciate it all.

I dont have a timer capable of less than 1 min increments, and to buy one over here is stupidly expensive ($200+). Welcome to Australia.

Bobbles peat would only hold water longer than perlite anyway wouldnt it?

Otis im feeding 1 min every 2 hours atm, could easily move to 3 hours as the wick will cover any sins anyway, but i suspect all the problem is coming from the amount of water suspended via wicking and the single minute feed so that probabally wouldnt help.

weedkiller the overflow idea is similar to the catch bucket idea of ADs where you let it overflow and catch the waste and recycle it. Good idea but alot of plumbing and potential for leaks.

420's bypass valve is much easier to implement, and its what i usually do anyway.

Big john filling the medium to the top of the bucket is a stupid idea in hindsight but yes im doing that. If i had an inch gap then i would have alot more space to absorb the incoming water and not flood. This is the simplest easiest and most effective idea IMO

Disciple : really well thought out response. i have 6 pots and only 1 flooded. I pulled it out and ripped out the tailpiece and refilled it, so its now draining well. Until it floods again i cant test the drain speed, but it was draining, just not as fast as the others. Watering anything by hand will flood the control res so i would have to empty that first. Realising that it has run with the same pump and timer for 6.5 weeks before it flooded implies that the growth (or something over time) has effected drain speed. Running a smaller pump is the same as 420's offtake valve idea, lowering flow. I talked about volume of feed and volume of pot earlier with D9, but obviously the perlite is wicking and holding an amount of water as well as whats being fed in via pump. As stated earlier im watering for 1 min every 2 hours, so i cant lower the timer event, and i suspect increasing wait periods will be fruitless.

All over im going to dig up an inch of medium from the pot in veg and hopefully that will give some buffer for floods. This is all but impossible for the already flowering plants but should be viable for the veg plant.

 

[DaveTheNewbie]

update. of the 2 plants same strain age size etc the one that flooded was very hard to dig any perlite out of. the roots were right up to the top
the other one had no roots in the first 2 inches of medium and it was easy to scoop it out

 

[otis33]

I was more suggesting the chow mix than the time of the watering. I would imagine you have access to hydroton or some type of clay pebbles and coco. you can check in on my progress with chow ppks. I can and will eventually get the turface and Jack's, but I have so many bricks of coco and tubs of recycled coco along with nearly 10 gallons each of h&g aqua flakes and cocos that must get used up. maybe I just over looked it, but I haven't seen any ppk/ chow grows and it seems like a good alternative for people unable to get turface....so far....

 

[DamnUglyDogE]

wow lots of really helpful input here guys, really appreciate it all.

I dont have a timer capable of less than 1 min increments, and to buy one over here is stupidly expensive ($200+). Welcome to Australia.

Bobbles peat would only hold water longer than perlite anyway wouldnt it?

Otis im feeding 1 min every 2 hours atm, could easily move to 3 hours as the wick will cover any sins anyway, but i suspect all the problem is coming from the amount of water suspended via wicking and the single minute feed so that probabally wouldnt help.

weedkiller the overflow idea is similar to the catch bucket idea of ADs where you let it overflow and catch the waste and recycle it. Good idea but alot of plumbing and potential for leaks.

420's bypass valve is much easier to implement, and its what i usually do anyway.

Big john filling the medium to the top of the bucket is a stupid idea in hindsight but yes im doing that. If i had an inch gap then i would have alot more space to absorb the incoming water and not flood. This is the simplest easiest and most effective idea IMO

Disciple : really well thought out response. i have 6 pots and only 1 flooded. I pulled it out and ripped out the tailpiece and refilled it, so its now draining well. Until it floods again i cant test the drain speed, but it was draining, just not as fast as the others. Watering anything by hand will flood the control res so i would have to empty that first. Realising that it has run with the same pump and timer for 6.5 weeks before it flooded implies that the growth (or something over time) has effected drain speed. Running a smaller pump is the same as 420's offtake valve idea, lowering flow. I talked about volume of feed and volume of pot earlier with D9, but obviously the perlite is wicking and holding an amount of water as well as whats being fed in via pump. As stated earlier im watering for 1 min every 2 hours, so i cant lower the timer event, and i suspect increasing wait periods will be fruitless.

All over im going to dig up an inch of medium from the pot in veg and hopefully that will give some buffer for floods. This is all but impossible for the already flowering plants but should be viable for the veg plant.

Solid....

 

[disciple]

 

[Grow4Flow]

Dave,
you should go back to what you know bro. I have been watching your grow every step of the way trying to decide if i wanna go this route and it really has me backing off and sticking to my buckets for fear of the same outcome

 

[bobblehead]

My suggestion regarding peat wasn't meant for ppk's... I'm just saying you've been struggling with many feed systems for a while now. Hydro might not be for you, even though I'm thoroughly impressed with your grow so far! But aren't you getting tired of cleaning up floods?

I want ppk's to work for you... I'm gonna try a few myself shortly... But I'm not going to struggle to dial them in grow after grow if they don't work as anticipated. Just my $0.02.

 

[DaveTheNewbie]

wonder why D9 and the others who are saturation pulsing with top containers draining only through the tail pipe are not getting overflows.... just recaledl D9 (and HL?) have like 3 tail pipes per container.... that makes a difference.

my single tailpipe has a larger volume / surface area / diameter than D9s 3 combined.

i like the way you are going with this. i did the math on the 80 mm tube and it will be slightly over 7 sq inches compared to 3 1.5" tailpieces at 1.76 sq in ea or 5.28 together.

Dave,
you should go back to what you know bro. I have been watching your grow every step of the way trying to decide if i wanna go this route and it really has me backing off and sticking to my buckets for fear of the same outcome

My suggestion regarding peat wasn't meant for ppk's... I'm just saying you've been struggling with many feed systems for a while now. Hydro might not be for you, even though I'm thoroughly impressed with your grow so far! But aren't you getting tired of cleaning up floods?

the answer to both of these is that i like to fuck around. I ran coco DTW pot in pot for years with no troubles. Booring. Thats why i spent so long on blumats and now these.

There is no doubt that a PPK is WAY more efficient than DTW coco. I would say about 20% more efficient just looking at growth. And i can make it work im sure. Its just dialin and hoonin, Freddy style.

 

[DaveTheNewbie]

Shit photo Sunday.

Shit photo Sunday.

It looks like my camera is behaving today ... no idea why. And you can tell the difference now ive gone back to maxibloom. Look at the veg plant growth in just 1 week, its amazing.

veg plants now 3 weeks old :

Ace Of Spades 3 weeks flower :

Querkle 7 weeks flower (1 week to go!) :

 

[DaveTheNewbie]

1 weeks veg change for comparason :

 

[bobblehead]

Bring it home Dave! Plants look good.