Commercial Resevoir Management

[Caravaggio]

So im currently hand watering 2 18k rooms that are about 60ft and a couple of brick walls away from the water source. We are basically running 50gal res's on wheels all over the place every damn watering.

I need some good ideas for how to make my life more simplified.

My thoughts are:

Get a 500gal res

PVC pipe across the building from that rez to the other rooms and just have 50gal in each of those rooms. Each room feeds 50gal at each watering.

The rooms are all on large tables 4x12 basically and its drain to waste. I capture the runoff in buckets at the end of each table and manually dumb those buckets after feeding. Runoff on each table is roughly 2 gallons.

Thoughts on simplifying things? Im fuckin tired.

 

[Marshall]

I assume you will continue to hand water.

Do both rooms get same nutes?

Get a rez large enough to handle total requirement and very strong pump. My experience is its tough to get a pump to create enough pressure through long runs of hose.

You can also pvc to each room and put a rez in there. Then pump through a hose to each table. I would ball halves at each rez and one master at the source. More than once I have overfilled rezes by forgetting I was filling them.

A trick I used was to put a t inside the rez from the pump with a shut off valve. When mixing I would close the valve and the water would exit the t and just mix in the tank.

Really you can make it as trick as you want it.... your budget..

 

[Roxfox]

You do need to get a larger res. how much water do you use a day? I would use PVC pipe with a soaker sprinkler system. You can manually water or put it on a timer. As far as the wast goes I would put a res under each table collect the runoff and then use a sump pump when they get full to drain them

 

[Marshall]

And the waste you can plumb to a drain. Or to a bin with float switches that will pump when full to a drain.

Again as trick as you want it.

My first grow I had a mess draining and filling as I had to run a hose for everything.

My warehouse my rezes had water to them and drains. All I had do was turn a valve to drain each one and a valve to fill them. No hoses except after harvest.

It will make your life a lot easier

 

[MIway]

there was this guy, apparently, that had a bunch of young groupie chicks as what seemed like maybe apprentices learning the rope of growing & selling whatever they were doing at an expo. seemed like great idea... super young, impressionable hot chicks as a 'crew', lol. had to make the work more pleasant. go cult like w it... make up some sort of new world order religion loosely based around pot & grow in the hills w all ur groupie minions, u bein the chosen prophet & all... w every mornin rituals of course. aint the world grand place, and totally solves the whole trim problem ;-)

 

[Caravaggio]

Thanks guys. The only drain is under the water source which is essentially the other side of the building unfortunately. Thats the biggest issue.

 

[richyrich]

Caravaggio,

Did you ever get it worked out?

 

[Caravaggio]

Caravaggio,

Did you ever get it worked out?

Still just hand watering out of large 45gal resevoirs on wheels for the time being. I haven't had a chance to go shopping. Been too busy

 

[richyrich]

Still just hand watering out of large 45gal resevoirs on wheels for the time being. I haven't had a chance to go shopping. Been too busy

Here are some ideas for you. First, as you already stated, get a huge rez. Use the can for now. I would look on craigslist for an ibc tote. They hold 275 to 350 gallons depending what size you want. They usually sell for around one hundred bucks.




Next get yourself a powerful water pump. I would buy a sump pump. Check these out.



These sump pumps are only $55 to 70 bucks and kick out between 2600 and 3200 GPH. They kick ass. They are at harbor freight tools. Check and see if you have one near you. If not, order online. The shipping is cheap. Also look for the 20% off coupons online. You save even more money. These pumps cost over 2 bills elsewhere.

Harbor Freight Tools
http://www.harborfreight.com/lawn-garden/pumps.html

 

[richyrich]

If you want to run an inline, these are a little weaker and cost $80 and 120.

Any of these pumps have the power to push water where you need it.

I would run long lines from the pump tee'd off with valves so you can control the flow to one room at a time. Just use garden hose. Same place has 100 feet for $30.



Each point where you have a tray I would set up a two way or four way manifold with shut off control. Take notice of the manifolds, not the spigot in the pix below. You turn them on or off as you need and control the flow of water from the pump. $5 and $10.

 

[richyrich]

At each tray you could have a dedicated water hose or use quick connects to carry a hose around to fertigate with.




Those are the hose quick connects. $6 same place.





Use the hose mends to make your hose to custom length. 89 cents a piece.

If you choose to build dripper manifolds, your feed lines will be in place already to hook up to the manifolds.

Definitely check out Picos thread on how to make his dripper manifold for dtw or recirc.

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] How to make a PVC dripper manifold
[/FONT]https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=62654

For your drains, just use more garden hose to each tray and T them off at each tray for a long run of hose all the way to the real drain. Assuming your trays are up above floor level, the water will finds its way to the drain by gravity. Nail the amount of feeding so you barely have any runoff, so your drain doesn't get backed up depending on how it flows. It could be a problem so you might want to go with a higher diameter hose. Or run to the hardware store and run 1 inch or 1 1/2 inch pvc pipe for your drains. The pvc pipe is dirt cheap.

Like others said, you can make it as trick as you want. If you want something that works, aint ghetto, and won't cost you a lot of dough, this way works. I couldn't see you spending more than 3 to 4 hundred bucks including the pico manifolds. Maybe a little more if you end up needing another sump pump to feed the other room when you go automated with timers and manifolds. Still cheap!!!

Hope this gives you some ideas. Happy growing...

 

[Caravaggio]

Richy-for some reason the pics are not showing up. The Sump pump and the tote in the first post I know what those are and im pretty much doing that now just with portable reservoirs that are 42 gal or so. Problem is my current feed each time is now about 60 gallons.

 

[richyrich]

That's weird. I have the pictures showing.

Each time you fertigate, how many batches of 60 gallons do you have to make?

Did you check out the cheap pump prices and picos manifold thread?

I can email you 20% percent coupons for harbor freight. I get them emailed and in the reg mail all the time.

 

[richyrich]

The IBC Totes are whoppers. They hold 275 to 350 gallons. I was thinking you could use one of them as your centralized reservoir. Can't beat a hundred bucks or so for a huge rez. The big rez's they sell at hydro stores are gonna run you an arm, like 600 bucks or more for something in the 400 to 600 gallon range. You could go one tote and sump pump in each room. One tote and one sump pump $160 x 2 = 320 for your two rooms. Run 3/4 garden hose from pumps down length of each grow room. Connect garden hose manifolds that have on off switches wherever you need them. Build yourself some pico manifolds, set on timers and you got instant plug and play. No more hand watering. Connect your tray drains to 1 inch, 1 1/4 inch, or 1 1/2 inch pvc pipe for your drains. Run the length of your rooms to your actual drain. You get 10 feet of pvc pipe for oh I think 3 bucks or so. I can see you getting this all done for about 5 hundred.

 

[Caravaggio]

That's weird. I have the pictures showing.

Each time you fertigate, how many batches of 60 gallons do you have to make?

Did you check out the cheap pump prices and picos manifold thread?

I can email you 20% percent coupons for harbor freight. I get them emailed and in the reg mail all the time.

The pics probably just show to you because they are still in your computers cache. They most likely dont show to others.

 

[Caravaggio]

The IBC Totes are whoppers. They hold 275 to 350 gallons. I was thinking you could use one of them as your centralized reservoir. Can't beat a hundred bucks or so for a huge rez. The big rez's they sell at hydro stores are gonna run you an arm, like 600 bucks or more for something in the 400 to 600 gallon range. You could go one tote and sump pump in each room. One tote and one sump pump $160 x 2 = 320 for your two rooms. Run 3/4 garden hose from pumps down length of each grow room. Connect garden hose manifolds that have on off switches wherever you need them. Build yourself some pico manifolds, set on timers and you got instant plug and play. No more hand watering. Connect your tray drains to 1 inch, 1 1/4 inch, or 1 1/2 inch pvc pipe for your drains. Run the length of your rooms to your actual drain. You get 10 feet of pvc pipe for oh I think 3 bucks or so. I can see you getting this all done for about 5 hundred.

Thanks man. Can you put a float valve and run your RO directly into these IBC resevoirs? Thats what I would need to do. Then just put an inline pump at the bottom of it and have it pipe over to my grow rooms where I would have the 2 55gal drums with nutes.

I did like the pico drip manifold. I am not so sure how even it would water though since my rooms are so much larger.

 

[richyrich]

Ya you could do anything with those totes. It would be a breeze to put a float valve for you RO. Easy to plumb an inline pump too.

The pico manifolds work really good because they have even water pressure all the way around. Each feed line to each pot will be equal output. That's why I like them and had built a few back in the day when I ran coco dtw. It was smooth sailing then.

I'm assuming you would have to build a manifold for each tray set up you have. I can only guess at what your grow looks like besides knowing its very big.

I'll try to put the pictures up again in a little while. First, I'll pm a buddy and have him look and see if he sees the pix.

 

[wookiestomper]

Wow. Props on the hard work buts that crazyness. DRIP LINES for the win. Get a good pump that not only flows high GPM but also makes good pressure. These are typically known as high head pumps, or also larger diaphgram pumps. Run a 2in PVC manifold from your pump that branches off into 1in pvc lines that go to each tray that can be shut off with ball valves. At each tray terminate the 1in pvc line with a 3/4in male hose fitting that then goes to a 20psi pressure regulator and then 1/2in or 5/8in compression fitting for your poly supply line. This supply line can be run the length of each tray and then you use 1/4in barbs that are poked into the supply line to connect 1/4in lines to the main line that go to each individual pot. One more 1/4in barbed coupler then connects to a 1/4in pressure compensating drip line with drip emitters pre installed at 6in spacing that is run in a loop around the stalk and connects with a "T" to the 1/4in line. The beauty of this system is the poly supply line in cheap and easy to work with. The pre made 1/4 drip line ensures each pot gets the same volume of nutes. With the ability to shut off the main manifold for each tray you can also use a smaller pump because you can switch between trays, feed one tray less or more etc. This is perfect for a drain to waste set up and how it set up all my rooms. Hope that makes sense. I stand around enjoying a toke while my drip rings pump 50 gals of nutes to my ladies in under 10 mins and don't do any work....

 

[Caravaggio]

Ya you could do anything with those totes. It would be a breeze to put a float valve for you RO. Easy to plumb an inline pump too.

The pico manifolds work really good because they have even water pressure all the way around. Each feed line to each pot will be equal output. That's why I like them and had built a few back in the day when I ran coco dtw. It was smooth sailing then.

I'm assuming you would have to build a manifold for each tray set up you have. I can only guess at what your grow looks like besides knowing its very big.

I'll try to put the pictures up again in a little while. First, I'll pm a buddy and have him look and see if he sees the pix.

Using those Pico manifolds in a room with 10 4x8 tables is the riddle i need to figure out.

 

[Caravaggio]

Wow. Props on the hard work buts that crazyness. DRIP LINES for the win. Get a good pump that not only flows high GPM but also makes good pressure. These are typically known as high head pumps, or also larger diaphgram pumps. Run a 2in PVC manifold from your pump that branches off into 1in pvc lines that go to each tray that can be shut off with ball valves. At each tray terminate the 1in pvc line with a 3/4in male hose fitting that then goes to a 20psi pressure regulator and then 1/2in or 5/8in compression fitting for your poly supply line. This supply line can be run the length of each tray and then you use 1/4in barbs that are poked into the supply line to connect 1/4in lines to the main line that go to each individual pot. One more 1/4in barbed coupler then connects to a 1/4in pressure compensating drip line with drip emitters pre installed at 6in spacing that is run in a loop around the stalk and connects with a "T" to the 1/4in line. The beauty of this system is the poly supply line in cheap and easy to work with. The pre made 1/4 drip line ensures each pot gets the same volume of nutes. With the ability to shut off the main manifold for each tray you can also use a smaller pump because you can switch between trays, feed one tray less or more etc. This is perfect for a drain to waste set up and how it set up all my rooms. Hope that makes sense. I stand around enjoying a toke while my drip rings pump 50 gals of nutes to my ladies in under 10 mins and don't do any work....

whoa man...like...whoa. got a pic?