Building a drip system

[sirius haze]

hello fellows,

Im planning to build my first drip system and i need the opinion of growers with experience to be sure i make no big mystake
any opinion is welcome too of course

the set up will be :

-33 coco slabs with 3 plants per slab on Danish Trays, drain to waste.

-One 150 liter Tank (to give a maximum of 1 liter per plant for a 24 hour period)
-One Big water pump (5000 L/H or 9500 L/H) to supply drippers (or open feed lines)
-One timer (picture)
-Connections for feed pump : garden hose, jubilee clip, T joint, Filter, fittings, PE piping, capillaries, drippers...
-One heating element to warm the volume of the tank
-One air pump to aerate the nutrients solution
-One circulation pump

thermo, PH and EC meters of course, non water proof pens to save some money

 

[sirius haze]

and my questions are
about the pump, in growshop they sell drip system for one square meter with a pump of 5000 L/H so knowing my set up is a little bigger should i choose the 9500 L/H i list in my first post ?

and about the garden hose, the PE pipes and the capillaries, i was planning to buy garden hose of 25mm to connect the pump with the filter and the PE pipe of 25mm too and capillaries of 6mm, what do you think ?

thanks a lot

 

[Hundred Gram Oz]

How many trays will you have and how many plants per tray?

Peace,
HGO

 

[sirius haze]

hello HGO, i will have six trays of 110x100cm and one tray of 11Ox60. 15 plants per one square meter tray and 9 plants in the small trait.

 

[sirius haze]

found this on a bench this morning

 

[Hundred Gram Oz]

Hey pal, your res is a lil small but still workable, you will have to fill it pretty often but not to worry as that isn't too much to worry about. I like to keep it simple and have 1 pump per tray. I use a MaxiJet 1000 pump (1000L/PH) per tray, this should be sufficent to feed 25-30 drip lines. I have my pump in the rez which goes to a manifold, the manifolds that I'm using at the minute have 26 sites and are actually used for air lines, the holes are a tiny lil bit bigger than the usual manifolds out there but the drip line still fits, they don't block as easy because of the bigger dimension. Here's what they look like...

It's just a matter of putting your drip lines to your plants. Now you will also NEED an inline tap to control pressure to your lines but more importantly it's used to stop the water from continuing.

Here's what the taps look like.

They let me set a flow rate, I'm using a pump for each lamp so I had to make 3 of these, only takes 5 mins. I cut the feed line around 6 inches above the pump, inserted a T-piece, run a few inches of pipe from the T-piece and inserted the tap as shown in the pics below.

Attach the pump to the end of the feed line and this is the result

Then it's just a simple little tweaking at the tap until there's enough pressure going to the drippers. It's very important to have this tap in your setup, if you don't have it installed then your water will continue to go through your drippers even when your pump shuts off.

Hope that helps and if you have any other questions feel free to ask. Your life will be much, much easier with the drippers taking control of all your watering needs.

Peace,
HGO

 

[sirius haze]

Hello HGO !

thanks a lot for your help man, cool pictures and very nice and clean set up you have congrats, i know you are a master coco grower ( your sticky thread rocks )
your set up is a little different from the one im planning to do, i had forgotten to speak about the tap in my post and about a check valve, in fact i found this kit and im thinking of buying it, its already set

i know the already set up kit can support a 5000L/H pump because its sold in complete system with such pump but imagine the manufacturer sell 1 square meter complete system (with tray, filter, tap, check valve, capillaries, drippers ect...) with a 5000L/H pump but a half square meter or a 1/4 square meter complete systems are sold with a 5000L/H pump too !!! good bizness i think lol

well anyway i see you are not using filter nor check valve, can i ask you the size of the tray you use i mean you said you use one 1000L/H pump per tray, like one square meter tray ?

I really want to keep only one tank and one pump if possible, my goal was to make a fresh tank of nutrients solution each day.

all things considered i think i need the 9500L/H pump for my set up and i need to know if the already set filter tap and check valve above can support such pump, the last thing i want is a flood...

EDIT : HGO i hear you on the manifold im thinking of this now, it looks very convenient , better than making holes every where on the PE pipe
my problem was/is with the size of pump and PE pipes i must use in a set up like the one i have, PE of 25mm seems to be the norm, is this what you use

 

[sirius haze]

nice pdf about drip irrigation...