U
Ununionized
I have been growing in Hempy buckets since 2009.
This time I needed to not water manually cause my wife and I left the new house we just bought
to go back to the old house we're slowly, moving out of, readying to put up for sale.
One of the kids is renting from us in the old house, with a roomate too, so we don't have to hurry.
I remarked in the Official Hempy Bucket thread that I accidentally poisoned the shit out of my plants by not trusting the timing of my travels to allow me to get back in time, so I stood the plants in fertilizer solution and then left.
I had the timers come on, on TOP of that water I left the plants standing in, and the water levels stayed too high, and it poisoned them.
However:
The timer I built came on right I assume, everything seemed like it was running right - and it's this part I wanna tell people about.
I don't have a picture of this but it's something I know bothers a lot of people.
They have to go out of town
and they need a simple, reliable and reasonably adjustable timer, that can do something: turn on for - however long,
every two days
every three days
every four days
for an ''ON'' interval they set,
and then repeat, ad infinitum.
I am going to describe this and hopefully some of you can finally use two, cheap-0 timers,
to create one,
that fires off however long you tell it - typically you're looking at running a little pump for somewhere between thirty minutes and an hour I guess, for most pots, or even most plants in the ground, when you DO water - every few days.
This allows you to ALSO use those little 1/4 inch tubing and dripper setups, that are the absolute cheapest available on earth I think. They certainly waste VERY little water.
Now - if there are many plants, you have to go buy some of those little 59-cent, 1/4'' plastic on-off valves they build
to adjust these kinds of 1/4 inch irrigation drippers further, if you have long lines.
But the mechanics of all that
are able to be quickly figured out by you, wherever you are.
WARNING:
There are limitations to this kind of super-simple timer and dripper setup,
and one of them is that if you allow animals or people, to disturb the relative heights of all your drippers, you lose the precision you had before. So you have to set it up in such way that you have the relative heights of the drippers, pretty close, if you want the differences in pumped solution to remain minimal, along the line.
I'm gonna keep this short:
the way you make two timers into one that fires every two, three, or four days,
is by plugging one of the timers into the output of the other.
Now - obviously your second timer in line there,
is gonna be the one whose "ON" interval,
feeds the plants.
You can figure that out
by timing how long it takes any one of the drippers to fill a bottle or container of known volume.
You then figure out how much you want each plant to get,
and then you are able to figure out,
how long the pond pump, stays on.
But the first timer is the one you arrange, so that you create a
two day
three day
or a four day timer.
Each of these timers is running on an electric motor that also kinda sorta serves as your clock.
If you walk over to the wall and plug your feeder timer in 12 hours,
and then walk over and unplug it manually the next 12 hours,
- your feed pump isn't gonna go around and turn your plants' water pump on, for an interval each day:
I mean, assuming LoL, you have it coming on once per day.
Your feeder timer, to your pump,
that you have the little plastic tabs pulled up or pushed down,
so it's ''ON'' for an hour or whatever once each day,
isn't going to get all the way around, once each day.
It's only gonna be able to go HALFWAY around,
each day - cause you go over and unplug it from the wall for 12
out of every 24 hours.
Ok - if you feed that timer with one, that turns ''ON'' for 12 hours per day
your plants, are only gonna get watered every TWO days.
Now.
You know that there are three, 8 hour periods, in any 24 hour day your timers are based on.
So: if you plug in your first timer, and have it set to turn it's switch ''ON'' for 8 hours per day,
and you arrange for your feeder pump to come on for an hour, kinda right around the middle of that 'ON' time,
then - every THREE days, your feeder timer,
is going to come all the way around it's own 24 hour cycle and turn your water pump for an hour.
This can be extended to making the timer come on every 4 days,
by figuring out that a day is ALSO divided into 4, six hour periods.
If your 1st timer's output,
is set to come on 6 hours each day
then it's off, 3/4ths of the day.
Your feeder timer's little clock motor,
plugged into the output of the switch of that first timer,
is then gonna be actually running, 6 hours, per day.
That's a quarter circle turn, on it's circular, 24 hour timer,
and that means your feeder pump
will be coming on, for your ''ON'' interval,
every FOUR days.
I have arranged the pins on mine to make the water pump come on an hour every TWO days,
by making the output of the first timer go ON for 12 hours then OFF 12 hours.
If you use this method of constructing multi-day OFF timers,
or have thoughts about this, please feel free to put in your own understanding
of how to make these super-cheap, - mine cost 3.99 each at the dollar store and are as reliable as any electric motor -
and generally, very easy to understand timers, into multi-day timers.
All my threads and posts are totally those of a non journalist so any grammatical errors, obviously I apologize for.
I am pretty sure that almost nobody in the pot growing world, knows it's possible to connect two of these low power timers,
one into the other, to make 2, 3, 4, 6 day timers - your interval has to be divisible into equal fractions of the 24 hour day, obviously.
So I wanted to share what I know about making these things operate this way so people can get started experimenting and using cheap-0 timers
as "multi-days between ON interval" timers.
The good thing about them is that these little fountain and pond pumps, use a surprisingly small amount of power under nominal circumstances, so there's never ANY stress on the timers electrically.
Most peoples' fountain pumps for a couple of plants will just use a VERY few watts, maybe 10,
larger ones use more, but they are far from stressing these little cheapie 24 hour timers, which have to be UL Certified to be able to handle something like 1500 watts.
Anyway, that's my sorta innovation I discovered and put into use, and I hope you are able to save yourself some stress by making a fountain or other pump come on for 15 minutes, or an hour -
to water your own plants,
with multiple days between ''ON'' intervals.
This time I needed to not water manually cause my wife and I left the new house we just bought
to go back to the old house we're slowly, moving out of, readying to put up for sale.
One of the kids is renting from us in the old house, with a roomate too, so we don't have to hurry.
I remarked in the Official Hempy Bucket thread that I accidentally poisoned the shit out of my plants by not trusting the timing of my travels to allow me to get back in time, so I stood the plants in fertilizer solution and then left.
I had the timers come on, on TOP of that water I left the plants standing in, and the water levels stayed too high, and it poisoned them.
However:
The timer I built came on right I assume, everything seemed like it was running right - and it's this part I wanna tell people about.
I don't have a picture of this but it's something I know bothers a lot of people.
They have to go out of town
and they need a simple, reliable and reasonably adjustable timer, that can do something: turn on for - however long,
every two days
every three days
every four days
for an ''ON'' interval they set,
and then repeat, ad infinitum.
I am going to describe this and hopefully some of you can finally use two, cheap-0 timers,
to create one,
that fires off however long you tell it - typically you're looking at running a little pump for somewhere between thirty minutes and an hour I guess, for most pots, or even most plants in the ground, when you DO water - every few days.
This allows you to ALSO use those little 1/4 inch tubing and dripper setups, that are the absolute cheapest available on earth I think. They certainly waste VERY little water.
Now - if there are many plants, you have to go buy some of those little 59-cent, 1/4'' plastic on-off valves they build
to adjust these kinds of 1/4 inch irrigation drippers further, if you have long lines.
But the mechanics of all that
are able to be quickly figured out by you, wherever you are.
WARNING:
There are limitations to this kind of super-simple timer and dripper setup,
and one of them is that if you allow animals or people, to disturb the relative heights of all your drippers, you lose the precision you had before. So you have to set it up in such way that you have the relative heights of the drippers, pretty close, if you want the differences in pumped solution to remain minimal, along the line.
I'm gonna keep this short:
the way you make two timers into one that fires every two, three, or four days,
is by plugging one of the timers into the output of the other.
Now - obviously your second timer in line there,
is gonna be the one whose "ON" interval,
feeds the plants.
You can figure that out
by timing how long it takes any one of the drippers to fill a bottle or container of known volume.
You then figure out how much you want each plant to get,
and then you are able to figure out,
how long the pond pump, stays on.
But the first timer is the one you arrange, so that you create a
two day
three day
or a four day timer.
Each of these timers is running on an electric motor that also kinda sorta serves as your clock.
If you walk over to the wall and plug your feeder timer in 12 hours,
and then walk over and unplug it manually the next 12 hours,
- your feed pump isn't gonna go around and turn your plants' water pump on, for an interval each day:
I mean, assuming LoL, you have it coming on once per day.
Your feeder timer, to your pump,
that you have the little plastic tabs pulled up or pushed down,
so it's ''ON'' for an hour or whatever once each day,
isn't going to get all the way around, once each day.
It's only gonna be able to go HALFWAY around,
each day - cause you go over and unplug it from the wall for 12
out of every 24 hours.
Ok - if you feed that timer with one, that turns ''ON'' for 12 hours per day
your plants, are only gonna get watered every TWO days.
Now.
You know that there are three, 8 hour periods, in any 24 hour day your timers are based on.
So: if you plug in your first timer, and have it set to turn it's switch ''ON'' for 8 hours per day,
and you arrange for your feeder pump to come on for an hour, kinda right around the middle of that 'ON' time,
then - every THREE days, your feeder timer,
is going to come all the way around it's own 24 hour cycle and turn your water pump for an hour.
This can be extended to making the timer come on every 4 days,
by figuring out that a day is ALSO divided into 4, six hour periods.
If your 1st timer's output,
is set to come on 6 hours each day
then it's off, 3/4ths of the day.
Your feeder timer's little clock motor,
plugged into the output of the switch of that first timer,
is then gonna be actually running, 6 hours, per day.
That's a quarter circle turn, on it's circular, 24 hour timer,
and that means your feeder pump
will be coming on, for your ''ON'' interval,
every FOUR days.
I have arranged the pins on mine to make the water pump come on an hour every TWO days,
by making the output of the first timer go ON for 12 hours then OFF 12 hours.
If you use this method of constructing multi-day OFF timers,
or have thoughts about this, please feel free to put in your own understanding
of how to make these super-cheap, - mine cost 3.99 each at the dollar store and are as reliable as any electric motor -
and generally, very easy to understand timers, into multi-day timers.
All my threads and posts are totally those of a non journalist so any grammatical errors, obviously I apologize for.
I am pretty sure that almost nobody in the pot growing world, knows it's possible to connect two of these low power timers,
one into the other, to make 2, 3, 4, 6 day timers - your interval has to be divisible into equal fractions of the 24 hour day, obviously.
So I wanted to share what I know about making these things operate this way so people can get started experimenting and using cheap-0 timers
as "multi-days between ON interval" timers.
The good thing about them is that these little fountain and pond pumps, use a surprisingly small amount of power under nominal circumstances, so there's never ANY stress on the timers electrically.
Most peoples' fountain pumps for a couple of plants will just use a VERY few watts, maybe 10,
larger ones use more, but they are far from stressing these little cheapie 24 hour timers, which have to be UL Certified to be able to handle something like 1500 watts.
Anyway, that's my sorta innovation I discovered and put into use, and I hope you are able to save yourself some stress by making a fountain or other pump come on for 15 minutes, or an hour -
to water your own plants,
with multiple days between ''ON'' intervals.
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