Need ideas for automated watering system

Hi everyone,

We'd like to set up a tree grow,
- probably 24 plants in 20 or 25-litre pots of Plagron coco coir with added perlite
- room is 3.3 x 7m/11 x 23ft, so would have 8 rows of 3 plants on roughly 3ft centres
- could be up to 8 x 600W HPS plus 6 x 400W HPS, vertical, no shades

We don't fancy hand watering and are scared off by the complexity of drip systems (not that we've ever used one), the idea of all those fragile hoses stretching all over the place sounds like a recipe for disaster.

So any ideas, what about a wick system?

Thanks for any help.
Cheers
Flynnie

The first problem I see with your grow plan is right at the beginning.

It's that whole 'we' thing :wink:

Fix that first

do you have this equipment or do you still need to get it?

and what nitetiger said

Hi guys, don't worry about the "we" aspect, I'm just trying to advise a mate the best I can, so I'm not a "partner".
We're just looking for a fairly low maintenance setup, could just go soil in even bigger containers and hand water every 3 days or so, but I've been impressed by the coco grows I've seen.
The equipment is at hand, and the room has been rewired and insulated, but it's still too cold in there most of the time, so this'll be a once a year job in the summer months, plants vegged in a greenhouse May and June to keep kWh down.

Ok, in that case, let's get down to it.

If the room has already been rewired and insulated, it shouldn't be that big a deal to keep it heated. My room is in a semi buried basement, and space heaters keep everything just right in winter.

Also, as far as the fragile hoses - if everything in my room were as tough as my irrigation tubes, I'd be a very happy man

Are you planning on cool tubing those lights? If not, I'm willing to bet they'd keep the grow nice and warm too.

Hi there NT, even though we put up a new ceiling with about 2ft of insulation on top, it's still pretty cold there, and a 2000W radiator has little effect, plus we don't want to run up the elec bill too much, so it'll only be used in summer.
No plan to cool the lights, so I imagine it'll get fairly warm in there, but we have a good 10in extractor fan which should cope, just need to soundproof it.
So irrigation tubes are tough you say? But setting up a drip system on this scale would be a PITA, wouldn't it?

I gotcha.

In my personal opinion, setting up the drip system would be a little time consuming on the front end, but you'll make up for it in spades when you don't have to handwater 24 plants. Especially when it gets late in flower when they are sucking down a gallon a day.

They're really not that bad to setup though. Cut a few lengths, stick dripper in, punch hole in pump line, insert tube. Not bad at all.

Thanks for your input, NT, it sure would be time consuming plus having those lines criss-crossing the room would make it difficult to move around the plants. Perhaps we should just stick to a less airy substrate, bigger pots and hand watering, or perhaps have pots within pots with a spacer to allow 5 or 10 litres of water in the bottom pot, then run some wicks (not that we've ever tried those either).

You could put the drippers on a stake, and I don't worry about my lines, like I said, they're tough. I stepped on 'em all the time

Autopot all the Way!

Autopot all the Way!

You should give the Autopot a go.



They are expensive at around $50 for a two 10" pot module, but it's well worth it IMO...no electricity needed. Basically they fill to an inch in the bottom and don't refill until completely dry.

Note about electricity: I have added an aquarium powerhead in my reservoir to keep the nutes oxygenated and from becoming stagnate-very important IMO...other than that it works on gravity.

I am using six modules (12 plants) in a 4' x 4' area with great results. My medium is coco/perlite 60/40 and I use GH 3Part nutes.

Here are some diagrams of how they work...these are from Futuregardens website.



OVERVIEW: A. Illustrates the base tray of the Autopot system. B. 10" pots. C. Your choice of growing medium. D. Smartvalve




FILL MODE 1: The Smartvalve allows solution (blue arrows) to flood the base tray to a level of one inch deep.




FILL MODE 2: As the solution level continues to rise, stale air (white arrows) which is depeleted of life giving Oxygen, is displaced from the growing medium by the solution as it is drawn upwards by capillary action.




DRAIN MODE 1: As plants uptake solution and the base tray empties, the growing medium begins to dry pulling in fresh air. This provides the root zone with a fresh Oxygen charge.




DRAIN MODE 2: Just before the solution in the base trays is completely used up by plants, the SmartValve recylcles back to FILL MODE 1


I use a reservoir with a shutoff valve on the outside with a 1/2" feed line, off of the feed line I run 1/4" feed lines with shutoff valves to each autopot module. Couldn't be any easier than this. My pH fluctuates a little during the week and I usually have to adjust it once a week. This is NOT a recirculating system.

Edit: to add info and pics below

Here are some layout ideas also from that site








JC

I am actually interested in getting just a set of autopots for a micro grow, but before I get it I want to know if the reservoir needs to be above the pots? Also I was wondering if anyone knew the dimensions with the trays+pots. Thanks

Any automated watering system is going to require tubes. So what you are saying, is you dont want an automated watering system.

Once that room is insulated and you are pushing 7KW of lighting, it will stay warm. Are the walls insulated? If not, you could put up some insulation board to help out.

Dont understand why you would just run it for a couple months.