10 min $10 DIY aerated compost tea ACT brewer

[heady blunts]

those assholes! full credit (and any proceeds) to MM!

 

[Microbeman]

What an ass ache that is. Sorry to hear about it. You might considering watermarking pictures, images, etc on your site. Much easier to get them to comply if it's shown they've digitally removed your watermark.

Ya I know. It's just putting the text on the photo takes extra time and looks ugly.

 

[Stankie]

That's BS.

 

[jaykush]

How about I hit some of these brewer companies with patent infringement?? End.

lol *evil laugh*

 

[heady blunts]

Ya I know. It's just putting the text on the photo takes extra time and looks ugly.

i'll do a pretty watermark on all your photos in exchange for a microscope and a copy of your dvd! atyourservice

 

[nvthis]

Great thread

 

[Bueno Time]

Since I have this pump already and I dont want to buy another pump to make one of these, could/should I use a smaller diameter pvc like 1" vs what looks like 2" diameter piping in the original design and would that make better use of the avaiable air being pumped to force water up through the pipe?

I guess I am assuming a smaller diameter pipe would require less air to effectively move the liquid up through the pipe.

This pump has 2 outlets and is for a 60 gallon aquarium.

I would only be brewing 1-2gal max of tea at a time for my current setup so I dont need anything huge.

 

[jerry111165]

Thanks guys>

Bullfrog, not sure what you mean by no hub. but it does utilize an O Ring...I'm not even going to get to see it working on Thursday, tho...gonna have to be Sunday...The wife is dragging me away from this...Says our 20 Year wedding anniversary is more important and is making me take her down the coast...

MM - So you think I wouls have better results with a larger riser pipe? Right now a;; low components are 1.5", and the vertical riser got switched to 1". Should I have just kept it all 1.5"?

Is this gonna be one of these trial and error things...

So no diffuser inside the tube either. I should try and get one set up in there, right? Neccessary? Would you?

jerry.

 

[Bullfrog44]

It is hard to believe that people can be this stupid. Especially the people at Vortex, what a crock of shit. Lazy people that pretend to be on the cutting edge, give me a break. Thanks for leading the way MM, forgot those jokers.

I'm going to have a rant here so hold on!

I started out my day looking up some photos of Lactobacillus to attempt to delineate the long bacteria species/type I was getting in my most recent brew. What did I find all over the Internet??

My own photos of various microbes used without my permission and without credit on all sorts of commercial sites, including the Vortex Brewer, displayed in such fashion that one is lead to believe that these people did their own research for their overpriced 2 bit products. I'm generally very open to sharing things and don't mind someone using my material with credit given but I hate sleezeballs who are just trying to make a buck off my work.

Another dude was using my photos, claimed as his on Flicker (or whatever) and he published one in a blog. I wrote into Yahoo who manages Flicker to notify them and they responded telling me all this documentation I'd be required to submit. All they need to do is look at my webpage. What utter bullshit.

How about I hit some of these brewer companies with patent infringement?? End.

 

[jerry111165]

I know I'm the new guy, but I have been doing ALOT of reading the last several months preparing for this new brewer.

MM, I havent found anything in my long searches that even comes close to your work.

I'm very sorry to see people stealing your pictures. Unfortunately, this is human nature and almost (especially on the internet) unavoidable unless you take Heady's advice and watermark your pics.

Its just not going to stop until you take the bull by the horns and protect the work that you have devoted SO much of your time to.

Have a really nice day anyhow.

jerry.

 

[jerry111165]

If I had to take an educated guess after all of the homework I have recently done, I would swear that the Vortex people are utilizing the same "TankDepot.com" tanks and stands similar to what I just bought and then adding perhaps $100.00 worth of hardware to thier brewers.

The real issue that I see with the Vortex line of brewers is cleaning, like Bullfrog, I believe, said. How the heck could you clean (properly) all of those pipes and hoses and fittings? I bet it would take minimum of a solid hour to clean those units.

Just my 2 cents.

jerry.

 

[Microbeman]

Thanks guys>

Bullfrog, not sure what you mean by no hub. but it does utilize an O Ring...I'm not even going to get to see it working on Thursday, tho...gonna have to be Sunday...The wife is dragging me away from this...Says our 20 Year wedding anniversary is more important and is making me take her down the coast...

MM - So you think I wouls have better results with a larger riser pipe? Right now a;; low components are 1.5", and the vertical riser got switched to 1". Should I have just kept it all 1.5"?

Is this gonna be one of these trial and error things...

So no diffuser inside the tube either. I should try and get one set up in there, right? Neccessary? Would you?

jerry.

I have found better flow and DO2 using 1.25 thin walled (class 160 to 200 IPS) PVC. It is very cheap anyway. The actual inside diameter is 1.5 inches. I'll try to find my post from the other day but we recently compared the flow rate using a 1.75 CFM pump and airlifts using 0.75", 1.0" & 1.25" riser pipe. The flow rate was the same using using 1.0" & 1.25" but the turbulance was greater with 1.0". The flow was reduced using 0.75" riser pipe.

In your case with the higher output pump I'd stick with 1.25 riser pipe.

As for the diffuser, I do use diffusers which I designed and have slotted at a PVC machine shop. Previously I used 3" sweetwater bonded glass diffusers but they were more difficult to clean. There is a slight increase in lift/flow using a 'quality' non-restrictive diffuser but the dissolved O2 is increased considerably. You can experiment with this.

Flow is measured simply by filling a 1 liter/quart container and timing the seconds to fill. Yours should likely fill in 2 seconds or less. My 50 gallon unit with a secondary diffuser in the barrel fills in about 3 seconds.

Post 265; BTW I ran a test with and without my designed diffuser and the flow was the same. Also the optimum pipe with the ECO 1 was one inch. The flow was the same with 1.25 inch but the turbulance at the surface was reduced. When using 0.75 inch pipe the flow was greatly reduced. Interesting physics.

I wish to do some experiments increasing the volume of the diffusion chamber.

 

[Microbeman]

If I had to take an educated guess after all of the homework I have recently done, I would swear that the Vortex people are utilizing the same "TankDepot.com" tanks and stands similar to what I just bought and then adding perhaps $100.00 worth of hardware to thier brewers.

The real issue that I see with the Vortex line of brewers is cleaning, like Bullfrog, I believe, said. How the heck could you clean (properly) all of those pipes and hoses and fittings? I bet it would take minimum of a solid hour to clean those units.

Just my 2 cents.

jerry.

They recommend running a perpetual brew (to avoid cleaning), topping up occasionally and that is exactly what many hydro stores which bought the unit are doing and selling the tea at $XX per gallon. This is based more on Biodynamic 'science' than actual research from what I understand. It is difficult to make a bad tea but to me this is not an optimum way to do things. The Vortex people are good people but I think they should have a bit more research behind them as far as direct microscopy and DO2 tracking. What they recommend is based pretty much on customer testimonials "When I used tea I bought at Joe Blow's shop, made with the vortex, my plants loved it"

To their credit, there is a hydro shop (chain of 2?) in California running trials with the perpetual brew and examining the results microscopically.

As for the use of my photo, I suppose it was garnered through a google image search. Even so I would not publish such on a webpage without tracking the origin.

 

[heady blunts]

Since I have this pump already and I dont want to buy another pump to make one of these, could/should I use a smaller diameter pvc like 1" vs what looks like 2" diameter piping in the original design and would that make better use of the avaiable air being pumped to force water up through the pipe?

I guess I am assuming a smaller diameter pipe would require less air to effectively move the liquid up through the pipe.

This pump has 2 outlets and is for a 60 gallon aquarium.

I would only be brewing 1-2gal max of tea at a time for my current setup so I dont need anything huge.

the OP uses 1.25" piping, but yes, for a smaller pump, thinner diameter tubing helps move more water.

i wouldn't suggest trying to brew more than 2 gal at a time with that pump.

good luck and post a pic when you've got it all finished!

 

[heady blunts]

They recommend running a perpetual brew (to avoid cleaning), topping up occasionally and that is exactly what many hydro stores which bought the unit are doing and selling the tea at $XX per gallon. This is based more on Biodynamic 'science' than actual research from what I understand. It is difficult to make a bad tea but to me this is not an optimum way to do things. The Vortex people are good people but I think they should have a bit more research behind them as far as direct microscopy and DO2 tracking. What they recommend is based pretty much on customer testimonials "When I used tea I bought at Joe Blow's shop, made with the vortex, my plants loved it"

To their credit, there is a hydro shop (chain of 2?) in California running trials with the perpetual brew and examining the results microscopically.

As for the use of my photo, I suppose it was garnered through a google image search. Even so I would not publish such on a webpage without tracking the origin.

my hydro shop is running some commercial brewer with a cone bottom (although it's not a vortex design). they have it running all week long and the guy said he just adds more imputs after a while.

i tried to engage him in a conversation about what kind of microbes he was trying to culture, but i don't think we were talking the same language.

it all seems highly suspicious to me. and at 8 dollars a gallon for some crashed protozoa soup, it might be even more of a rip off scam than all the hydro nutes in the store! lol.

 

[Bueno Time]

the OP uses 1.25" piping, but yes, for a smaller pump, thinner diameter tubing helps move more water.

i wouldn't suggest trying to brew more than 2 gal at a time with that pump.

good luck and post a pic when you've got it all finished!

Thank you.

I will post a pic of my brewer when I complete it I will go with a small diameter pipe.

 

[Bueno Time]

Well I went to home depot today and got a 2ft section of 1" pvc and two elbows (less than $3 ).

My air pump is a piece of crap and wouldnt move enough water with the straight section of pipe and second elbow as a downspout. So for now I am using just the pvc tube up to a 90 elbow and the water spills out of that back into the res.

I have a 1.5 gallon container that is tall and narrow used for storing like cereal or something like that.

I have just over 1 gallon of water in it (I think 1 and 1/8th gallon or 1 gallon and two cups). I have no EWC left going to have to pick some up but decided to concoct a tea with what I have.

Heres the tea I am brewing right now:
-1 gallon and 2 cups water
-1 teaspoon Neptunes Harvest Fish Hydrolysate 2-4-1
-1 tablespoon blackstrap molasses
-1 tablespoon Jamaican Bat Guano 1-10-1
-1 tablespoon Blue Mountain Organics Super Plant Tonic (fungi and humics basicallly)
-1 teaspoon Fox Farms Big Bloom

Hell of a tea concoction I know but the soil and plants should find it rather tasty I hope.

Thanks for the thread! What a simple and cheap brewer to make.

I will post a pic up soon of it though it is ghetto as hell compared to most in this thread.

 

[jerry111165]

Hi guys/gals.

I have done one batch of tea so far with the new brewer, and boy did it appear to work well. I simply havent had the time to play with it as much as I want to yet - work, ya know.

I fed the tea on Sunday afternoon, and had to stay out of town last night for work. It will be interesting to check out the gals tonight and see how happy they are.

Its obvious to me that I am going to have to get a microscope at some point. I just feel that I'm steering blind right now with no physical proof of microbiotic life.

I had a question, tho, and was wondering if anyone wondered the same. We use compost and EWC to "start out" the tea biology, - as a basis to have something in there to breed more and more microbes. Would it help our teas to add mycorrhizae? I use the powdered VAM from BioAg. Would several scoops help to kickstart the breeding process? I use the VAM during transplant. I lightly spray the root zone with kelp/water, or just water sometimes(to help the VAM stick), and then lightly dust the roots with BioAgs VAM mycorrhizae.

So - would it help our teas to add the powdered mycorrhizae to the tea?

Thanks in advance.

jerry.

 

[Scrappy4]

Jerry, I doubt it would work, but if you want to try I would add at watering time, rather than brew it. As far as i know Myco spores need to contact roots to work. And for me, in my experience, when i forget to inocuate at transplant time i have not noticed any differnce at all, notta. So I'm left to assume either my source was not active or there is not enough time in a container for it to do it's stuff. But not seeing a difference does make me question it's use.......scrappy

 

[rrog]

Mico layers up pretty good on inoculated soil with no plants yet, but I think the agitation of the brewer would continuously break up the fungal strands. That's my armchair appraisal, anyway