any good or bad experience with dxhydro...

[Hammerhead]

I had to rebuild mine. It was not to code. If you ever need to get your electrical inspected it will not pass. Now that I have done so much research on these I would never buy one again. I can build my own..

 

[thisoldhouse]

hammerhead... what features did you have on your unit?

 

[Hammerhead]

Mine was a plain Jane. No features. My unit came with 1 30a breaker feeding all the outlets with where only rated for 15a...I swapped out the 30 and installed 2 20a and changed all the outlets to 20a..

 

[thisoldhouse]

what would be the easiest way to wire up a delay and a high temp shut-off?

 

[krunchbubble]

i dont know why people buy these in the first place....

they are so fucking EASY to build, buy an electrical book from Home Depot and buy all the parts from there or online, spend a few hours reading, build it, SIMPLE.....

 

[Hammerhead]

I did it for health reasons. When you sick you don't feel like doing anything. After I got it and looked inside I knew I could have built it better myself.

 

[thisoldhouse]

i dont know why people buy these in the first place....

they are so fucking EASY to build, buy an electrical book from Home Depot and buy all the parts from there or online, spend a few hours reading, build it, SIMPLE.....

they serve a purpose otherwise there wouldn't be a need. pretty sure books at home depot do not explain this... how to do a high temp cut-off properly, delays, etc. plus there might be better ways to do it than we thought of, which is why I asked. Wiring is easy but control work isn't something everyone has done.

plus, some contactors or relays are suited for ballasts, others are not. so maybe you shouldn't be so quick to make people feel dumb for asking as I bet you couldn't figure it out from going to HD

 

[thisoldhouse]

I did it for health reasons. When you sick you don't feel like doing anything. After I got it and looked inside I knew I could have built it better myself.

of course it is always easiest when you can look at how someone else did it. that is why we have these forums, to show others better ways of doing things.

 

[thisoldhouse]

Mine was a plain Jane. No features. My unit came with 1 30a breaker feeding all the outlets with where only rated for 15a...I swapped out the 30 and installed 2 20a and changed all the outlets to 20a..

gotchya sorry it wasn't done up properly

 

[Hammerhead]

Ya I have a few posts in the grow room safety thread on my rebuild with pics... I even upgraded it to handle more outlets

 

[watts]

how do you power flower and veg lights off the unit if the times are different. 12/12 and 18/6

 

[Hammerhead]

You would need to add another relay for that timer. There called dual trigger

 

[CannabisTHC]

i dont know why people buy these in the first place....

they are so fucking EASY to build, buy an electrical book from Home Depot and buy all the parts from there or online, spend a few hours reading, build it, SIMPLE.....

Its even easier to buy one, I tend to go with DIY projects but I just decided to spend a few hundred bucks and not bother with the hassle, I'm sure I could have built it for cheaper but it wasn't worth it to me at the time.

 

[PuReKnOwLeDgE]

DIY, no thanks. I sleep good at night knowing I didn't wire the panel up. It would have been a very large headache trying to learn how to build one of these things. Sure I can look at it and see what bone is connected to what bone and all of that, it isn't rocket science, but still a headache if you don't know what you are doing. I build my own computers, car audio systems, and was a generator mechanic at one time so I am no stranger to wiring diagrams and schematics but this is not the job for an amateur. I still don't want to touch something like this, better to have someone who is experienced. Why buy one? For the same reason we buy or pay someone for labor for anything else, less hassle for yourself, convienence.

The question about how to run veg and flower, the answer is get a PLC wired in. There may be other solutions but that is the one I know. Also for the high temp subject, through the PLC I can set the time I want lights to stay off to the second. So if you want them to stay off until you check it you can. Reprogram? The PLC doesn't loose programing, even if the main breaker is flipped. It knows what time and day of the week with stored memory like a computer.

I imgaine he is getting busy, more medical states popping up and I imagine mostly happy customers giving good referrals to friends. As far as some people saying he is hard to communicate with I find untrue. Once he called me back to let me know he had to pickup his daughter and would call me and walk through my issue as soon as he got back, around 9pm. He stayed on the phone with me while I had zero single, I would take direction and walk back into the bad single, apply, rinse repeat. Before I was 100% sure wtf I was doing I had a 3-4 phone call sessions with him and a couple emails full of information he already sent me and more. This was all 2 months after I had recieved my unit.

 

[High74]

lol at the negative reps hahahah

Hammer once again thanks for all youre help, youre a good person

 

[angel4us]

Thanks for all responses BUT i have made contact and it is being shipped !!!!! yes i agree with you pk - and i beleive i saw your panel in a thread is what turned me onn to dxhydro.....and i have to admit he has given me much guidance alreaddy!! and should have panel rocking soon!!!

 

[rives]

anybody ever wire up a temp override where it would keep the lights off until you reset it?

what would be the easiest way to wire up a delay and a high temp shut-off?

The high temperature cutout is pretty simple. For an automatic reset, you could get a thermostat with an adjustable hysteresis. You would set up a wide dead-band before the t'stat reset (actuate at 100, reset at 80 for instance). If you want to physically reset it, a relay and a push-button would be needed, or a micro PLC and a push-button. You would activate the relay coil with the t'stat and have a contact on the relay hold it energized after it was actuated, while simultaneously breaking the power to the lighting with the other relay contacts. A normally closed contact on the pushbutton, in series with the relay coil, would then reset it by interrupting the power to the coil.

A hot-start delay would get a bit more complicated, and would be most easily done with the micro PLC. Time delay relays are expensive enough that you could come close to buying the micro in it's place, and get a bunch of other functions to boot. Additionally, you would normally need the hot start protection after a power interruption, and it would be much easier to handle that in a PLC than with wired logic.

 

[Double F]

i can vouch for DX, i ordered from him back before his business increased so i got mine quick, but i hear hes getting tons of orders so might be a backlog. i have been running mine for 3 years with no problems. i like how he custom makes them and the prices are reasonable compared to the standard hydro store stuff..

they are so fucking EASY to build, buy an electrical book from Home Depot and buy all the parts from there or online, spend a few hours reading, build it, SIMPLE.....

how much would you charge for one? i used to love researching and building these things but nowadays things are so busy it seems easier to just buy one, especially if you got the cash. someone should start a DIY thread maybe that would be interesting to read.

peace

 

[rives]

how much would you charge for one? i used to love researching and building these things but nowadays things are so busy it seems easier to just buy one, especially if you got the cash. someone should start a DIY thread maybe that would be interesting to read.

peace
[/B]

I think that if you do a search, you will find some. Here is a link to a good start on one - you could just put a sub-panel powered off of a dryer cord in front of it.

http://www.hydroponics.net/learn/grow-light-controller.asp

 

[stagehand099]

I think that if you do a search, you will find some. Here is a link to a good start on one - you could just put a sub-panel powered off of a dryer cord in front of it.

http://www.hydroponics.net/learn/grow-light-controller.asp

Yeah, Rives, I've built 2 of those simple 30 amp jobs and they work very well for what they are. So easy to build. There's no bells and whistles, but its a safe design and I sleep much better than when I was juggling/almost overloading every 120v circuit at my spot.

On DXHydro, I emailed back and forth about a 30 amp controller and got to the point where he sent me an invoice for what we agreed on and damn, the invoice was a couple hundred more than the price he quoted just one day before. I thought to myself, this guy is smokin' the amnesia herbs or something...In the end I was concerned that he would build it wrong or different than I wanted and decided not to deal with him. Just my experience and not meant to imply that he's dishonest, just that he came off as not very detail-oriented in my dealings with him.

stagehand