village green
Member
For somebody who advertises their problems so much you have some damn fine looking plants.
ok so the "old" style of PPK you refer to (that D9 ran w/single tail pipe) was not being flooded... those units were (and still are) fed with 1/4 line or maybe a bit larger.... but the key is they weren't doing the volume per irrigation event that is now happening.
personally I'd run individual buckets under each of your PPK's in your cabinet... If you follow D9's advice you won't need lids because the (3) tail pipes will keep the top unit in place. and then you'll have much less of a drainage problem (no drainage problem) but hey....
gotta say those plants look very nice. full, lush, healthy. Sick ass roots too man...
either forget trying to saturation pulse (flood) and just inject little amounts regularly (say the volume of your media divided by 4) or put in 3 tail pipes and do it right.
if you're hell bent on totes for the bottoms... you can always get a big roll of Thermolam Plus (non-fusible) from your local fabric shop and drill 3 7/16" holes in a circle around your existing tail pipe. when you pour the media in, hold the wicks up a bit so they extend up and laterally thru the media and then hang down say 1.5' below the bottom of your top container into the solution. this'll give you more drainage and better wicking (not that you need it)
is there a chance there's not enough room in that pipe you're using as a lower "bucket" so when that huge volume of fluid hits it it backs up b/c it's not transferring back to your pump chamber fast enough?
also, the GH pH drop test kit is pretty cheap and an awesome idea when first dialing in a recirculating setup like this.
too much heavy duty light early can also make clones look like that... the leaves drop down to say f*&$ you to the light... and after a while you'll get yellowing.
Dave you got some serious roots going on in there man! The plants look great, doesn't appear to be affecting them at all.
I had some flooding issues where one of my lower buckets was filling up with water draining from the tailpipes too fast for it to drain out of the 3/4" returns, and overflowing. I solved it by lowering the air gap, which was a little high, and shimming the bucket that was overflowing, since the floor isn't totally level it had a higher water level than the others.
If you decide to go multi tailpiece, it really isn't too bad to space, just make a jig out of cardboard and you can easily place the holes in the same spot each time, for the tub lids or the medium containers.
If it's just the roots clogging it up completely another thing you could think about is some spin-out on the inside of the container or just the tailpiece. It's a copper based paint that is used to treat pots to prevent plants from getting rootbound. Catman just posted in d9s thread today that he had used it and had great root mass.
hey have you pulled the (one of the) plugged plants out and hung it over a sink or bathtub and then filled it manually and watched to see what happens??? does it drain? do you see solution coming out of the tail pipe? how long does it take?
this has me kind of puzzled because the solution should find it's way out eventually.... and when it does you should be able to irrigate again without overflow (even with a single tail pipe)
(if the wicking is working.... and water is being drawn up... well, water will also be drawn down....)
when you watch a pump-fired irrigation event happen (like where it just does it's thing on automatic) what do you see? when you come back in (2) hours and watch the next irrigation event, what happens?
hey have you pulled the (one of the) plugged plants out and hung it over a sink or bathtub and then filled it manually and watched to see what happens??? does it drain? do you see solution coming out of the tail pipe? how long does it take?
this has me kind of puzzled because the solution should find it's way out eventually.... and when it does you should be able to irrigate again without overflow (even with a single tail pipe)
(if the wicking is working.... and water is being drawn up... well, water will also be drawn down....)
when you watch a pump-fired irrigation event happen (like where it just does it's thing on automatic) what do you see? when you come back in (2) hours and watch the next irrigation event, what happens?
i will do that tonight some time and give you a real rundown rather than just making it up right now.
in the meantime i got some 80mm tailpieces to replace the 40mm ones.
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twice as wide diameter means means much higher area of flow (P*20*20=1257) => (P*40*40=5028). Nearly 5 times more room.
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Because there are already holes in the buckets (and i dont have a large enough hole saw) i had to enlarge the holes with a jigsaw which ripped the bucket apart and caused cracks everywhere.
The first 2 i glued with araldite and it wasnt thick enough to hold water so i am going to have to redo with silicone or co-polymer or something tomorrow.
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i think what has happened is dave is watering way too much way too often and the roots are following the "wet" pathway.
when you water in a more intermittent fashion the water disperses better and creates more equal conditions throughout the root zone for a longer period of time.
this in turn encourages lateral "air" type root growth. directing growth away from the tailpieces.
i like the way you are going with this. i did the math on the 80 mm tube and it will be slightly over 7 sq inches compared to 3 1.5" tailpieces at 1.76 sq in ea or 5.28 together.
but, you still should not attempt a saturation pulse with perlite.
you are watering too much too often causing channeling to occur.
a wave pulse is about volume per pulse not TIME! you really need to devise a way of delivering the water in measured amounts on a regular basis.
how much medium are you using? how deep is it in your container.
when i ran coco or perlite i used a wave pulse. i was experimenting a lot but at one point in a 3.5 gal bucket i was only delivering 4oz's every 15 minutes.
sending these small "waves" through the medium. keeping gases and nutrients refreshed and still providing mass availability of water.
this is how you need to operate until you can find a better medium.
but back to that 80 mm tube i've never seen those flanges before. i don't think they are sold here.