Attic Recirculating SWC questions

[Guest]

Hey all,

Cool weather is on its way and I finally began contruction of an small attic grow. Rougly 5'x5' lit with 2 t5 flourosystems over 2 2'x4' trays/tubs.

The room below is a bedroom closet with a 2nd floor laundry room access behind it's wall. (water/electricity.. ). I plan to use this room to house the reservoir and surplus water setup in an auto-top way to keep me from filling the reservoir.

I'd like the water to be pumped from this location up to the 3rd floor, filling up both tray/tubs until the water then flows through a overflow 1.5" drain and falls back to the reservoir. I was thinking the ECO Plus 1584GPH to move the water up that high and recirculate nicely. Sufficient pump?
http://nationalgardenwholesale.com/detail.php?id=04_PUMP&prod=998

The trays/tubs will have a few 12" airstones aswell. 8 plants per tray in 3.75 netcups mediumless.

Setup shown in the picture will the trays recirculate well enough using only 1 fill line while having tray 2 overflowing back into the 1st before it overflows back to the reservoir?

Please Check out the attached pic and provide me some input/suggestions. Maybe it can explain a little better then me.

Any input is greatly appreciated. Will definately show some pics here soon.

 

[mushupork5]

are you not concerned about heat issues in the attic? i like the setup and thought process though. good work thus far. and why not do 5 gallon DWCs or bio buckets if you are in an attic

 

[Guest]

Hey,

Its going into the winter time here so heat shouldn't be a problem. If anything I think I may have to compensate for it being too cold.

Provided my res will sit in the closet below I should be able to control things pretty well. This will also be my fresh air draw so I can AC this closet/room in the summer if I continue to grow up there.

The reason for the trays is that I have very limited height up there. About 4' before it starts to "cape". I am going with t5 lights which finish a plant great if kept around 2', but still wanted to keep my containers as shallow as possible. Normally shallow containers are tuff to grow in as ph swings, ect create problems, but since I'll actually have quite a bit of water in this recirculating system it should work out great.

Pics coming soon.

Any more input folks before I get started?

Thanks,

 

[Guest]

You're going to need a helluva pump to raise that water ~10 ft!

 

[bluehaze2]

The GPH is not as important as the "head" pressure rating. This is how high the pump can push a water column. The link doesnt have a rating for your pump but the next model down is 14 ft. so yours will be greater. Find out how high it pumps and then take your height needed and add 10 percent to see if it will work. The greater head you can get the better .
Also, use at least a 3/4 inch feed line to reduce backpressure and tee off a valve to dump excess back into the res. Most submersibles do not have any way regulate the output and you dont want to just chock it off with a valve only in the feed. This causes the pump to run much warmer. Adding the tee w/valve reduces the strain on your pump and will keep it from getting too warm. Another plus is the excess fed back into the res will add needed aeration.