Blumat auto watering

[catman]

I just got some Maxis as well and I'm really going to roll the dice with em. Current plan is to use two per 5 gallon bucket which have a 6'' long by 1.5'' diameter pipe below. The 5 gals rest on 2.5 gals. The reason for the pipe is so that the over-saturated zone is contained in the small pipe instead of valuable space in the 5 gal.


I will be using a mixture of Turface MVP and perlite.
I may screen out smaller sized particles or just use them straight from the bag. Turface is a clay rock that in a way has the opposite properties as perlite. Perlite has lots of surface area amongst it's exterior, but it does not absorb any moisture inside of it. Turface really absorbs and holds on to moisture. Perlite is super light weight while turface is rather heavy. Mediums that hold moisture also hold nutrients accessible to the plants; technical term is cation exchange capacity. I figure I ought to be able to mix up something that will work with the sensors.

 

[TribalSeeds]

Kent has the worst website ever. period

 

[TribalSeeds]

Has anyone tried the 3mm lines with CNS17?

 

[greenmatter]

Kent has the worst website ever. period

YES THEY DO! ...... and they know that. CALL THEM !!!!!!!! order more than you think you need cause they get you for about $10 in shipping, but they do answer the phone and they send you your stuff.

dealing with them on the web has not worked for anybody since this thread got started

 

[sunnydog]

I just got some Maxis as well and I'm really going to roll the dice with em. Current plan is to use two per 5 gallon bucket which have a 6'' long by 1.5'' diameter pipe below. The 5 gals rest on 2.5 gals. The reason for the pipe is so that the over-saturated zone is contained in the small pipe instead of valuable space in the 5 gal.

I do not understand.....

 

[FlowerFarmer]

YES THEY DO! ...... and they know that. CALL THEM !!!!!!!! order more than you think you need cause they get you for about $10 in shipping, but they do answer the phone and they send you your stuff.

dealing with them on the web has not worked for anybody since this thread got started

I attempted to put my order in on the website initially...didnt work.

Next day I called them and they already knew my order, shipping address, etc.. just didn't get payment successfully. So you can always submit online and then call with payment I believe.

 

[greenmatter]

i actually drove there the first time i ordered because the web site was not working. when i mentioned the problems with the site to the guy in the office he said "it is usually like that". the next time i just picked up the phone

once they get you in the system a phone order takes less than 5 minutes ........ but dealing with them on the net ..... no thanks

 

[catman]

I do not understand.....

Fill a container with a media the size of perlite or smaller like soil, fully water it, and have a hole in the bottom of the container for run off. Wait until the run off stops, pick up the container and tilt at say 45 degrees, and observe as more water still exiting the container. Basically what happens is that water molecules can defy gravity to an extent because in part of how the molecules bind to themselves (surface tension.) Water wicks itself upwards because of the tiny spaces between particles. These spaces determine how far up water will go so let's say it goes up 6 inches in your container after the soak. There are physical forces that will hold the water in place instead of letting it run out of your bottom hole. If your container is clear and ya tilt it, you will see the trapped water move to one side and it'll want to (and will depending on how fast the tilt is and size of container) climb to a height greater than 6 inches and thus more water will leave the container because the water above 6 inches is pushing down due to gravity and atmospheric pressure.

The water that is inside the 6'' is called a Perched Water Table. Another example... You put hydrotron in the bottom 2 inches of your bucket and perlite on top of it. Water binds really good to perlite because it is small (and has tiny pores of sorts on it) and if we personified physics, the water basically says it's too much work to move down into the hydrotron. The water is perched 2'' higher than it would like to be. So, instead of getting better drainage like some people think would happen, you basically just wasted 2 inches' of space where roots could have been growing. The top of your water would be 8 inches off the ground in this example. All this talk about water sitting between spaces in a medium amounts to spaces where oxygen can not be and roots really need oxygen.

It's so easy to understand visually, but hard to describe in words. Basically soil, perlite, or whatever wicks water up a few inches from the bottom of a container. So with container like mine, the wicking zone exists, but there is much less volume of medium in the bottom tube due to the pipe's width being much smaller than the buckets. Hope that helps. Let me know if it doesn't and I'll try to find someone who can explain it. You've helped me a ton in this thread, thanks.

 

[Tyga]

2 maxis per 5 gallon bucket?? Waayyy over kill. I used 1 regular blumat for each 5 gal bucket. And im using 1 maxi per 20 gal pot...

 

[heady blunts]

 

[catman]

2 maxis per 5 gallon bucket?? Waayyy over kill. I used 1 regular blumat for each 5 gal bucket. And im using 1 maxi per 20 gal pot...

2 for several reasons. Gallons don't mean shit. The Maxi is suggested for container depths the same as the buckets according to the manufacturer. I don't think it'll be possible for me to over water the plants with my setup so I may run em wide open; as much as an elevated res will do for me anyway. Redundancy, if one clogs, there is the other. If I only need one, hell, I'll veg 3 plants with em too. Faster moving water to hydro roots(to a limit of damaging the roots) seems to amount to better all around results. Although it might be unnecessarily, I haven't read of a single person using them with perlite with success and I know perlite benefits from way more than 2 drip locations. I'll probably have to move them around when I'm around.

The Tropf-Blumat Maxi acts as a regulator and dripper, just like the standard Tropf-Blumat, however, it is 23 cm long in total and has an insertion depth of 15-18 cm. Therefore, it�s application makes sense only above a container height of 30 cm (tub size 30 cm) or for a planting depth of 30 cm, typical for larger planting tubs and solitary plants in troughs on patios and roof gardens, and also for individual solitary garden shrubs.

The Tropf-Blumat Maxi enables the moisture levels in deeper layers, close to the roots, to be monitored and regulated. Watering occurs more seldom but therefore more intensely - the surface of the tub stays drier.

http://www.blumat-shop.de/Tropf-Blumat/Tricklings/Tropf-Blumat-Maxi.html

 

[sunnydog]

I must be a dumbfuck........

I must be a dumbfuck........

Fill a container with a media the size of perlite or smaller like soil, fully water it, and have a hole in the bottom of the container for run off. Wait until the run off stops, pick up the container and tilt at say 45 degrees, and observe as more water still exiting the container. Basically what happens is that water molecules can defy gravity to an extent because in part of how the molecules bind to themselves (surface tension.) Water wicks itself upwards because of the tiny spaces between particles. These spaces determine how far up water will go so let's say it goes up 6 inches in your container after the soak. There are physical forces that will hold the water in place instead of letting it run out of your bottom hole. If your container is clear and ya tilt it, you will see the trapped water move to one side and it'll want to (and will depending on how fast the tilt is and size of container) climb to a height greater than 6 inches and thus more water will leave the container because the water above 6 inches is pushing down due to gravity and atmospheric pressure.

The water that is inside the 6'' is called a Perched Water Table. Another example... You put hydrotron in the bottom 2 inches of your bucket and perlite on top of it. Water binds really good to perlite because it is small (and has tiny pores of sorts on it) and if we personified physics, the water basically says it's too much work to move down into the hydrotron. The water is perched 2'' higher than it would like to be. So, instead of getting better drainage like some people think would happen, you basically just wasted 2 inches' of space where roots could have been growing. The top of your water would be 8 inches off the ground in this example. All this talk about water sitting between spaces in a medium amounts to spaces where oxygen can not be and roots really need oxygen.

It's so easy to understand visually, but hard to describe in words. Basically soil, perlite, or whatever wicks water up a few inches from the bottom of a container. So with container like mine, the wicking zone exists, but there is much less volume of medium in the bottom tube due to the pipe's width being much smaller than the buckets. Hope that helps. Let me know if it doesn't and I'll try to find someone who can explain it. You've helped me a ton in this thread, thanks.

are are you trying to make an automated hempy bucket? If not, I still don't understand what this has to do with B/Ms???

 

[heady blunts]

are are you trying to make an automated hempy bucket? If not, I still don't understand what this has to do with B/Ms???

make that two of us.

 

[catman]

Ya can't see how the biology and physics behind how water moves around in mediums and plants is relevant to the location (essentially whether to purchase a normal or maxi sensor) of the blumat cone and how it might influence the function of the device? The roots uptake the most water from the bottom of the container and for most growers that is where the majority of the roots will be (obvious, I know), but not in the containers I'm using. It's not a hempy bucket because there is no hole in the side of the bucket or even a reservoir of water. I got the idea from the PPK thread and from bonsai growers. I don't know what it should be called because I haven't seen anyone do something like it yet. Depending on how I mix different sizes of the mediums, I think I could drip often enough (it would be more like consistently flowing with few controlled pauses of drips from the sensors right at the bottom of the container on the Maxis) and with a large amount of volume to basically add water faster than it can be drained. Water that can't be drained quick enough will then be like a hempy bucket reservoir, but with constant watering and runoff. Also, in hempy buckets the majority of the roots sit in still water while if I could pull this off there will be very few roots in the bottom most parts of the medium which are in a small tube under the bucket, inside the hempy reservoir one could say. The important thing to understand is how nature only cares about the height of the container and not the width when it comes to how water finds the bottom of the bucket, in a way. The blumat is essential to this theoretical operation. I realize most people probably haven't even heard of the turface medium I'm using, much less turface and blumats. I might be confused and/or confusing, or something, but I'm stumped how what I'm sayin ain't in the balk park...shit

Anyway. I soaked the carrots for 2 days and put it a bucket with mostly perlite with some surface. Turned the rate down to a tiny bubble that didn't wana move while I was watching. Bucket weighted in at at 31 lbs after being super soaked and drained and just found it at 33 lbs. I think I forgot to put the top rate regulating piece on while I closed the carrot under water, but if it's not that, seems like it was running away already. Will replace the carrot and see. I'll also be trying more turface for more moisture around the cone and hell maybe I'll have no choice, but to constantly have a recirculating stream flow.

 

[heady blunts]

there's a few issues that i see here:

1.) first, the medium. others have tried turface, calcined DE, and perlite hempy-type systems with the blumats and they don't go so well.

imo, the ceramic cone needs to have a snug contact with the surrounding medium in order to function properly.

i even eventually switched from a bark-fines based soil to a peat based soil because the bark mix was too loose.

2.) i believe you are conceptualizing the blumats incorrectly. the maxi's are designed to allow the top 5 or 6 inches of medium to DRY OUT between watering.

The Tropf-Blumat Maxi enables the moisture levels in deeper layers, close to the roots, to be monitored and regulated. Watering occurs more seldom but therefore more intensely - the surface of the tub stays drier.

if you'll refer to my picture of the directions a few posts back, to match the appropriate set up to your application, you must consider container diameter. depth is almost a moot point.

since the blumat's watering pattern is like "an onion" under the soil surface, starting at the drip point, it has a finite diameter. that is why bigger containers need more blumats, to cover a wider footprint, not to soak to a deeper level.

3.) i understand your bucket has a tube or pipe that extends down from the bottom in order to keep the "perched water" contained and to minimize the amount of roots sitting in stagnant water. bravo.

what i don't understand is how you plan to deal with a constant flow of water if there's no drainage holes and you don't want there to be a hempy-style reservoir? the plants are not gonna drink that fast.

 

[catman]

imo, the ceramic cone needs to have a snug contact with the surrounding medium in order to function properly.

That makes sense. I wonder how many people using such mediums fully saturated them after the medium was in the container. I'm sure ya know perlite likes to float around. What I think I'll try is saturating the medium before I fill the buckets with the intention of never having to soak the medium so nothing moves around too much. I have plenty of super fine particles of turface or perlite to surround the cone with if I must.

the maxi's are designed to allow the top 5 or 6 inches of medium to DRY OUT between watering.
since the blumat's watering pattern is like "an onion" under the soil surface, starting at the drip point, it has a finite diameter.

I don't think they were designed for that purpose. It has to be all about depth. If the cone was say only half way down in the soil where it is less moist than the bottom, ya could end up over-watering the bottom, but I'm sure ya guys know how to dial them to accommodate. To cover a bigger (wider) container ya don't even need more sensors. Ya need the satellite thing to run multiple feed lines off a single sensor. Of course it would be better to have more sensors because of the onion effect you talked about. I'm limited to 3 fuckin plants so I think the benefits of two sensors was easily worth the cost for me. Another reason why I wanted two is that I grow donuts around vertical bulbs and foliage along with roots really lean toward the direction of the bulb so I figured I'll try to get the plants so when is closest to the light as possible and the other the furthest.

I can already tell 2 drip lines will be perfectly fine for this perlite medium in a 5 gal as one. I'm aiming for roots to be growing out of the medium which will be an inch or two of pure turface regardless of what media I use below it.

what i don't understand is how you plan to deal with a constant flow of water if there's no drainage holes and you don't want there to be a hempy-style reservoir? the plants are not gonna drink that fast.

The bottom of the pipe is open so it drains into 2.5 gal bucket that it sits in. What I did when I hand watered was drain the buckets about every 2 weeks with some hose and the siphon effect. There is some space between the bottom of the tube and the bottom of the 2.5 gal in other words. I could let the water height in the bottom bucket make contact with the pipe and then it would be like an automated hempy, but word is that leads to damaged roots. With no perched water table and being I screen the medium for fine particles, I really don't think it'll be possible for me to drown any of the roots if I'm not dripping more than I'm draining. My thinking now a days is to water the medium, not the plants. No water, no or dead roots. Therefore, always should be water from top to bottom.

 

[sunnydog]

I like easy.....

I like easy.....

I just got some Maxis as well and I'm really going to roll the dice with em. Current plan is to use two per 5 gallon bucket which have a 6'' long by 1.5'' diameter pipe below. The 5 gals rest on 2.5 gals. The reason for the pipe is so that the over-saturated zone is contained in the small pipe instead of valuable space in the 5 gal.


I will be using a mixture of Turface MVP and perlite. [URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=32743&pictureid=759529&thumb=1]View Image[/URL]
I may screen out smaller sized particles or just use them straight from the bag. Turface is a clay rock that in a way has the opposite properties as perlite. Perlite has lots of surface area amongst it's exterior, but it does not absorb any moisture inside of it. Turface really absorbs and holds on to moisture. Perlite is super light weight while turface is rather heavy. Mediums that hold moisture also hold nutrients accessible to the plants; technical term is cation exchange capacity. I figure I ought to be able to mix up something that will work with the sensors.

Fill a container with a media the size of perlite or smaller like soil, fully water it, and have a hole in the bottom of the container for run off. Wait until the run off stops, pick up the container and tilt at say 45 degrees, and observe as more water still exiting the container. Basically what happens is that water molecules can defy gravity to an extent because in part of how the molecules bind to themselves (surface tension.) Water wicks itself upwards because of the tiny spaces between particles. These spaces determine how far up water will go so let's say it goes up 6 inches in your container after the soak. There are physical forces that will hold the water in place instead of letting it run out of your bottom hole. If your container is clear and ya tilt it, you will see the trapped water move to one side and it'll want to (and will depending on how fast the tilt is and size of container) climb to a height greater than 6 inches and thus more water will leave the container because the water above 6 inches is pushing down due to gravity and atmospheric pressure.

The water that is inside the 6'' is called a Perched Water Table. Another example... You put hydrotron in the bottom 2 inches of your bucket and perlite on top of it. Water binds really good to perlite because it is small (and has tiny pores of sorts on it) and if we personified physics, the water basically says it's too much work to move down into the hydrotron. The water is perched 2'' higher than it would like to be. So, instead of getting better drainage like some people think would happen, you basically just wasted 2 inches' of space where roots could have been growing. The top of your water would be 8 inches off the ground in this example. All this talk about water sitting between spaces in a medium amounts to spaces where oxygen can not be and roots really need oxygen.

It's so easy to understand visually, but hard to describe in words. Basically soil, perlite, or whatever wicks water up a few inches from the bottom of a container. So with container like mine, the wicking zone exists, but there is much less volume of medium in the bottom tube due to the pipe's width being much smaller than the buckets. Hope that helps. Let me know if it doesn't and I'll try to find someone who can explain it. You've helped me a ton in this thread, thanks.

2 for several reasons. Gallons don't mean shit. The Maxi is suggested for container depths the same as the buckets according to the manufacturer. I don't think it'll be possible for me to over water the plants with my setup so I may run em wide open; as much as an elevated res will do for me anyway. Redundancy, if one clogs, there is the other. If I only need one, hell, I'll veg 3 plants with em too. Faster moving water to hydro roots(to a limit of damaging the roots) seems to amount to better all around results. Although it might be unnecessarily, I haven't read of a single person using them with perlite with success and I know perlite benefits from way more than 2 drip locations. I'll probably have to move them around when I'm around.


http://www.blumat-shop.de/Tropf-Blumat/Tricklings/Tropf-Blumat-Maxi.html

Ya can't see how the biology and physics behind how water moves around in mediums and plants is relevant to the location (essentially whether to purchase a normal or maxi sensor) of the blumat cone and how it might influence the function of the device? The roots uptake the most water from the bottom of the container and for most growers that is where the majority of the roots will be (obvious, I know), but not in the containers I'm using. It's not a hempy bucket because there is no hole in the side of the bucket or even a reservoir of water. I got the idea from the PPK thread and from bonsai growers. I don't know what it should be called because I haven't seen anyone do something like it yet. Depending on how I mix different sizes of the mediums, I think I could drip often enough (it would be more like consistently flowing with few controlled pauses of drips from the sensors right at the bottom of the container on the Maxis) and with a large amount of volume to basically add water faster than it can be drained. Water that can't be drained quick enough will then be like a hempy bucket reservoir, but with constant watering and runoff. Also, in hempy buckets the majority of the roots sit in still water while if I could pull this off there will be very few roots in the bottom most parts of the medium which are in a small tube under the bucket, inside the hempy reservoir one could say. The important thing to understand is how nature only cares about the height of the container and not the width when it comes to how water finds the bottom of the bucket, in a way. The blumat is essential to this theoretical operation. I realize most people probably haven't even heard of the turface medium I'm using, much less turface and blumats. I might be confused and/or confusing, or something, but I'm stumped how what I'm sayin ain't in the balk park...shit

Anyway. I soaked the carrots for 2 days and put it a bucket with mostly perlite with some surface. Turned the rate down to a tiny bubble that didn't wana move while I was watching. Bucket weighted in at at 31 lbs after being super soaked and drained and just found it at 33 lbs. I think I forgot to put the top rate regulating piece on while I closed the carrot under water, but if it's not that, seems like it was running away already. Will replace the carrot and see. I'll also be trying more turface for more moisture around the cone and hell maybe I'll have no choice, but to constantly have a recirculating stream flow.

I ,and surely others as well, will be interested in how this all works out for you.
However, the reason I use these is they make this part of life a a lot EASIER, predictable, and(mostly hassle free.Never mind exceptional growth and vigor, which, in my almost 35yrs. in our "hobby", equals or exceeds any "traditional" types of hydro. And I've used most, BTW.

Personally, I am just getting too damn old to re-invent the wheel on EVERYTHING, specially when it works exceptionally well, some thing rare now a days.

Good luck! Maybe post a pic or two to illustrate this, as I am still having some visualization issues.
SD

 

[catman]

I use these is they make this part of life a a lot EASIER, predictable, and(mostly hassle free.Never mind exceptional growth and vigor, which, in my almost 35yrs. in our "hobby", equals or exceeds any "traditional" types of hydro. And I've used most, BTW.
Good luck! Maybe post a pic or two to illustrate this, as I am still having some visualization issues.

I only decided to try em because I've heard and seen such great things about em over the past few years which is all the experience I got. I completely understand where your coming from, but I'm bored with 3 plants and I'm just sharing for anyone who cares and to take notes. I'll get some pictures up eventually and I realize few will even care and I can't blame em. I got no real proof that this should be arguably a superior method of growing than say using soil WITHOUT blumats, haha! I will have better control over feedings, more oxygen avaible to roots, and better medium moisture all around. Maybe I'll never be able to grow this way and do better than the tried and true ways, but in theory I sure as hell think someone can or I wouldn't share. I'd be happy to be wrong about everything if I could understand why as well. I know I'm making this way more than it needs to be, but ya probably know I'd be wasting much more time reading about hydro.. It took me a few months to wrap my head around what I've said to begin with and there just is no way to explain it better than pictures and animations. Thanks for the good luck. It's better to be lucky than good, another reason for me to try something new.

 

[TribalSeeds]

Kent actually contacted me before I had a chance to call them. They saw my quote in the system and sent me an email. I was actually just getting to the computer to contact them.

 

[Tyga]

WARNING- to anyone purchasing blumat Maxi's... When you order them it does not come in a patio kit like the regular ones do. All the tubing,adapters,T's,etc. all come separate! Which is pretty bullshit.... Now I need to wait another week or so before I can start running these.