Blumat auto watering

[Maj.Cottonmouth]

I finally dug my Blumats out and I decided to make a PDF of the instruction book because I can never seem to find it when I want it. I have attached a compressed version to this post. Sorry it looks a little crappy but I had to make it small enough to be able to upload it to IC. Save it to your pc and you will have it forever

 

[LeeROI]

Good idea, Major.
Here is a downloaded pdf with better resolution and an additional instruction page:

 

[Maj.Cottonmouth]

That looks great, thanks man.

 

[silver hawaiian]

When I did soil with them I used 1 regular blumat per 5 gallon smart pot but I know some people use two for better coverage.

My original order was a patio set with just 12 blumats. So as I threw things into the oven, I was using two blumats per 5 gal smartie. As the room become more full and I needed more blumats, I just took one from the pots that initially had two.. And..

No difference! So, my scientific research conducted heretofore on said doodad does in fact CONCLUDE that, indeed, one blumat seems to be sufficient for a 5 gal pot.

(Though I think I've seen before that some folks prefer the Maxi's for 5 gals..)

 

[ekomsi]

I just ordered a 50pack of Tropf Blumats, 60Meters of 3mm tubing both from sustainablevillage.

I also ordered 100 3/32 equal size barbed union from KentSystems (straight connectors) should leave me with twice as many as I need.

Gonna use 1/2in line running from my rez and 3mm coming off that to the blumat sensors.

I have 3 55gal drums probably use a 25 gal elevated rez with either pump and overflow back to 55gal drum or use some sort of float valve to keep that 25 gal REZ always full.

I have run the ebb n grow system with hydroton as my medium for over a year now and I feel like these blumats will give me more consistent results. My roots keep clogging the return lines on the ebb n grow system.

My plan is to run between 36-50 plants on blumats I have not decided on medium yet? All under 5400W of lights. 36K btu Mini Split/dehumidifiers/humidifiers/fans, 15x9ft flower room (thats the grow area room is a little longer then 15ft), also going to use #5 smart pots with trays underneath for easy dialage.

Am I missing anything?

Wish me luck

 

[FlowerFarmer]

I just ordered a 50pack of Tropf Blumats, 60Meters of 3mm tubing both from sustainablevillage.

I also ordered 100 3/32 equal size barbed union from KentSystems (straight connectors) should leave me with twice as many as I need.

Gonna use 1/2in line running from my rez and 3mm coming off that to the blumat sensors.

I have 3 55gal drums probably use a 25 gal elevated rez with either pump and overflow back to 55gal drum or use some sort of float valve to keep that 25 gal REZ always full.

I have run the ebb n grow system with hydroton as my medium for over a year now and I feel like these blumats will give me more consistent results. My roots keep clogging the return lines on the ebb n grow system.

My plan is to run between 36-50 plants on blumats I have not decided on medium yet? All under 5400W of lights. 36K btu Mini Split/dehumidifiers/humidifiers/fans, 15x9ft flower room (thats the grow area room is a little longer then 15ft), also going to use #5 smart pots with trays underneath for easy dialage.

Am I missing anything?

Wish me luck

Sounds good to me.

Throw some valves on the end of your 1/2" to bleed the system and/or drain your elevated res if needed.

 

[ekomsi]

Sounds good to me.

Throw some valves on the end of your 1/2" to bleed the system and/or drain your elevated res if needed.

Thanks will do, Im gonna have six holes in the elevated rez making 3 loops with 3 valves at the end of the loop. I want to have an even distribution throughout the 1/2in manifold system?

What the difference between flexzilla hose and regular 1/2in black tubing I get from the hydro store, besides the big cost difference? Is it worth the extra money?

Does everyone recommend bleeding the lines once a week, every other week? How much solution does everyone let out?

I plan on using Veg+Bloom as a my nutrients.

I cant wait for all my shit to get here, and to harvest my ebb n grow pots.

 

[FlowerFarmer]

I think the whole flexizilla hose recommendation came from bobble in order to locally source tubing that fit the 8mm parts that came in the patio kit. He used flexizilla air tubing 1/4".

You already have the kent tees to stab into whatever tubing you'd like so if the flexzilla 1/2" stuff is more expensive I really don't see the need for it.

It is super flexible and sweet though.


o - I have never experimented with bleeding my lines. I've got the valves installed to empty my elevated res at the end of the grow or if needing to bleed, but have never found the need to do it as I don't experience air lock issues. It does make sense though so bleeding out a gallon or so once a week might be good precaution. Who knows.. I let my blumats blast a lot of air out for a minute before setting them up and have never had any issues.

 

[silver hawaiian]

o - I have never experimented with bleeding my lines. I've got the valves installed to empty my elevated res at the end of the grow or if needing to bleed, but have never found the need to do it as I don't experience air lock issues. It does make sense though so bleeding out a gallon or so once a week might be good precaution. Who knows.. I let my blumats blast a lot of air out for a minute before setting them up and have never had any issues.

Same here. I've got a valve at the end of the line for bleeding, but I've never found the need to actually use it. .. In that time, I've had to disconnect the line from the rez for 20-30 minutes at a time, while making modifications to/changing the rez itself.

Not sure if it's good luck so far, or if it's not a common occurrence.

Edit: ..But, as you said, it may not be a bad habit to be into, to bleed the line every now'n again..

 

[redbudduckfoot]

yep, same here. i blast about a gallon out the end valve every week or so, and discard that water. i will also open all the Blumats full-bore for a minute or so, one at a time, to get any air out of the 3mm lines.

i have been filling my 5 gal rez every 36 hrs or so up until saturday. finally hooked an old hydro ebb and flow pump/overflow kit up, so now I have a 35 gal Brute trash can feeding the upper rez 24/7 keeping the water well aerated with the waterfall and a 4" round airstone in both upper rez and brute main rez.

so..........................

lol.

talk about automation. so fucking sick. after 4 days i have gone through maybe 1/4 of the brute. now i can leave the house for a week or longer if i wanted to. so that is one flower room down, one more to go, as well as the veg/mothers. (i run a 1K horizontal and a 1200w vert, at opposite times of the day)

wish i would have done this months ago. was having some serious problems with my partner letting his/our 5 gal rez dry out and empty almost daily. we all know what happens then: the carrots dry out then the plants do not get any water and die. this was on a 4K sourD grow and he destroyed at least 4 plants because of that. fucking guy. all he had to do for the entire 69 days of flower was keep the bucket full. it only takes 45 seconds to fill the damn thing up.

anyway........................

long story short, i believe this improvement/upgrade will iron out all the kinks in the Blumats. i am really excited to see how it improves the efficiency of the grows.

RBDF

 

[Lazyman]

Just wanted to update you guys on some setup changes I've made in the last year with Blumats.

I find that a 55g res is more than enough for 4 lights worth of plants, but using the 3/4" line makes the feed line move nutes so slowly I tend to get stagnation towards the end of it. The answer seems to be smaller diameter tubing, 1/2" or even 3/8" would be best.

I also have purchased a couple of the new 105G upright reservoirs, and they ROCK! Expensive at ~$300 each, but they have a sump, are all black, take up minimal floor space, and don't need to be elevated at all. One will feed 8 lights. They are a bit trickier to clean out since the top opening is only about 10" across (kinda like a pickle barrel) but for larger grows I think they are the bees knees. I tried them in my small garden (two 4KW grows side by side, perpetual) and it was overkill, so I'm in the process of swapping them into the basement, each barrel will feed two rows of 4 lights. This way I can go from 4 flowering barrels to two. More floor space for plants!

Oh, and my feeding regimen has changed a bit too, I veg in soil now, and since I'm using 1G pots it wasnt practical to Blumat a shitload of tiny pots, we just hand water from a hose. Buying some low tide trays next week so I can just flood a few trays with a hose to save time.

Then we transplant at the flip into 2g pots of Botanicare Aeration mix coco/perlite, and feed Maxibloom and Epsom salts the first month, Koolbloom powder and a little molasses the second month of flower. I add 3ml per gallon bleach every day to every res, these is cheap and keeps the slime at bay and helps keep blumat hoses from getting clogged. I buy the bleach at costco to save more $. DM Zone is nicer but it's super expensive compared to bleach.

Have a good one guys!

 

[Maj.Cottonmouth]

Thanks for the info Lazy, good to hear you are still rocking the blumats.

 

[ak-51]

I'm still rocking my blumats with great success.

In the year or so I've been using them I've only ever had one "catastrophic" failure, and I caught it so soon that nothing was lost. I just had a blumat open all the way up on me and dump my whole res out into the drain to waste tub. I found it the next morning and just refilled the res and recalibrated the blumats. Problem solved. I think it was user error anyway since it was only the day after I set them up.

What seems like it might cause problems for me at some point is the amount of sediments that are getting in my lines. I am using the following nutes: Botanicare (Grow, Bloom, Cal-Mag+, Liquid Karma, Sweet, Hydroplex), Canna (Cannazyme), and Bleach. I go half strength on the Liquid Karma because out of all of them it seems to be the thickest.

Has anybody used the CNS17 line with blumats? I'm wondering how the viscosity is with it. I'd like to switch to a good one-part system as well.

I was thinking of trying to find some of that foam-like shit that you find in filter pumps and throwing that in my elevated res in an attempt to filter things out before they get into the lines. I have one pump that moves nutes from my lower res and another that just stirs the lower res. Both of those have filters and I clean them out every week or so, which seems to help cut down on the sediments.

The other issue I have is trying to get the right amount of runoff. I seem to have a difficult time getting just the right amount of runoff. It seems like there's a very small line between no runoff and way too much runoff. I just want some so that I know the entire pot is hydrated. If I don't have any I start to worry that only the top half is wet enough.

 

[Dave Coulier]

AK-51, there should never be any run-off with the blumats. That is over-saturating the media, and not healthy for the roots.

It can be difficult to judge the correct 'weight' of the pots when using blumats. I imagine many of us may feel the container is slightly light when we compare it to how much containers weigh after we hand-water, but this is normal. The media should be moist throughout, but never water logged in any way.

Regarding the sediment, it sounds like you are having some precipitation problems. I encounter bio-film buildup in my lines, but no sediment. Im using GH 3 part Flora series, and it performs wonderfully.

 

[Dave Coulier]

Regarding bio-film, has anyone here successfully eliminated it from their line? I tend to forget to add household bleach to my res each day. If I run water only, I never have problems. Its only when nutrients are in the lines to problems develop, and they are worst during warm periods, and during winter its not nearly as bad.

Using .31ml/gallon will give an initial concentration of 5-6ppm. This much must be applied each day to maintain a 1-2 free chlorine concentration. We'll see if I can remember not to forget..

Lazyboy, you are using a much higher concentration. How do your lines look? Id love to get some feedback from anyone with bio-film problems/solutions.

 

[sunnydog]

I was thinking of trying to find some of that foam-like shit that you find in filter pumps and throwing that in my elevated res in an attempt to filter things out before they get into the lines. I have one pump that moves nutes from my lower res and another that just stirs the lower res. Both of those have filters and I clean them out every week or so, which seems to help cut down on the sediments.

Pantyhose/stockings

 

[sunnydog]

It can be difficult to judge the correct 'weight' of the pots when using blumats. I imagine many of us may feel the container is slightly light when we compare it to how much containers weigh after we hand-water, but this is normal. The media should be moist throughout, but never water logged in any way.

I go for the heavier feel. In my experience,the moister pots ALWAYS out-perform the drier pots.
This has caused me to seriously re-think the accepted roots need vast amounts of air dogma we have always been sold. I have come to believe they don't need as much (in good soil, at least) air as we have been led to think. I think much of this thinking is cross-over from hydroponics, where oxy levels are critical, that being a completely artificial environment for the roots to exist in.
Not saying it should be sopping wet, just solidly moist.Think about it, how much air do outdoor plants get in natural soil? Some, to be sure, but I've never seen any airstones popping out of the ground, and I've seen some HUGE,HEALTHY plants outside, in what would be , by indoor standards, pretty packed soil.
It is also "common knowledge" that soil should have "wet and dry cycles" to "breath", this is bullshit. They do FAR BETTER with a consistent moisture level, as several years of blumatting have abundantly shown me.

I've also been doing no-till. soil is as dense as can be-plants are loving it.

Food for thought. I think.

I've been meaning to post these "observations for quite some time, I'm just lazy, and a poor typist!

 

[rrog]

That's great info and I happen to agree with every point. I used to have airstones in the bottom of pails. No more.

I thing the dripping encourages good oxygenation of the water, and as the dripping water slowly works its way down, it's bringing O2 that it picked up in the highly oxygenated surface soil. That's my theory, anyway.

A big beneficiary of the O2 is the microlife. Undisturbed fungus as with no-till should fluff the soil over time.

 

[Dave Coulier]

Well, I wouldn't hope your pots aren't dry . I like my containers completely moist throughout, but I dont want to see any moisture on the saucer underneath.

Its not so much the plants need alot of air, its that they need to be able to diffuse the CO2 that builds up in the rootzone. If the media is too wet, it will have a difficult time doing this, or if the media particles are too large, non-porous.

I go for the heavier feel. In my experience,the moister pots ALWAYS out-perform the drier pots.
This has caused me to seriously re-think the accepted roots need vast amounts of air dogma we have always been sold. I have come to believe they don't need as much (in good soil, at least) air as we have been led to think. I think much of this thinking is cross-over from hydroponics, where oxy levels are critical, that being a completely artificial environment for the roots to exist in.
Not saying it should be sopping wet, just solidly moist.Think about it, how much air do outdoor plants get in natural soil? Some, to be sure, but I've never seen any airstones popping out of the ground, and I've seen some HUGE,HEALTHY plants outside, in what would be , by indoor standards, pretty packed soil.
It is also "common knowledge" that soil should have "wet and dry cycles" to "breath", this is bullshit. They do FAR BETTER with a consistent moisture level, as several years of blumatting have abundantly shown me.

I've also been doing no-till. soil is as dense as can be-plants are loving it.

Food for thought. I think.

I've been meaning to post these "observations for quite some time, I'm just lazy, and a poor typist!

 

[rives]

While we are letting the air out of accepted theories, what do you guys think about compaction levels? I'm new to coco, and in the middle of my first run with Botanicare ReadyGro Aeration mix. Initially I just filled the 3 gallon air pots and thumped them down on the counter 2-3 times to remove any voids (this was after hand-packing it around the perimeter to keep the water from pouring out). This is how I always ran the pots with SS#4.

I had a couple of small (1-2 quart) runaways right off the bat, and it seemed as though the blumats were "loosening up" in the mix. It actually appeared as though the root density was pushing the spikes up, out of the mix, which resulted in poor contact between the mix and the blumat. After this, I packed the mix down tighter, although it is still a long way from compacted, and it seems to be working better. Any thoughts?