Blumat auto watering

[Dave Coulier]

Grow4flow, it sounds like your making the same rookie mistake I made when I first started using Blumats. Id set them up, and fidget with them thinking its not dripping fast enough, and it lead to troubles. Now, I do like E_24 says, set it and forget it. Keep your res topped off and as long as no clogs form, you should generally be okay. Resist the urge the urge to fidget with them.

The best way to judge if they are working properly is to A: look for moisture stress on the lowest leaves. Yellowing, or shriveled leaves, or leaf abscission is usually a sign of moisture stress. If you have none of these, then thats great. Even if your pot feels light, if your leaves look green and healthy dont fidget.

Now for B: Examine the media through the drain holes if possible. You should see fuzzy roots, and moist media. Not dry, nor saturated.

Root health, and lower leaf health are the two best ways to judge if you have blumats dialed in correctly.

 

[sprinkl]

Hey guys im about to set this up in my garden. I bought two beginner packs and some extra maxis as i might use this indoors too.
I already drilled a hole in 2 70l vessels and installed the connectors. As i will be gone for two weeks i might need all that capacity if the weather is dry. I was thinking of hooking up both vessels at each end of the line instead of making 2 lines so neither line runs out of water faster than the other.
Will this work? I dont see why not but then again ive yet to use them for a first time so i could be totally wrong too

 

[greenmatter]

Hey guys im about to set this up in my garden. I bought two beginner packs and some extra maxis as i might use this indoors too.
I already drilled a hole in 2 70l vessels and installed the connectors. As i will be gone for two weeks i might need all that capacity if the weather is dry. I was thinking of hooking up both vessels at each end of the line instead of making 2 lines so neither line runs out of water faster than the other.
Will this work? I dont see why not but then again ive yet to use them for a first time so i could be totally wrong too

it would work great

BUT

if something goes south (read : runaway). you would empty both vessels and ALL your plants are going to have problems. running them split could have it's plus side

just something else to think about right ...... ...... 1/2 dozen of this and 6 of that kind of deal.

FWIW it seems like the girls drink less on the blumats than hand watering ........ gallon/liter wise.

 

[rives]

Sprinkl, the only problem that I can see would be the difficulty in purging the air out of the system. Perhaps if you put a valve at each reservoir and one at the midpoint of the loop, you could purge each end independently. Elevating the mid-point a bit might help.

 

[ak-51]

What is the smallest container size anybody is working with?

In the past I have used either 2 or 3 gallon pots with coco. I am about half way through flowering a run that is 1 blumat each in 1 gallon circular pots. At least a couple times a week I'm getting pots that are either too dry or are way too wet and are running off and wasting all my nutes. This is something I expect within the first week of putting the blumats in, but not after they've already been in at least a month now. I'm wondering if it's not the pot size that's killing me, and that they're just not stable as you get down to a size that small. I was doing really well with 2 blumats a piece in square 2 gallon pots.

I was hoping that I could switch from 9 2 gallons to 16 1 gallons and cut a little veg time off. I'm not sure that's the best option if this run continues like it has been.

 

[rives]

I'm using 1 liter air pots for my bonsai moms and they've actually been more stable than the 3 gallon ones that I flower in. I'm using SS#4 in the the 1 liter pots, though, and I've found that it is substantially different than coco.

 

[Dave Coulier]

What is the smallest container size anybody is working with?

In the past I have used either 2 or 3 gallon pots with coco. I am about half way through flowering a run that is 1 blumat each in 1 gallon circular pots. At least a couple times a week I'm getting pots that are either too dry or are way too wet and are running off and wasting all my nutes. This is something I expect within the first week of putting the blumats in, but not after they've already been in at least a month now. I'm wondering if it's not the pot size that's killing me, and that they're just not stable as you get down to a size that small. I was doing really well with 2 blumats a piece in square 2 gallon pots.

I was hoping that I could switch from 9 2 gallons to 16 1 gallons and cut a little veg time off. I'm not sure that's the best option if this run continues like it has been.

Ive used them before with Dixie cups. Ran 13 at one time . Container size isn't your problem. What type of medium are you using? Some mediums just dont work well with Blumats. (Bark based, and RW IME)

 

[ak-51]

100% coco. Same medium as I have been using with the blumats the whole time I've been running them.

I must have gotten off to a bad start or something. I have 16 more 1 gallon pots in veg right now and they'll go into a tent with blumats in a week. That'll be a fresh start, and I'll continue to mess with the current ones.

 

[redbudduckfoot]

flood all pots again with a watering wand or watering can; completely drench them.

make sure your blumats are full of water.

re-adjust blumats to cling. with coco i find its better to have a little run-off.

its all about the first few days after the initial drench when dialing them in.

another thing that might be a problem; keep your elevated rez full. when u lose water pressure all kinds of problems arise. the blumats stop resonding, suck the water out of the blumat itself, then the pots either dry up or a runoff occurs.

hope this helps

RBDF

 

[ak-51]

If I continue to have problems I'll do the drench and completely re-dial them. Hopefully it's just been an abnormally long dial-in process and I've fixed it.

The ones that have been problems I have always pulled the carrots out and looked to see if there were any bubbles in there and I never saw any.

The water level in my elevated res is about 3-4 feet above the lowest point in the black feed line. My elevated res also automatically tops itself off every hour. It's a 5 gallon bucket with a cycle timer and pump combination feeding it regularly.

 

[Weed Killer]

Got a pm and I cannot directly respond sorry.

For the pump, I used a demand pump that has a pressure switch to turn the pump off It is a shurflo SLV10-AA40

With a smaller accumulator the pump will just run more often

I got the watts regulator from freshwatersystems

The 3/8 hose and fittings came from home depot

 

[rrog]

Very cool stuff, weed killer. I'm trying to determine if my hard well water is building high levels of Ca+ in my soil. I run straight hard well water through the BM pressure reducer, which is neat and tidy, but flawed IF the calcium is building up. Apparently not all hard Ca+ is available. CaCO3 is pretty locked up and unavailable as free Ca+ in water. Not certain if similarly locked up in soil

 

[Dave Coulier]

Got a pm and I cannot directly respond sorry.

For the pump, I used a demand pump that has a pressure switch to turn the pump off It is a shurflo SLV10-AA40

With a smaller accumulator the pump will just run more often

I got the watts regulator from freshwatersystems

The 3/8 hose and fittings came from home depot

Thanks weedkiller. Im in the process of acquiring all that I'll need for this setup. I think Ill like it alot. I can't wait to get it all together.

 

[Coco Sagan]

We're outfitting our 24k warehouse with these hopefully soon, and i'm trying to come up with the best ways to split up our reses / best blumat setup.

We have 8 7-gallon smart pots per tray, w/ 12 trays each. So 96 7-gallon plants total. Is one blumat maxi enough for each 7-gallon smart pot? We have 4x8 botanicaire trays so runoff can happen accidentally but we're aiming for almost none.

I'm thinkin a 55-gallon drum in each corner of the room. Is that enough to feed 24 plants w/ a res fill up every 2 days? Or should we look into getting those 105-gallon standup reses?

I really really like ekomsi's idea of pumping your nute solution that is mixing in a 55gallon drum into a 25 gallon elevated res w/ an overflow line, as quoted below from his original post in his "Huge Experiment..." thread:

I will be using a 55gall rez, inside the 55gal rez will be a smallish pump that all day every day will be on pumping nutrient solution up to a 25 gallon rez, this rez will have a 1in overflow pipe that brings solution back to the 55 gallon rez. The 25 gall rez will have 1/2in tubing that runs the blumats manifold. gonna use a closed loop system with either 2 or 3 loops, at the lowest point of each loop there will be a valve for bleeding the system. There will also be inline valves at the top of the manifold. I will use 3mm line coming off the 1/2in line with Kent Tees 3/32in

Any input on the res size or even the efficiency of outfitting an entire flower room this way? Thanks peeps!



PS It's a medical grow so the intent w/ the blumats is just to free up time for other duties instead of wanting to go on vacation for 2 weeks or something. The blumats will be closely monitored at all times.

 

[Weed Killer]

I was thinking about it there is no reason you cannot use one of the larger 115v demand pumps, and the 2 gallon accumulator, just use the larger watts regulator 0-60 psi and regulate it down to 15psi. having the larger accumulator and higher pressure would give you more reserve and the pump would run less. Just be sure you are comfortable working with pressurized liquids.

I went with small because I am only feeding 5 plants, but a bigger setup would be very cool.

 

[ak-51]

Coco Sagan -

I use 2 blumats in pots 2 gallons or larger. I feel like it adds in redundancy for safety and you get a better water distribution when you use multiple blumats. Using remote emitters would probably be enough to get good distribution though. If you're vigilant about checking them every day I think you could probably swing it with just one though.

 

[Dave Coulier]

I was thinking about it there is no reason you cannot use one of the larger 115v demand pumps, and the 2 gallon accumulator, just use the larger watts regulator 0-60 psi and regulate it down to 15psi. having the larger accumulator and higher pressure would give you more reserve and the pump would run less. Just be sure you are comfortable working with pressurized liquids.

I went with small because I am only feeding 5 plants, but a bigger setup would be very cool.

Hey weedkiller, have you looked into any of the pre-assembled water boost systems? Ive been looking at them tonight, and model 804-013 I think would be ideal. Its a difficult model to find though. 804-023 is a common one that runs 90 psi, while the other one is 60.

I plan on running probably 10-15 plants in 1-3 gallon containers in my flowering room. So you may get to see your wish come true .
I just need a lil help from those more experienced to help me get it all set up.

 

[redbudduckfoot]

personally, i use (1) sensor per pot, anything 5g or below. i have never used two per pot, im sure it adds some extra security.

RBDF

 

[Coco Sagan]

thanks for the responses, peeps! I'll probably outfit each pot with 2 maxis. The site says they're really only useful for sticking them like 15" below the soil(less)line, but when i stick a maxi in a 7-gallon smartpot (shallow but wide), they seem to be fine.

One question I haven't necessarily seen answered in my 60 or so pages (or mustve not understood it at the time) is, do i HAVE to use 8mm OD / 0.25" ID tubing for my manifold?

Since I'll be running 24 plants off of each setup (which means 48 maxi blumats), I'm thinking that i may want 1/2" ID manifold instead of 1/4" ID. Will this aid in proper distribution across the entire row? Or am I fine simply going with the standard 8mm?

Since I'm getting all the parts from the hydro shop I don't need to screw around with the patio kits. I want to make sure that I get everything I need, though. If I DO happen to go with a 1/2" ID manifold, what else should I pick up for conversion-sake?

 

[Coco Sagan]

well, im all set to order my kentsystems pieces (200 x 3/32" barb tees) but I want to be sure that those are what I need to fit the blumats to 1/2" ID feed line/manifold.

I understand it goes from res -> hull adapter -> 2 x 1/2" line coming out of elevated res (i plan to loop), -> 3/32" barbs for each pot (2x blumat off of each tee, crisscrossed to different pots as mentioned) -> 3mm tubing -> blumat

this thread is gold!

i also decided to do regular blumats, 2 per 7-gallon, instead of maxis. they just seem too spikey and big. The 7gallon pot is the exact same depth as the 5 gallon, and ive been hearing the regular blumats handle 5 gallon coverage (vertically) well enough.