Blumat auto watering

[Chevy cHaze]

Also running them in 3gal (11L) square pots just wondering what length do you recommend having the drip line at. Having a few issues and going to pull them and reset them following your steps.

Hey Ozdia,
Here's a pic of my 3gal smartpots with Blumats in action.



While the length of the drip line is important (radial wicking) what's even more important, especially in smart pots, is the distance of the back of the carrot to the container wall.

If it's not big enough or the soil is fluffy, the blumat will be triggered by drying out from the back!
I try to push down extra soil behind the carrot and compact it a bit so it will not easily dry out.
No snorkel tek here, just some top dressed guano under the drip point.
Hope you enjoy yours mate!


CC

 

[Chevy cHaze]

3 Triangles towards close or 3 smaller lines between the triangles? Instructions from blunt say close 2 more triangles.

Hey LT,
Hope you're good.
A blumat mark is one of the upside down triangles' tip.
You can of course also simply use the space in between the trinagles no laws against that ;-)
Very likely actually that your last drop hanging position is not exactly on a triangle tip.
Yeah but a full mark, not the tiny vertical lines!


Enjoy!
CC

 

[ozdia]

Hey Ozdia,
Here's a pic of my 3gal smartpots with Blumats in action.
[URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=71351&pictureid=2084046&thumb=1]View Image[/URL]


While the length of the drip line is important (radial wicking) what's even more important, especially in smart pots, is the distance of the back of the carrot to the container wall.

If it's not big enough or the soil is fluffy, the blumat will be triggered by drying out from the back!
I try to push down extra soil behind the carrot and compact it a bit so it will not easily dry out.
No snorkel tek here, just some top dressed guano under the drip point.
Hope you enjoy yours mate!


CC

Cheers for the reply really appreciate it I’m in plastic pots so have mine about 3-4cm from the edge, I’ve heard that happens with smart pots pots where they dry to quickly if too close to the edge. How much cm’s would you say that drip line is hard to judge by the image many thanks

 

[Chevy cHaze]

Cheers for the reply really appreciate it I’m in plastic pots so have mine about 3-4cm from the edge, I’ve heard that happens with smart pots pots where they dry to quickly if too close to the edge. How much cm’s would you say that drip line is hard to judge by the image many thanks

No problem, the pot is 30cm/1' in diameter, so probably around 15cm I'm guessing?

 

[JustBlazin]

Hi All
Just wanted to say HUGE thanks to the "DRIP KING" Sunnydog. if it wasnt for him we would all still be tethered to our watering cans. thanks sunny much respect and i think blumat should be giving you some type of royalties...lol geez you probbobly moved more units then any of their salesman. also big thanks to Rives, Chevy Chaze,lapides,EZ Rider,dave coulier, heady blunts i, sure im forgetting some ohter people im sorry. if it wasnt for all you smart cookies i would be ancle deep in water everytime i went in my tent...lol
thanks again you people are geniuses and much respect for posting all your trials and errors on here for all us lackeys' to learn from. now thanks to you all and blumats we can exel in our hobbys
great respect and much appreciation.

 

[saitama]

Is anybody still running drip clean to prevent salt build up? I stopped running it this round just to see, but I'm also running megacrop now instead of V+B. The plants look very happy and I'm in week 3 of flower.

Just wondering what the state of the union was for drip clean because it used to be the thing to do at 1ml/gal when running blumats.

 

[Chevy cHaze]

I use it in case I run nutes trough the blumats, but running organice living soil for the last years and therefore only water til harvest..
It did help a lot though I thought. Running Hesi nutes I had clogged lines once, cleaned all out and added drip clean ans no more issues after that.
Cheers
CC

 

[Brother Nature]

I still use dripclean, almost religiously, but I'm also in coco and using canna nutes, I definitely had clogging without it. I also find it helps reduce salt build-up in the medium so means I need to flush less (if at all) as long as I use the less is more principal with my EC levels and don't fuck up my PH.

 

[saitama]

I still use dripclean, almost religiously, but I'm also in coco and using canna nutes, I definitely had clogging without it. I also find it helps reduce salt build-up in the medium so means I need to flush less (if at all) as long as I use the less is more principal with my EC levels and don't fuck up my PH.

Great, thanks! 1ml/gal? I'm primarily worried about nute lock from salt build up

 

[Brother Nature]

Hey mate, yeah at about that rate. I'm metric, but it's roughly the same calculation. Using 5-6ml per 25l, so just under 1ml/gal, but same difference really.

 

[marmarb]

Finally joined the gang setup 12 blumats in 4x4 for mothers. Have the main rez suspended 5ft in air constantly topped off by 5 gal bucket on floor fed with 1/2" tubing. Over flow set at 8" than falls back into bucket on floor so pressure stays the same using coco jacks 321 will start adding diy drip clean.

 

[saitama]

Finally joined the gang setup 12 blumats in 4x4 for mothers. Have the main rez suspended 5ft in air constantly topped off by 5 gal bucket on floor fed with 1/2" tubing. Over flow set at 8" than falls back into bucket on floor so pressure stays the same using coco jacks 321 will start adding diy drip clean.

Curious what DIY drip clean is. Please share

 

[farm3r]

I've just started setting up my Blumat system using BluSoak ( aka Soaker Hose / drip tape) for 4x4 no till raised beds. I'm still trying to dial things in.

For those who have experience with both the BluSoak and regular Blumat with distribution drippers, what do you think work better? Is it true that the BluSoak seems to keep the soil on the dryer side and not as responsive as the distribution drippers? I read that somewhere.

For each of my 4x4 raised bed, I'm using the standard recommendation of using the Maxi (long one) carrot in the center and the regular carrot near the edge of the bed. The Blusoak would run in a spiral around the bed. I have a two-reservoir system where the top one has a water return / topoff with 1 inch PVC pipe and PVC bulkhead. The top reservoir also has two 8mm bulkheads near the bottom for a looped system. The bottom reservoir has a submersible pump, pumping water up about 6 ft to fill the top reservoir until I see the water return. Once everything is running smoothly, I will put the water pump on a timer to run periodically so the water head is always close to the return bulkhead. I'm also using PVC adapter that fits in the standard 3/4 inch water hose connection on the pump and then I have a 1 inch PVC pipe fits into that and goes straight up to the top reservoir. Wow, that's a long description. If anyone is interested, let me know and I'll take photo and tell you about which parts to get. It took me a while to figure out what to buy and how build this reservoir system given that I didn't even know what the heck a bulkhead is to begin with. LOL.

I don't see a lot of people in this thread (Read backward to Page 500) using the BluSoak and FYI, the carrot triangle adjustment is actually different than the regular setup with distribution drippers.

In case someone reads this, for the BluSoak setup, after finding the hanging drop, DO NOT adjust the triangle at all. Just plug in the 3mm line to the BluSoak. Also, look on Sustainable Village website as there's a couple of pages with really great tips for both the regular system and blusoak.

Anyway, I've seen so many positive feedback and reviews of the Blumat system and can't wait to get mine dialed in and watch the plants pray every day, a good sign that they are loving things.

Oh, one more thing. Have you guys heard of the aquamat capillary system? I also got this from Sustainable Village. It's basically a mat with several layers of material and foams. It has two blusoak lines running in parallel along the length of that mat. I got the 4 x 2 mat. It uses a FLAT carrot to sense the water in the layers of material. When you put a fabric pot or plastic pot with flat bottom on the mat, the soil wicks the water up. It works for pot sizes up to two gallon. You can use pots up to 3 or 5 gallon, but the water only wicks up half way, I think. Anyway, it freaking kick arse! Now I don't even have to water my seedlings, clones, or small vegging plants. Usually, most growers go from solo cup to one gallon, and then final pot for flowering. So with this mat capillary system, I don't even have to worry about watering during veg.

BTW, this thread got a ton of great and helpful info!

 

[flylowgethigh]

I am working on a timer based watering system for a 4 x 4 flower tent, and will be using moisture meters to manually dial it in. This will be my first at this, and I can see watering being a good way to screw up. It would be nice to trigger the watering based on moisture, instead of time.

This bluemat meter I will trust first: Edit...I'm watching a 7 gallon bag of moist soil dry in the interim, and that Bluemat moisture sensor seems to be working very well. It is helping me get a "feel" for the moisture.

https://www.sustainablevillage.com/blumat-digital-moisture-meter

 

[Chevy cHaze]

Hi guys,

Just thought I'd show you a couple pics of my Deep Blumats that I have been talking about before.





Regular Tropf Blumats are extended with a plastic straw/pipe that's vertically inserted and goes down directly to the center of the pot.
The flexible drip line is inserted into the upper opening and this way you always get even saturation all the way to the bottom and the edges of the pot. Works great in bigger pots where you always end up with dry soil at the bottom and behind the carrot.


Cheers
CC

 

[Fitzera]

Hi guys,

Just thought I'd show you a couple pics of my Deep Blumats that I have been talking about before.





Regular Tropf Blumats are extended with a plastic straw/pipe that's vertically inserted and goes down directly to the center of the pot.
The flexible drip line is inserted into the upper opening and this way you always get even saturation all the way to the bottom and the edges of the pot. Works great in bigger pots where you always end up with dry soil at the bottom and behind the carrot.


Cheers
CC

Definitely something I'm going to look at in the future as I'm switching to using all fabric pots and 7gals at that for most. 2 regular blumats worked fine for plastic 5 gallons but I need better coverage with the 7gal fabrics.

 

[flylowgethigh]

I love the carrot moisture sensor, and wish it had a remote wireless display. The thing I never liked with their drip watering is the point source of the water. I can see a tube like that one going down to a bottom layer of drainage {like perlite), wetting the whole bottom as the carrot sensed the soil needing water. Kinda a little SIP.

 

[marmarb]

Has anyone compared the growth rate to dwc. This has been a nice way to keep moms

 

[marmarb]

Curious what DIY drip clean is. Please share

Drip clean helps keep the lines from clogging

 

[Fitzera]

Has anyone compared the growth rate to dwc. This has been a nice way to keep moms

IMHO I don't think you can compare blumats to dwc in any way, shape or form.