Blumat auto watering

[dgr]

Gentlemen,
The pressure differential between the top and the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket is 0.5 PSI -- unless your bucket is 20 feet tall, which mine aren't. So if you get the top of your bucket 6 feet above your blumats, The pressure range will be from 2.1 to 2.6 PSI. Not quite the same as 5 - 10 PSI. The higher you get your bucket, the smaller the percentage change between the high and low pressures.

This is a great thread. Thanks for all the info you've posted.

 

[heady blunts]

 

[sunnydog]

Important!

Important!

Please, if you have any runaway issues, please note whether it occurred in a pot with ONE blumat, or MULTIPLE blumats.
Trying to see if having two or more units in the same pot will lessen or stop over runs.

 

[laylow]

Sunny what size pot are you having the run away probs in and is this with a reg blumat...

we need to get some sort of chart up on what size and how many blumats for what size container really....

 

[heady blunts]

 

[rives]

Please, if you have any runaway issues, please note whether it occurred in a pot with ONE blumat, or MULTIPLE blumats.
Trying to see if having two or more units in the same pot will lessen or stop over runs.

Well, having two blumats might lessen either the magnitude or the frequency of the runaway, but it still happens. A few weeks ago I changed my supply circuit and added a second blumat to each of my 3 gallon smart pots in preparation for leaving town for 10 days. It was working wonderfully, got everything dialed in, and......the night before I left town, had a runaway.

My setup has a drain pan plumbed into the sewer drain and an auto-fill circuit on the reservoir, so it is impossible to know if the runaway had less volume than in the past. However, it should take care of the more frequent problem that I had, which was getting too little water for a variety of reasons.

 

[laughingmoon]

Advanced Blumatting

Advanced Blumatting

So say I want to run one set of blumats (4 carrots total) for a couple different strains with different finishing times (9-11 weeks). The plants will be put into flower at different dates so that the plants are timed to all finish on the same date.

This means I will have feeding schedules that will match up for certain periods, so they can all be on the same reservoir, and periods where I will have to take some off the res and hand water until the next matching feeding period.

The question is, how can I disconnect without drying out the carrot, and without causing an overflow when I reconnect. And how can I do it quickly and easily?

 

[whadeezlrg]

maybe just shut the valve off at the top of the carrot and make sure your on top of your watering game until the feeds are back on track with eachother

 

[Herborizer]

I have not had very many runaways, but my recent theory is that they happen when the drip is too far from the carrot. I keep these very close now. I got the idea from my my mother chamber which I use 1 gal smart pots. Since the pots are so small I naturally had the drip close to the carrot. In 7 months I have not had a single runaway in my mother chamber.

For the person asking about Canna coco and smartpot size, I use 2gal smartpots and get about 3.5oz per plant. My tray is a 4x4 and I grow 6 plants. Sometimes I think that only 5 plants would be better. With scrog I fill my screen like 95%. I just chopped again and when I pulled the plants out of the smart pots the bottom 1/3 of the coco wasn't even used. I would bet hat I could switch to 1gal smartpots and not have any issues, just save money.

 

[rives]

The question is, how can I disconnect without drying out the carrot, and without causing an overflow when I reconnect. And how can I do it quickly and easily?

I just put a clothespin or one of those black, heavy duty paperclip/clamps on the 3mm tubing and pinch off the flow.

 

[heady blunts]

So say I want to run one set of blumats (4 carrots total) for a couple different strains with different finishing times (9-11 weeks). The plants will be put into flower at different dates so that the plants are timed to all finish on the same date.

This means I will have feeding schedules that will match up for certain periods, so they can all be on the same reservoir, and periods where I will have to take some off the res and hand water until the next matching feeding period.

The question is, how can I disconnect without drying out the carrot, and without causing an overflow when I reconnect. And how can I do it quickly and easily?

get a little bucket or tupperware, fill it with clean water, pull the blumat out of your soil/coco/whatever, and drop it into the water.

it will stay full and keep the drip line shut for as long as it is submerged.

i've had four or five blumats in a little bucket of water for days at a time and they come out of it ready to go straight back into the pots and work perfectly.

this also fills the cones up all the way if there are any air bubbles trapped inside

 

[laughingmoon]

So I could clothespin off a blumat, but not connect it, lift it out of the soil, drop it into a big enough cup of water, and topfeed by hand for the in-between days? Once I put the blumat back into the coco and take the clip off it should function like normal?

I presume if I clothespin it and not submerge it, that the couple days of hand watering could lead to the blumat drying out.

 

[rives]

If you drop it into water, the clothespin should not be needed - the moisture that it senses would keep it turned off. When I use the clothespin method and handwater, I try not to let it dry out any more than it would with the blumat, and haven't had any problems with the blumat losing water. However, I don't use coco, so it may dry out faster than you can keep up with handwatering.

 

[laughingmoon]

If you drop it into water, the clothespin should not be needed - the moisture that it senses would keep it turned off.

Great point.

Another idea I had was when there is a conflicting feeding schedule, say one plant is later in flower now needs only 0/9 (micro/bloom), but another still needs 6/9, I adjust the res to only have the lower requirement nutrient, in this case, the 0/9, and then I hand water 6/0 for the plants that need 6/9. It would seem that due to the extra water, overflow would be an issue, and if that was to be avoided, the plant might be underfed a bit.

 

[Dave Coulier]

Laughingmoon, I think it'd be simpler to set up multiple reservoirs for your plants that are in different stage of growth. Ive tried to find the middle ground for plants in different stages of flowering, but its more of a hassle than its worth. Some plants were under-fed, and others over-fed. From now on, Ill have reservoirs for different stages of growth.

 

[laughingmoon]

Hey Dave,
Multiple reservoirs would be nice, but I'm limited in space. These questions will apply to a 2'x2' tent. I'll be working with, say, 4 plants, and out of 77 days of flower, only 12 of those days will have different reservoir feeding requirements.

 

[heady blunts]

new res for my micro grow!

i read a few posts back that water pressure from gravity is measured at the top of the water level, not where the thru-hull adapter comes out the bottom. so i redesigned my reservoir.

(i hadn't added the thru-hull yet in this pic

am i the only DIYer that loves p-traps and rubber bands?

you can't really see it but there's a hole in the lid of the darker tote that this drain pipe fits in.

and here it is all installed!

i just quadrupled my capacity! plus the blumats will now have consistent pressure ALWAYS!

 

[dgr]

Neat design Heady. You should have used an actual toilet riser. They have a gasket and last, IDK, 20 or 50 years. Plus, pull the flapper and WHOOSH dump the top tank into the bottom tank. lol. Actually, I might steal your idea for a different project and use a toilet fill valve. I don't think deadheading a mag pump will do any harm.

 

[NachoConQueso]

I've been using these things for a bit now and I just cant seem to keep my lines from getting clogged. My res is small so once I get down to about a gallon of water and the precipitates are floating around my lines feel the pain. Should I buy a bigger res and top off more often? What do you guys do? I don't like pouring a gallon of nutrient water down the drain just to do a fresh refill. That seems wasteful and not environmentally friendly.

 

[heady blunts]

I've been using these things for a bit now and I just cant seem to keep my lines from getting clogged. My res is small so once I get down to about a gallon of water and the precipitates are floating around my lines feel the pain. Should I buy a bigger res and top off more often? What do you guys do? I don't like pouring a gallon of nutrient water down the drain just to do a fresh refill. That seems wasteful and not environmentally friendly.

what nutes are you using? i know people experience clogging with certain nute lines.

are you adding drip clean?