Chicken shack rdwc madness.

[Numboard]

I ran an old cast iron radiator off a well years ago. Drain to waste. It worked awesome... until I ran the well dry. That was awkward. And I became dirtier and thirstier every day. Was effective while it lasted though.

Its actually not quite well water, We have a pond in front of our house that is fed by a pipe that runs up a stream for a while. So gravity fed by stream, then we have a irigation pump hooked to that to feed various things on our property, mainly irigating. Its usually on almost all day long.

I like your approach... Have you considered putting one radiator in the room with forced air behind it attached to your chiller (or your intake)... but instead of just dumping it back into the chiller reservoir, hook the other radiator inline with that massive beast so you can dump as much heat out doors before it hits your chiller again?

I dont want to have anything out side the shack for security reasons. I dont think my chiller will be able to handle anything more than chilling my two 35 gallon systems. Although when the temps are lower than 120 in the shack (oh sweet jesus) the effectiveness of the chiller might go up.

Or...

...if you are going to circulate well water through the coup, use that instead of your compressor to control your res temps. Pump it through the res first, then all of your atmosphere radiators... (and save your amperage for something else)...

This is a good idea, however the water that comes from the pond is quite a bit higher than i want my res temps to be at, so im gonna keep the two things separate. Also i can justify using it to cool my res because its only on when it needs to. its off for about an hour before it comes on for 30 minutes. Also once the ambient temps lower it will be on even less.

I would put my radiators where I needed the temp controlled, (i.e. by the girls) rather than on the intakes... but that's definitely just my thought.

How do the roots look?

I plan on expanding in the future to occupy the entire shack. so with the cooling of the whole shack taken care of I don't need to worry about upgrading in the future (Lol who am i fooling..) Roots look pretty good as I keep the water temps real low.

In a total different direction:

As your temps climb, plant transpiration increases. You could try (I presume you have a passive res that tops off your recirculating...) dropping your PPM so the same quantity of nutes move through your plants on a daily basis as transpiration increases. (I see too much food rather than heat, personally. But I don't know what you're feeding at, or what your temps are.)

I add back water by dragging a hose in through the door and blasting it in the bucket. Only takes a sec... lol I flush the system every week by attaching the pump to a drain hose. Simultaneously i add back water until all nutes are flushed out. I am feeding at around 800ppm of 3:2:1 general hydroponics flora. (grow micro bloom) Temps in the shack are usually 10-20 degrees higher than it is outside, Which is usually 90-100 degrees these days. Emergency mode.

Good canopy on the ladies.

I like the way your brain works. (The radiator idea is something I'm working on... well not really, but an idea I have thought about thinking about working on...)

Wat.

Edit: I think coupled with the fan i am going to buy a attic fan thermostat. Most can go to like 75 so, when the thermostat kicks on the big ass fan will turn on and it will also open a washing machine valve, these have two regular garden hose fittings on them so i can just bring the water in that way and when the valve opens water from hose gets sent through a 3/4" hosebarb, Nifty! I can controll this with 110 volts perfect for the thermostat.

.
Fuck hydro inovations 100 dollar solenoid valve. Crazy....
Ill run all rads in parallel for maximum cooling powa11!!1!
Total invested in grow after insulating: 2500.

 

[budleydoright]

Came by to ck out the chiller but no pics. Oh well, make sure that your nute water and any of the copper on your chiller don't come in contact..

 

[Numboard]

Came by to ck out the chiller but no pics. Oh well, make sure that your nute water and any of the copper on your chiller don't come in contact..

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showpost.php?p=3645809&postcount=83
Plenty of pix here, And I haven't had any problems with copper yet. I do have a place bookmarked where i can get nice aluminum tubing for really cheap in the event that it does cause me problems.

Edit:
Just went out to check on the plants. I checked under the clones to see if there were roots and one of the white widows has some roots! woo!
Oh and have a torched kief bowl too...

Gonna get these into flower asap. Waiting on my water pump and 6" can fan still

 

[ImaginaryFriend]

Using your pond for a heat sink... I like that.

There's a cat who calls himself something like RustyTrichome on another board who is a Texan shack grower. He deals with temps like you are describing. I think he's a soil grower (I haven't looked at his posts in a long time) and rather than feeding once a week and straight watering the rest of the time, he feeds with more frequency at lower rates.

Your ppm is not high by most standards, but it may be in that heat if you're getting a lot of transpiration.

What are your temp and humidity numbers?

 

[Numboard]

No idea on the humidity numbers, haven't even bothered to check but I assume its dry, >somewhere on lassen. Ambient temps in the shack during the day reach 120 no problem. Thankfully I am going to home depot today to get all this shit. Don t have the rads yet thats gotta wait a week or so. I think after all the insulating and that big fan ill be in semi better shape at least.

 

[ImaginaryFriend]

Okay.

That's pretty hot. Now I see the need for the plan.

 

[overbudjet]

Hi Numboard ,I suggest another kind of chiller instead of yours copper tube they are called worth chiller and they are made of stainless steel tubing http://cgi.ebay.ca/New-Super-Effici...tem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item45eebce8b5
and a pic of mine in rez and another one of the girls(white widow after 1 week of 12/12)

Very good job on that room
P.S. I like the idea of making your own seal with rubber pad and dye

 

[Numboard]

Hi Numboard ,I suggest another kind of chiller instead of yours copper tube they are called worth chiller and they are made of stainless steel tubing http://cgi.ebay.ca/New-Super-Effici...tem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item45eebce8b5
and a pic of mine in rez and another one of the girls(white widow after 1 week of 12/12)

Very good job on that room
P.S. I like the idea of making your own seal with rubber pad and dye

The next time im doing this, upgrading. Ill be making full use of the entire shack and when I do I am definitely following your bulkhead design. They are just so much cleaner and nicer, and BIGGER! My buckets are always uneven, the ones at the end are lower than the ones at the res. Big pump and small pipes. gravity cant keep up.
Do you have any links to what heavy copper poisoning in plants looks like? I cant find any. If I can find any evidence that copper is hurting my plants I will switch to something better immediately.

What are you feeding your air handlers with? well water? Im trying to get a gauge on how well my design will work. I plan to hopefully be running 3 of them at a time in parallel blowing into the room. Heres the back side of one of them:

so attached to the fans will be a attic thermostat connected to the water supply valve and the fans.

 

[overbudjet]

Your heat exchanger look so nice compare to mine.

 

[Numboard]

Your heat exchanger look so nice compare to mine.

Well how well does yours work? and what water source are you feeding it with?

 

[overbudjet]

working good so far,5 row old dehu rad with 8 fan maintain my room at 86 perfect for co2 but the setup was not completly done yet, so to hot for my girl .so i have to add a/c this week or adding another heat exchanger i gone doing both better to be safe than sorry !for water the system is simply a DTW.

 

[ImaginaryFriend]

Where in the system is your pump located, and in what direction is it flowing... i.e. pumping from the res into the buckets, or pulling from the buckets into the res? Seems like a ball valve somewhere in line would be a way of controlling flow and balancing levels.

 

[Numboard]

Where in the system is your pump located, and in what direction is it flowing... i.e. pumping from the res into the buckets, or pulling from the buckets into the res? Seems like a ball valve somewhere in line would be a way of controlling flow and balancing levels.

That has been outlined plenty of times. The pump sucks from the end of the bukets and dumps into the controller bucket. Sucks from two buckets on end. Dumps in controller bucket.

Got some supplies. also got all the insulation. Turns out the shit is expensive and i diddnt bring enough money to get the fiberglass. I got just 3/4" foam 20 sheets of 4x8. Hopefully this will be enough, if not whelp. back to the store.

 

[Ganoderma]

I'm not sure about that set up there, it looks like a hazard just waiting to happen. You have a bucket filled with anti-freeze that does not have a lid of any kind on top of it. You have an open bucket of anti-freeze in the same room/area as your plants!

 

[Numboard]

I'm not sure about that set up there, it looks like a hazard just waiting to happen. You have a bucket filled with anti-freeze that does not have a lid of any kind on top of it. You have an open bucket of anti-freeze in the same room/area as your plants!

Yeah so? I got a open jug of bleach sitting right next to where my plants are too! Oh dear!

 

[fatigues]

Great pics on this and I really like the functionality of your build.

Stay safe and show us more of your girls.

Oh - one last thing: add mylar to the tops of your DWC lids. You are wasting light there going on to the orange lids that your girls (and their lower branch popcorn) would prefer were bounced right back at em.

 

[Numboard]

I just finished mounting one of the attic vents. I also hooked up the huge blower fan. Makes a ton of noise, moves a TON of air. Wired it up to a unused light switch. Going to mount the thermostat right next to the switch. Also mounted the 6" inline fan to my little manifold thing. Its so hot these days I only have like 3 hours in the morning and 4 hours in the evening to work out there. We'll see what the temps are like in there with the fan running all day tomorrow. It will be another week before i can get ahold of those rads. If not more. I might tackle some insulating tomorrow.

 

[budleydoright]

real quick. copper not bad for water at proper ph and with conditioning, ie.. tap water.
Start adding mineral salts and everything changes. I am not speaking first hand, but passing along many "Tips" from other growers, copper will create a toxic mess with your nutes. Don't know how long it takes, what the symptoms are or why. I do know it will kill your fish in a reef tank setup. That's enough proof for me. I suggest you look into this further.

 

[Numboard]

real quick. copper not bad for water at proper ph and with conditioning, ie.. tap water.
Start adding mineral salts and everything changes. I am not speaking first hand, but passing along many "Tips" from other growers, copper will create a toxic mess with your nutes. Don't know how long it takes, what the symptoms are or why. I do know it will kill your fish in a reef tank setup. That's enough proof for me. I suggest you look into this further.

I have already made a post on the infirmary
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?p=3702105&posted=1#post3702105

 

[MynameStitch]

I do not see pictures of your plants that got problem you speak of.....

What color are the roots?
If you had root rot problems it will show anything on the plant, damaged growth does not recover.....
is the water you are using now coming from that stream?
Just to be sure, you can get a water test kit that will tell you how much copper is in your water..... I can't tell ya anymore until I see pictures of the plant and roots.....
How long have you had this copper chiller?