How many of you use blumat watering system?

[#1cheesebuds]

How many of you use blumat watering system for your indoor plants.
Give me your thoughts on whether I should get me some. And what brand to get.

 

[kalopatchkid]

I used blumats for several years and ditched them for a simple drip system, I don't miss blumats at all.

Now I just use a 20 gallon reservoir with a submersible pump attached to a smart outlet that I can set schedules and control with my phone. This setup has been way more reliable for me, I don't have to fuss with runaway/malfunctioning blumat carrots, resetting after a harvest is faster because I don't have to soak and refill the carrots, and I can buy every part I need from Home Depot for cheap.

 

[420PyRoS]

Had great results using blumat troph's.
Id be using them now if i could grow indoors.

Id have to leave up to two weeks at a time for work and family, they saved my bacon while away.

Never had any issues with them.

 

[Tangwena]

Been using them for years indoors and on my balcony grows never missed a beet.
I like how you can adjust the amount of water towards the end of flowering to make the soil dryer.

 

[Artful Codger]

I use the small Blumat Tropf carrots indoors in 100% coco. They take some getting used to, but work great once you have them dialed in. There's a (really) long thread here, titled "Blumat auto watering" started by @sunnydog that was a great source of info when I was getting started with them. Post #1,295 in that thread is a nice summary. One piece of advice: have your pots in a tray that can hold the contents of your reservoir. You'll get runaways in the early going, and it's nice if it doesn't leak all over your room.

 

[Brother Nature]

I love them, I use them for all my indoor plants and some of my container plants outside, though am not currently using them for my cannabis plants. You will need to buy the original tropf brand though, the knock offs don't seem to work as well. Some people have issues getting them to work well, I don't understand why as they are very fool proof, but if you do have issues just persist at getting them dialed in and you'll never look back.

 

[b8man]

Yup - using them for years - 20+ grows. Just finished another grow where they made It sooo easy to get great results. The plants love them - no deficiencies for the whole grow. If anything it makes growing a bit boring.

They work better with smaller pots and you need to use drip clean in your reservoir to make them much more reliable. I use canna coco notes - don’t add anything known to block droppers.

 

[Piecho]

I used blumats for several years and ditched them for a simple drip system, I don't miss blumats at all.

Now I just use a 20 gallon reservoir with a submersible pump attached to a smart outlet that I can set schedules and control with my phone. This setup has been way more reliable for me, I don't have to fuss with runaway/malfunctioning blumat carrots, resetting after a harvest is faster because I don't have to soak and refill the carrots, and I can buy every part I need from Home Depot for cheap.

Can you share more details of your system?
I'm running on cheap pump which you can trigger manually or by scheduling watering once a day for selected time. I find it limiting, I would be happy to auto water them multiple times a day.

Here is the blumat post

Blumat auto watering

Will all of the negativity about DE I decided to email Blumat. They seem to think there should be no prob so I guess I'll be the guinea pig. Anyway, just thought I'd let you all know.

www.icmag.com

 

[kalopatchkid]

Can you share more details of your system?
I'm running on cheap pump which you can trigger manually or by scheduling watering once a day for selected time. I find it limiting, I would be happy to auto water them multiple times a day.

Here is the blumat post

Blumat auto watering

Will all of the negativity about DE I decided to email Blumat. They seem to think there should be no prob so I guess I'll be the guinea pig. Anyway, just thought I'd let you all know.

www.icmag.com

I use this surge protector and have my submersible pump hooked up to it. I create schedules in the app or I can turn it on/off manually from anywhere with an internet connection. It kinda kicks ass, I only wish it let you schedule shorter time cycles under 1 minute.

 

[gmanwho]

Heres a double whammy of a story to consider. they arent for everyone.

they arent for every grow room either. as with anything water related, there is potential for flooding. so you need to learn, understand an assess the risk verse reward, remove potentials for failure. it all depends on the grow room setup.

if you arent the observant type of person. they can be tricky to under stand. but in reality they are not that difficult to dial in, an or once understood, reduce your potential for leaks. they just need to be understood.

10-12 yrs ago my first experience with blumats was a near disastrous situation. 2 times!! same incident.



as i went on vacation i had one blumat not adjusted properly, an it "ran away". System was connected to house water feed. It dripped slightly excessive for 11 days. an the water collected in my pond liner lined room. eventually building up 3" of water in a 10ft x 25ft room. No floor drain, it was before i knew better.

I landed in the airport near home, waiting for the luggage turn style. the phone rings, its the renter, "hey there's something leaking upstairs in your apartment". i reply ....ill be there in 30 mins!!!

I dont remember the number exactly, the gallons and weight of the water that collected on my 3rd floor grow. I later calculated it, and it was excessive.

with water weighing 8.3 ish pounds per gallon. it was in the hundreds of gallons, and thousands of pounds of water weight that eventually collected. Above my renters.

It could've been a bad situation. or i could have hurt or killed the poor lady that slept under that room.
Thankfully nothing happened but some water damage to the 2nd floor. and then....

but 2 days later after i stopped the leak, and pumped the water out, it still dripped in the walls and made its way 3 stories down to the basement.

the water slowly dripped and traveled down the inside wall of the "bubble frame construction" of the building. it dripped into the basement some 40-50 ft bellow.

since there was like 8 bedrooms in that building, or however many people legally can live there legally. over a certain amount of people the state law required a full fire alarm system. Not just smoke detectors.

Water dripped into the top "bowl" area of the temperature activated fire sensor in the basement. these where the type of alarm sensors that when heated melt something and drop this 2inch metal round disk onto the floor. they melt at over 200f or so in temperature.

The water dripped down, pooled up in the bowl area ontop of the sensor where the electrical connections to the system are made. The water pooled up there an completed a electrical connection, continuity, an tripped the whole house alarms at 2am. Horns, flashing strobes both inside and outside the building. The fire department showed.

Luckily the Alarm panel showed the issue was in the basement. so when the fire dept showed up, they where only interested in the basement.

I had hundreds of plants upstairs, and in the garage. i was running like 30 1000's at that time across 3 different electrical meters. i was lucky, AGAIN!

However, i do still use them. But i now have floor drains in situations where a leak could cause lower damage to the building.

 

[Tangwena]

Good point its why I have an enclosing drip tray under the plants that is run to a waste.
It has happened to me a couple of times in the past so you should take that possibility into account for sure.
I only have a small grow box and 115 litre rez to leak but its more than enough to cause some damage.

 

[xtsho]

I've had some of my best indoor grows using blumats and 100% coco.

As far as runaways go where they drain your reservoir overnight I had that happen when I first used them. Fortunately My tent is in a garage and the water just flowed out and down the driveway.

If you monitor them for the first few days and adjust as needed you can avoid any runaway carrot that doesn't shut down the flow. Once you have them set properly I've never had any issues.

 

[Brother Nature]

That is a very good point that gman brought up. I've only used them with 30 plants max, in our larger grows we use a drip system. When I was using them in that 30 plant grow it was split into two tents and the reservoirs were not large, to avoid a similar situation to what gman had. The couple run away issues I had were due to my laziness as I tend to get kinda complacent when I don't have to visit my grow on a daily basis..

 

[growsjoe1]

Here is the blumat post

Blumat auto watering

Will all of the negativity about DE I decided to email Blumat. They seem to think there should be no prob so I guess I'll be the guinea pig. Anyway, just thought I'd let you all know.

www.icmag.com

That's a great link...K+

 

[#1cheesebuds]

Thanks for the info, but i think ill just stick to the old fashioned hand watering.