Need help with pump/drippers

[ScrubNinja]

I've decided on setting up an automated drip to waste coco system for my tiny grow tent's next grow and I know little about pumps and drippers. I just want 2 pots under a scrog, say 8 to 10 litre pots, with 4 drippers on each pot.

The guide I read said to water them til runoff 4 or 5 times a day. Now, in a whole day, these plants are probably only gonna drink, what, maybe 2 litres? So that's 4 or 5 litres per day for my whole grow, tops.

The smallest pump I can find at the online place I use is 500 litres per hour which breaks down to 8.3 litres per minute. So even if I watered for 1 minute once a day, I'd still be wasting 3 or 4 litres. Let alone doing that 5 times a day?

So how do I make this work?

 

[smurfin'herb]

for 2 plants?!!! just water by hand dude!!

But if you really want drippers, just get that pump and hook it up to a 1/2" line, then insert your 1/4" spaghetti lines, then insert the drippers. I find that the basket drippers work very well for me. Hell, you dont really even need the drippers in your situation, you can leave the spaghettis open and just stick them into the medium.

Im glad my days of figuring drip systems out are pretty much over. Jus go do some research on the net, its what i did. Icmag taught me a lot, experience taught me everything.

Here is a high pressure system i designed myself with pressure compensated drippers. Once you master these, your golden. Clogged drippers are a thing of the past as long as you dont use thick ass organic shit not made for hydro. You need to get the psi ratings for you drip heads, spaghetti lines, trunk lines, backflow/check valves, filters and everything else in sync and matched up with a feasable psi for your system. It will only operate as high as the most limiting factor kind of like plants. I.E. if your drip heads can operate at 10-20psi, and your trunk line can only run 8-10psi, then you will need to run your system at 10psi or else your trunk line could burst. Also gotta make sure you get the right kind of pump for this setup, and that is capapble of running the number of drippers your application requires. They are usually rated in gph,gpm,lph,lpm which are easily converted into one another if needed. I could go on and on with info, but i will save it for a thread of its own one day.

 

[ScrubNinja]

for 2 plants?!!! just water by hand dude!!

But if you really want drippers, just get that pump and hook it up to a 1/2" line, then insert your 1/4" spaghetti lines, then insert the drippers. I find that the basket drippers work very well for me. Hell, you dont really even need the drippers in your situation, you can leave the spaghettis open and just stick them into the medium.

Im glad my days of figuring drip systems out are pretty much over. Jus go do some research on the net, its what i did. Icmag taught me a lot, experience taught me everything.

Thanks for the reply smurfin', and nice system. The plants will be scrogged so that's basically why there's a watering system going to be used. Dunno if you've ever watered a scrog by hand but it's truly tedious.

I have researched, man. It's taken a huge effort just to get this far in understanding it and designing a whole system the first time. I've found people with a similar problem and noone has given an answer. I agree about using holes/spaghetti and not drippers, I was gonna do that anyway cos of blockages in drippers.

For example, ok, let's do what you suggested (and how I already plan to do it!) and use spaghetti lines. So at each water I need, maybe a cup or two of nutes. I turn on the pump for the minimum setting of one minute, and bam, 8.3 litres comes out. That's like 2 gallons when I only need a cup or two. Multiply that by 5 times per day and this is gonna be very wasteful. And before anyone says it, recirc is not an option here, it's drip to waste. Thanks.

 

[FreezerBoy]

Drain to waste in a tent sounds like an accident waiting to happen. I'd really look into E&F. Sticking with the plan, there are smaller pumps out there. Buy one more suited to the task. Or put a splitter on it and monstrously restrict the line that goes to the plants while the other stays in the res.

 

[ScrubNinja]

accident waiting to happen

Someone called my name??

But seriously, cheers, that sounds like the way to do it! You must be responsible for more succesful growing on this site than anyone FB, so thanks for that splitter idea.

I did want to do ebb and flow at first but it seems coco prefers non-recirc top feeding and isn't as suited to other styles. (Only going off what I've read, and my experience hand watering. I know someone'll disagree, lol). But yeah, I envisage spill catchers under spill catchers under spill catchers. I'm sure I'll screw it up many times but I wouldn't do it anywhere risky.

 

[kiwiboy]

your 500 pump wont pump 500 per hour. the 500 per hour label is if there is no pipes causing restriction and with a zero working head.

After your pump has pumped up to your pots 1-2feet and gone through your spaghetti your flow rate will have dropped remarkable.

I am using a 1000ltr pump with drippers. There is an inline filter, so I never have had a blockage. On the last run I had 24 drippers opened up as far as they would go, the total flow rate was down to 180 litres per hour

 

[ScrubNinja]

Ahhh excellent info man!! Thanks so much. Taking that into account, this pump is probably a good size to go for, I'm guessing. A good starting point anyway. woohoo

 

[Philosophelon]

You will only need a very small pump for a few drippers. I try to use 2gph drippers when possible, because they are the least likely to clog, but I use 1gph and 1/2gph drippers too.

Then you just set your timer for how long it takes to get 10% (or whatever number you want) runoff. If you use drippers with lower flow rates you need to run your pump longer, and vice versa.

 

[ScrubNinja]

Thanks Phil, I was just worried if I tried to control the flow with drippers, it might burst from the high flow of the pump, but I can see how it works now, cheers.

Does anyone see any gaping holes in this idea?



The head height on the pump is 1.08 metres which is about 39 inches and I can raise/lower the res as needed to get the flow right I suppose. The blue dots are whatever I roll with for emitters - tubing, maybe mini sprinklers or something, if they don't block, but probably just tubing to keep it simple.

Have I missed anything obvious?

 

[Philosophelon]

Make sure that the pump you purchase will push water up that high. Pumps usually have a little chart on the box that say what the flow rate is at a given height, and sometimes really small pumps can't push water up three feet, or will do so at extremely low pressure.

 

[ScrubNinja]

Nice one, I think I should be good to go with heights now. I forgot to add there is more not in the pic, I'm about to go back and recheck that, I believe it's a valve above the pump to stop flowback, and an inline filter.



Do these things pump from the very bottom/ground level, or part way up?

 

[FreezerBoy]

The little grooves at the bottom by the suckers are the intakes. It won't empty you bone dry but, will drop the level to about 1/4"