Supercharged RDWC v1.0

[Billy Liar]

good luck
Peace
BL

 

[BattleAxe]

Hi BA, nice job constructing the system! I PM'd you about the height of your drains, but now that I read through your thread, I see that your water level is correct and the inner bucket is sitting in 2"-3" of water. Ideally, I'd like to see the water level about half way up the side of the outer bucket. That would give the air roots plenty of space in the inner bucket. And instead of 9-10 gal of water, each bucket would hold 6-7 gal, giving you 20-25 X turnover. (each bucket is changed out 20-25 times per hour). Since you've already plumbed the drains and have no leaks (congrats!), I'd leave it alone and go with the Waterfarm inner buckets. I think you need more and bigger holes in the bottom of the inner container. Look at the holes in Heath's bucket:

One important change you should make is to replace the feed bulkheads with a 3/4" barbed elbow mounted as high as you can without interfering with the lid. Feed will shoot out of the elbow and flow down the inside of the bucket. Better feed circulation and plenty of surface agitation, producing more DO where it counts - near the roots. I don't think you will even need a waterfall from the drain hoses. Those drain hoses can enter the res just under the lid (you do need to cover the res). Those drain hoses will be above the water level in the res, so you don't need a bulkhead, just a hole. A dark res won't grow algea, will be less noisy, and will be insulated from the heat of the lights.

If your cheesecloth filters are clogging, just eliminate them. I advise not using any screens as they will eventually get blocked by the mucous-like slime that is actually beneficial bacteria. The bennies also clog airstones BTW. Your water pump should have come with a intake filter, a black cylindrical foam piece about 4" long that you can attach to the pump intake pipe in the res. That should catch most of the larger pieces of plant matter.

For your SCROG, I believe four plants would easily fill the screen. It doesn't seem like it, but you'll be surprised by the rapid lateral growth under the screen. But six plant should work fine. You're almost finished, BA! Hope it wasn't too hard...I can't wait to see those clones in their new home!

Hi Pete,

Thanks for following along. Good call on the inner bucket holes, I'll ream them out a lil more. Not much I can do with the buckets as far as the water level, the inner buckets are resting on the lid and that's as far as they can reach, so the water level is sadly, what it is. I know it's not gonna be the 20 - 25 time turnover rate that we discussed but still hoping for some good results.

I really wish that ICM would host video, it would make it so much easier to explain things but I'll give it a go.

Initially, I cut the lids to fit an inner bucket with both the feed and drain on one side. Then as discussed, I ended up bringing the feed around the back so that I could mount the scrog to the manifold using slip slide tees. With your original design, the inners fit within the hatch portion of the lid. With the new design, I had to center them a bit more for the inner to fit but the hatch still works, I'll post some pics when I get out there today.I still have the original lids that were cut to fit the original design with both feed and drain on one side.

I did also end up incorporating the original filter onto the feed pump, the chiller pump is still rockin the cheesecloth. Only one pump came with the cylindrical foam, the 1200 pump came with a filter but it was a cage style filter, which won't work because I plumbed the hole in the res too low. I ended up ordering another filter online and awaiting it's arrival.

As far as the elbow goes, currently, the feed comes in and splashes right into the sidewall of the inner bucket, then experiences a some splashing and running before ending up in the bucket. I like your idea of the elbow there for more agitation. So I will be picking those up on my next outing.

I initially ordered 8 buckets in case I butchered one and needed a spare. I am considering using one of these spares as the res as Philthy pointed out to me the dangers of using non food grade materials in hydro. It would be in the same location as the res now, I'd just add some holes for the drains as high on the bucket as possible to allow for a water fall effect. Whaddyu think?

Sorry for the novel guys, Pete hit me on PM about some of these things but I figured, I'd tackle them here so that everyone could learn from it.

Thanks for looking in Pete!

 

[BattleAxe]

Where's my chair??? Subbed should be a great watch........

good luck
Peace
BL

Good to have you SH.

Thanks for stopping in BL, you were one of the inspirational sources for this project btw.

 

[BattleAxe]

good stuff!

Thanks for looking in bud.

 

[petemoss]

Maybe this pic will make it clearer:

The double-barbed elbow will shoot a jet of feed solution straight down into the surface of the water. Sort of a powered waterfall churning the water. This, I believe will supply enough DO near the root ball for vigorous growth. No air pumps or airstones should be needed. When I grew with a DWC rig with a huge Alita air pump and airstones, I hated the noise and constant maintenance needed to change airstones that clogged after a few days.

In this proposed setup, the inner container will be filled with hydroton with 2" of red lava rocks at the bottom. As the new clones grow, the inner bucket will be filled with air roots - fuzzy fishboned roots that can supply oxygen. After a few days, the roots will grow down into the bottom bucket. But instead of air roots, water roots will form in the lower bucket. The water roots also supply oxygen to the plant in the form of DO. Below is a pic of water roots and air roots:

 

[BattleAxe]

Maybe this pic will make it clearer:

The double-barbed elbow will shoot a jet of feed solution straight down into the surface of the water. Sort of a powered waterfall churning the water. This, I believe will supply enough DO near the root ball for vigorous growth. No air pumps or airstones should be needed. When I grew with a DWC rig with a huge Alita air pump and airstones, I hated the noise and constant maintenance needed to change airstones that clogged after a few days.

In this proposed setup, the inner container will be filled with hydroton with 2" of red lava rocks at the bottom. As the new clones grow, the inner bucket will be filled with air roots - fuzzy fishboned roots that can supply oxygen. After a few days, the roots will grow down into the bottom bucket. But instead of air roots, water roots will form in the lower bucket. The water roots also supply oxygen to the plant in the form of DO. Below is a pic of water roots and air roots:

Yes, that makes sense now. Thanks.

I'll be picking some of these up on my next outing. I still have a couple days til my clones are full rooted.

 

[il19z8rn4li1]

Maybe this pic will make it clearer:

The double-barbed elbow will shoot a jet of feed solution straight down into the surface of the water. Sort of a powered waterfall churning the water. This, I believe will supply enough DO near the root ball for vigorous growth. No air pumps or airstones should be needed. When I grew with a DWC rig with a huge Alita air pump and airstones, I hated the noise and constant maintenance needed to change airstones that clogged after a few days.

In this proposed setup, the inner container will be filled with hydroton with 2" of red lava rocks at the bottom. As the new clones grow, the inner bucket will be filled with air roots - fuzzy fishboned roots that can supply oxygen. After a few days, the roots will grow down into the bottom bucket. But instead of air roots, water roots will form in the lower bucket. The water roots also supply oxygen to the plant in the form of DO. Below is a pic of water roots and air roots:

Pete,
hello friend.

If you dont mind me asking... How DEEP is the INNER tub...
and also where do you place the plant in the inner tub full of
hydroton or lava rock?

Thanks :-D

 

[petemoss]

Pete,
hello friend.

If you dont mind me asking... How DEEP is the INNER tub...
and also where do you place the plant in the inner tub full of
hydroton or lava rock?

Thanks :-D

Hello D, What I tried to show in my drawing is a water level about half way up the side of the outer bucket. By using two buckets, the plant has two sources of oxygen. In the upper or inner container air roots will grow in a NFT/aero environment. I didn't show it in the drawing, but there will be a top drip fed with a 1/4" line to keep the hydroton moist. Water flowing down through the clay balls will pick up dissolved oxygen from the air spaces around the balls. The air roots are also able to obtain oxygen directly from the air. In the bottom, water roots will grow in a DWC environment with roots completely submerged. Here the water roots get dissolved oxygen from the water. The plant doesn't care where the oxygen comes from, as long as it gets its "minimum daily requirements".

I'm not sure exactly how deep the inner Waterfarm buckets are. For his bottom container, BattleAxe is using a 13 gal rectangular bucket that is almost 19" tall. He drilled drain holes 14" up from the bottom, so I imagine the inner bucket is rather shallow- maybe 7"? Not the ideal proportions I had in mind, but it should work. Wish I could speak from experience, but this is just my theory of the ideal RDWC setup.

I'm just an old fart who grows in a cabinet now. Don't think I'll ever have the room for a DWC grow, so I was delighted to find a willing student in BattleAxe. He's proven to be an excellent student who asks the right questions and is willing to put in the time and effort to build his setup right. BA and I have already discussed many of the basics of this "dream" system, but I'll repeat some of my thoughts about stuff such as "how does the feed circulate properly when fed from the top and drained from the same area?" and "why is a top drain better than a bottom drain?" I hope that will help others follow along with BA's first RDWC grow. Feel free to chime in and share your experiences with RDWC. I'm willing to learn!

 

[BattleAxe]

When PeteMoss speaks, I listen....

When PeteMoss speaks, I listen....

Thanks for the kind words Pete. Many thanks for your continuing support here.

Twas a long day of xmas shopping, picked up a tree, decorated it, hung some more lights watched Polar Express as a fam then once everyone hit the rack, I hit my garden, vaped some SWT and put in some work.



Per PMs instruction, added the swing joint elbows and it did, indeed add some "Mucho agitation"


Drained the res and replaced my filters



Then went to work on replacing the old roughneck res with one of the reserve buckets that I initially ordered. These buckets are FDA approved for food storage.Much more flow after doing away with that cheesecloth.



I had to cut new drain lengths as I had to reposition the res.

Drilled out all the inner buckets and cut out the remaining new lids.



Fire for effect!

Changed out the garden hose for a more FDA friendly hose found at Lowes and added the drip lines by drilling into them, placing a top hat grommet and shoving it down as far as I could into the manifold. You can see in the pic, this adds DO by the bubbles created. These drip lines require no airstones, just the flow of the pump but I had to position them just above the lip of the outer bucket to maintain a waterfall effect. This is perfect because, I can slide the drip line out of the inner bucket and lift the hatch to clear drain or feed roots if needed. On that note, do you think it is necessary to black these out to prevent algae or will it be okay because it is flowing?



did some cleaning and added to my wall of shame. Looks like its time to place some CL adds. Anyone need a GH waterfarm, minus 6 inner buckets?



vaped some more, installed the scrog 12" off the top of the bucket per PeteMoss and Scrogerman and as my youngest would say, "tada!"



I felt like a proud father.

Now that this is good to go, for the time being, it's time to rack out.

 

[petemoss]

Hey BA,
Damn, you work fast! I can see from your pics that everything is coming together nicely and you're almost ready to put the new clones in. Looking at the pics, I now realize why the drains looked so high to me. That's because the inner buckets are sitting way above the lid. Also, I see that you're not using the top hat grommets right; they are meant to go into PVC pipes and not into plastic tubing. For plastic tubing, you should use a different type of grommet and a punch to make a hole. I built a drip manifold using the top hat grommets and this is what it should look like:

First, drill a hole in the PVC pipe that is slightly smaller than the grommet. Then twist and push the grommet into the hole. It's a tight fit and you may need to use some soap or oil to ease the grommet in until the "brim" of the grommet is flush against the pipe. Finally push the end of your 1/4" tubing into the hole in the grommet. Again, the fit should be tight and not easily pulled out. The 1/4" tube shouldn't go in past the grommet as you've done, just to the end of the grommet. Be careful not to push too hard when you are drilling because the PVC is brittle and could easily crack or chip. I used some scotch tape on the surface of the pvc. You could also use a hair drier to soften the pvc so it won't chip. Looking at your grommets, it seems that the hole is larger than the 1/4" tubing, leaving a lot of space around the drip tube. Perhaps you can take a grommet with you to HD or the hydro shop to find a different drip tubing that will go in tight. You may need to use 3/8" tubing to get a tight fit. And while you are there, get some black 3/4" tubing to replace the clear stuff and you won't have to worry about algae.

Looking at your pic of the new feed elbow, it doesn't seem to be shooting out water as forcefully as I imagined it would. Might just be the pic doesn't show it or the tubing inside the 3/4" feed is impeding flow. The elbow should be shooting at least 150-180 gph into the bucket. After you change the 3/4" tubing to black, try to measure the flow to the bucket when the system is full of water. The easiest way is to pull out the sump drain hose and catch the water that comes out in a pail. See how much water you get after 15 seconds and you can estimate the gph flow you are getting to the bucket.

 

[BattleAxe]

Thanks for confirming that Pete. I suspected that I wasn't doing it right by entubating the drip lines but that was the only method that allowed for enough pressure to push the water up to the bucket. I didn't attempt to drill the manifold because of the dangers that you highlighted.
Although the pic may not accurately depict, the fit of the drip line and top hat grommet is good, i had to spit on it to get it in. I'm gonna replace the hose once more and drill out the manifold.

 

[petemoss]

Thanks for confirming that Pete. I suspected that I wasn't doing it right by entubating the drip lines but that was the only method that allowed for enough pressure to push the water up to the bucket. I didn't attempt to drill the manifold because of the dangers that you highlighted.
Although the pic may not accurately depict, the fit of the drip line and top hat grommet is good, i had to spit on it to get it in. I'm gonna replace the hose once more and drill out the manifold.

Hi BA,
I see what happend now. There wasn't enough pressure to push water up the drip line because the moving stream of fluid created a low pressure zone where the drip tube met the 3/4" stream. Your "entubating" forced water into the end of the drip tube. Good fix! Hopefully when you tap into the manifold, the lateral flow won't interfere with flow into the 3/4" feed line. Try not to drill too close to the Tee's where the flow is faster.

Guess the flow from the feed elbow is less than I expected because the elbow is just a few inches from the water surface. When I look at how high the waterfarm buckets sit, I can't help trying to figure how to drop the bucket lower with supports on the lid. Wood strips to frame the top etc. But I guess there's no time now that your clones are almost ready. Something to think about for future grows. They say that it takes several runs to tune in a good SCROG.

Can you get red lava rock? here in the east the HD's won't have any until springtime but maybe you can find some in your area. The lava rock and hydroton should be rinsed until you get clear runoff. Otherwise you'll get a lot of red dust at the bottom of the bucket. Do you have a EC meter? I think a weaker feed 1.2-1.5 would work best. Anything stronger is not needed and may harm the beneficials. Your first grow looked very healthy, so I trust you have a good idea what your strain likes.

 

[BattleAxe]

So prior to reading your reply, I did some more work....Revamped the res as I was getting some minor leaks and having trouble equalizing the draining due to the holes being drilled at different heights in the res. I replaced the hose with new hose and blacked it out with electrical tape. Drilled out the manifold for the drip lines but as you can see, drilled near the tees#doh!

I transplanted my clones into the setup, no nutes, limited light, just trying to get them to root a little more, I'm kinda using the setup as a bubble cloner at the moment. Because the roots are still short, the plants are sitting low in the inners, to take advantage of the DO from the feed elbows. With this positioning, the drip wouldn't do much anyway. Because I drilled to close to the tees, I was unable to get half of the lines to actually drip. I think I may end up just cutting the drips lines and sticking a goof plug on them for now unless anyone else can offer a solution?

I've also been thinking about how to drop the buckets, there are two lips on the inners, currently, the inners rest on the top lip, it wouldn't be much to take a dremel to the top lip but I wonder if it would be worth it as it would only drop it about an inch. I think for the next run, I may end up using a net pot with a taller footprint.



I just placed my order for an ec meter, the truncheon bluelab. I wanna let the clones root some more then will start adding nutes, hopefully by then, my meter will be in.

 

[petemoss]

A little background info. BattleAxe has heard this already, but it bears repeating. A lot of people looked at Hurtback's original design and asked the same question: how does the water circulate properly when it is fed in at the top and drained from the same area? There is a picture in the modular bio SCROG thread in my signature that Hurtback drew.

It shows the path of the feed solution as it shoots out of the elbow at the top of the bucket. Basically the incoming water follows the sides and bottom of the bucket. It seems the feed water will not get through the solid mass of roots, but it does. The water flows around the root mass along the sides of the bucket. Hurtback injected blue dye to verify that the incoming water would circulate, so he knew the original design would work. Some of us tried to improve the flow by adding a tube from the feed elbow to the bottom of the bucket, but we found it made no difference. If you wish, you can take the feed tube out of the drain and locate the elbow on the side of the bucket opposite the drain. I believe that is what BigToke did. It is the pressure of the water shooting out of the elbow that forces the new feed to go down the side and away from the drain.

Why is a top drain better than a bottom drain? In a top draining setup, the water level is determined by the height of the drain. The water level should be set so that the bottom two inches of the inner bucket is submerged. That makes the inner bucket a bio-bucket. Since we have lava rocks at the bottom and we move water through the rocks, beneficial bacteria will grow in the rocks. Another advantage of a top drain is that roots will not grow down the drain once the roots have grown out. Early in the grow, short roots will tend to float on top of the water and get sucked into the drain. Those roots can be pulled out of the drain by opening the "inspection hatch". After the first week, the roots are longer and will stay down in the water. So roots down the drain are a temporary problem only in the first week or so. When you have a bottom drain, there is no way to keep roots from getting sucked down the drain. Screens will get clogged with roots and by the beneficial bacteria. When the drain is blocked, the bucket could overflow. Having two bottom drains will delay the overflow, but eventually you have to find a way to clear the drains.

 

[BattleAxe]

Excellent info here. It was drawings like this one that helped me wrap my head around the concepts of RDWC. Very informative as always.

 

[petemoss]

So prior to reading your reply, I did some more work....Revamped the res as I was getting some minor leaks and having trouble equalizing the draining due to the holes being drilled at different heights in the res. I replaced the hose with new hose and blacked it out with electrical tape. Drilled out the manifold for the drip lines but as you can see, drilled near the tees#doh!

I transplanted my clones into the setup, no nutes, limited light, just trying to get them to root a little more, I'm kinda using the setup as a bubble cloner at the moment. Because the roots are still short, the plants are sitting low in the inners, to take advantage of the DO from the feed elbows. With this positioning, the drip wouldn't do much anyway. Because I drilled to close to the tees, I was unable to get half of the lines to actually drip. I think I may end up just cutting the drips lines and sticking a goof plug on them for now unless anyone else can offer a solution?

I've also been thinking about how to drop the buckets, there are two lips on the inners, currently, the inners rest on the top lip, it wouldn't be much to take a dremel to the top lip but I wonder if it would be worth it as it would only drop it about an inch. I think for the next run, I may end up using a net pot with a taller footprint.

...
I just placed my order for an ec meter, the truncheon bluelab. I wanna let the clones root some more then will start adding nutes, hopefully by then, my meter will be in.

Rats! I was afraid those drip lines wouldn't work. My bad! Should have thought it through more before you went through all that work.
But this may work: drill a hole in the feed elbow and glue a short drip line in the hole. The hole should be drilled so that water is pushed into the end of the drip tube. Picture the path of flow thru the elbow and put the end of the tube where water will go right into the open end (not across the opening but straight into the tube).

You could easily drop the inner waterfarm bucket by about four inches by drilling holes just under the very top lip and inserting some rods through the holes. Two rods could go through the holes and extend across the whole lid (parallel to the hinge on the lid). Then you could redrill the drains lower and tape up the old holes.

EDIT: On second thought, 1/4" drip line is still too small. 3/8" tubing should be just right.

 

[petemoss]

Yipes, BA, don't do that! The rockwool cube shouldn't be sitting in the water. That will drown the clone or give it stem rot. When you first put a clone into the pot, set it high in the pot and leave the top of the cube exposed. Fill the pot with hydroton first and set your rockwool cube on top. For the next week or so, handwater around the cube to keep the hydroton moist but don't get the cube soaked. You can water with full strength nutes (up to 1.5 EC) and give the clone plenty of light. After a week or so, the roots should reach the water at the bottom of the inner pot and you can stop hand watering.

These clones are in oasis cubes buried in silica stones but the idea is the same as hydroton. Fill the pot and bury the cube, leaving the top exposed and dry.

 

[Scrogerman]

Nice build BA, props to PM for helping ya through it & working out the kinks. not sure about giving younglings such a high EC though? i start my clones off on EC 0.4-0.7 depending on how big they are. G'Luck

 

[zeropercentthc]

How is the reservoir changed without a bottom drain?

 

[BattleAxe]

Thanks for catching the RW Pete. I thought the drip feed would provide enough aeration with the flooding and draining of the RW cube but didn't think of stem rot. They seemed to have liked their shower. I built them a little mound and diverted the feeds that were working.



I have been doing a lot of reading about offgasing and plasticisers leaching into nutes from PVC and have really been thinking of just using the current manifold as a skeleton for some PEX tubing. I'd replace the fittings and then incorporate your drip design into the new fittings. Just trying to source all parts before I commit. I need to drain this thing and scrub out all the buckets, before I start trying to read EC as I've got a bunch of debris floating around from all the construction and mods. For now, it's just water ph'd to 5.4 until they grow more roots.

I do like your idea on dropping the buckets though, I saw some plastic bamboo sticks, if that makes sense, that I think would work for this application.

Nice build BA, props to PM for helping ya through it & working out the kinks. not sure about giving younglings such a high EC though? i start my clones off on EC 0.4-0.7 depending on how big they are. G'Luck

Cheers mate for stopping by and chiming in. I couldn't have done it without PM.

How is the reservoir changed without a bottom drain?

post# 34

Full day of work ahead of me tomorrow finding parts, trimming lids and shaving lips. Will update as I continue to mod. Rest now, I'm beat.