Alternatives to buying overprice Resis?

Running a drip system, with 2600 watts. I am going to try to use one resi for the 2000 watts, and then a separate resi for the 600 watt with a different strain. These things are surprisingly expensive, do you guys know of cheaper ways to do it? Obviously you don't want the resi to be too tall because you lose height, but I have to imagine there's a cheaper way to do it. I have a friend who just uses Rubbermaids for 600 watt lamps, but I don't think that'd work trying to supply water for 2000 watts of plants. How much water is generally needed for about 24 plants... 40-50 gallons?

good question, but probably have better luck, if a moderator moves it to the hydroponics section ... us dirt-farmers ain't much help with them there modern appliances :jointsmile:

Plenty of soil growers use a reservoir to hold water.

Well to get going on planning your res, you need to say what your medium and the number/volume of pots you are working with is, too.
I don't think that a significant percentage of soil growers use a res, simply because it IS a lot of maintenance keeping pH where it should be etc, and you would be most likely running drip-to-waste anyhow because of the logistics of filtering out soil particles that could clog the pump, and then you also would need a waste one.
Is it done? Yup.
Commonly? Nope!

I grow in soil and use a res.
I have a 33 gallon trash can, with a dual air pump and an aquarium heater for winter.
I use a canoe paddle to mix it well before pumping, and I use a double filter on my pump.

are you running recirc?
are you in a greenhouse?
wil you eat them in a box?
will you eat them with a fox?
:D

Nope. Strictly one way.
And nothing hotter than maxicrop goes in the res. When I use guanos, I mix it in jugs.

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Originally Posted by razzapiggy

Obviously you don't want the resi to be too tall because you lose height, but I have to imagine there's a cheaper way to do it. ... How much water is generally needed for about 24 plants... 40-50 gallons?

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Depends a lot on the size of the plants.

If'n yer gonna drip to waste, there's no particular reason for the res to be under the table- or even in the same room. Floor drain or some other waste catchment would be nice- you could prob just stick it all on pallets w/ panda underneath, stapled up onto pallets to make a tray, and shop-vac up waste every now and again.


Since yer pumping out the top of the feed res to your drippers, it can be anything- trash barrel, cattle trough, what have you. Keep in mind that the height of water column determines the pressure at column base- I'd spend the $ on a good trash barrell. If you go w/ a trash barrell, you'll have to tweak feed times over res pump head, as delivered pressure will vary.

Possibly helpful thoughts (?)
-Organics and spaghetti tubing rarely mix well.
- Stake your drippers and make sure every pot is fed by several drippers.
-Figure out how much water per pot per day you use now, and do the math to figure out feed times before you actually buy stuff. If you want to use calibrated drippers to make the math easy, remember that you'll need a fairly beefy pump to bring them to operational pressure