Ok here it goes. Gonna do a start to finish grow. I figure Ill put it in this thread since, well its relevant! Here are some pics of the room almost ready to go, been running bleach solution for two weeks, I just got lazy but hey its sterile now. Pics are mostly self explanatory but here it goes. The buckets are from Wally World, $8. Each bucket has a 2 inch double female threaded bulkhead at the bottom on the side. A two inch ABS pipe is threaded inside and out for the overflow drain and drain to main drain manifold. Main drain manifold it under the floor and is 4 inch PVC. I used plastic toilet flanges screwed to the floor to connect my main drain to and the drains from the bucket turn down with a 90 DEG fitting and extend about 3 inches into the drains. The overflow drain pipe inside the bucket goes from the bulkhead to the other side of the bucket and turns up with a 90 DEG , its about 12 inches from the drain to the bottom of the bucket. I did this because the root ball wraps the overflow pipe and holds the plants up quite well.
You can see in the pics the homemade lids cut out of pink polyurethane foam. One is cut to fit the inside of the bucket, the cut is tapered so it fits snug and will not fall in, it acts as a drip ring so no nutes that splash up dont leak out. The second lid is made from the same material only it is 1 1/2 inch thick as opposed to the 3/4 material used for the drip ring. On top of that I use a foam board that is 1/2 inch thick and foil clad for blocking light out and for reflectivity, the hole in this piece is the same size as a net pot that fits a 5 gallon bucket. I use the 6 inch net pots because I start my babies in 4 inch rockwool cubes and they fit snug in them and require just a cup or so of hydroton to fill in the sides. I also believe they leave more room iside the bucket for a humid air gap between the nute level and the drip ring.
Each bucket has 3 sweetwater 1x2 inch 3/16 barb airstones, I have tried them all and these are the most reliable, virtually clog proof. The buckets are aerated with an ALITA AL-80 air pump $259 on ebay at HIDHUT. Each buckets gets 20 litres of air per minute, look at the bubbles!
Main feed pump is at Little giant 1250 GPH submersible from home depot for $100 in the pond section. Pumps through a 1 inch PVC manifold next to each bucket then reduced to a 1/2 inch ball vavle. The ball valves are necessary to equalize the flow otherwise the closest buckets to the pump get more flow. I find a 1/4 turn shut works good. From the valves 1/2 inch black poly tube goes up and through a rubber grommet about 4 inches down from the bucket top. From there a 90 DEG barb fitting goes down with more 1/2 inch poly tube to the bottom of the bucket so the buckets fill from the bottom up. Some may say this is not necesaary but if you dont do this you will never be able to do a full nute change. When the pump is turned off the nutes back siphon and it suck the buckets dry. The downfall to this is if the power goes out you WILL have a flood. So I have a ball valve connected to the pump output so I can shut it off and leave the buckes full. I plan on installing a electric solenoid valve in place of this ball valve that is normally closed, when plugged in the valve will be open and if power goes out it will close preventing floodage.
I use a PACIFIC COAST 1/6th HP aquarium chiller with heater control for my total of 70 gallons of nutes. For the most part it works great but, if it gets really hot it doesnt cut it and I have to duct the AC into its coils to keep temps down, only in the summer. I will be trading it in for a 1/4 horse unit that doulbes the cooling BTU's. I keep my chiller set at 65 DEG but it fluctuates between 64 and 70 depending on the temps in the room. Cheapest prices on the chillers is at Aquarium chillers, chiller, universal marine industries, UMI,pacific coast, aqua medic, red sea aquanetics, Aquatic Technology,Coolworks IceProbe Two 300 watt aquarium heaters keep the temps up when its cold.
All ballast are in seperate room, chiller and res is in a different room.
Lights are as follows
4x 1k HPS in corners and 1x1k MH and one 600 HPS in the middle all in cooltubes. Each of the five light setups have their own 440 CFM vortex blower mounted to the floor and exiting through the cieling. Got the blowers for $159 each on Ebay, beats the hell outa the $300 they want at my local grow shop. The floor is raised 14 inches and has an opening 48 inches wide with furnace filters attaches to keep the dust outa the cooltubes.
I have a 60 pint per day dehumidifier in the room and 1 10k BTU and 1 6k BTU ac unit in the room as well. I would have used one bigger unit but I had these on hand. A dehumidifier is mandatory in a sealed room or the humidity will go way high at lights out, mine will go up to 90+ RH without it and with it it stay aroun 40-45 Grow room temps run around 85-93 DEG lights on and 70-75 DEG lights out. The last 10 days of 12/12 I chill the room down to 55 deg for the ladies that like to purple up! Some of you might not agree with me on the high temps but its working good for me.
I use a plant pro greenhouse controller with a 240 volt power expander for the lights. The room has its own 70 AMP panel.
Co2 comes via a greenair CD-6 propane generator and is set to 1600 PPM
I have two 14 inch oscillating fans mounted high on two sides of the room and they do the job well.
Chicken wire is screwed to the entire cieling for tying up branches , it is necessary!
I use two 18 WATT Jebo uv sterilizers for nutrient sterilization from EBAY for $30 each
Nutes are GH 3 part Flora series and CAL MAG using latewoods mix, works the best, Thanx to Latewood! I used to use Hygrozyme religiously and think its a great product but still occaisionally got a bit of root funk. Changed to the SWEETWATER air diffusers and using SM-90 and PYHTOFF and all those troubles are gone.
For those of you who dont know what PYTHOFF is it will be avialable in december at HYDRORX.COM. The site might not be up yet but will be soon I am told. Pythoff has been used in Australia for years in Hydro veggie farms. It is basically Chlorine but in a different form, MONOCHLORAMINE. It only takes 10-20ml every 3 days to keep my sytem sterile and free of the funk, I got the commercial strenght, the hobby strength takes a little more and cost $25 per litre. I was lucky enough to get 4 litres of commercial strength sent to me from Flairiform, the manufacturer. It does kill every living bacteria in your nutes so for those of you that like the bio goodies growing in there its not for you. Monochloramine is used widely to treat community water supplies as it has a longer half life than chlorine. This stuff is harmless to plants, I have accidentally used it tripple strenght in my areo cloner and it didnt hurt a thing, only effect was perfectly snow white healthy roots.
Stay tuned, new babies going in by next week.
