RacerX's recirculating 16 bucket dwc "Grow Log"

[MisterE]

I read Blazeonups entire thread as well a week or two ago and it rocks. I am curious why someone doesnt mold in a 1/4" nipple in the middle of what would otherwise just be a 1/2" connector.. certainly be no leaks then

From what I understand, thats the only real vulnerable spot.

[Racerx]

I read Blazeonups entire thread as well a week or two ago and it rocks. I am curious why someone doesnt mold in a 1/4" nipple in the middle of what would otherwise just be a 1/2" connector.. certainly be no leaks then

From what I understand, thats the only real vulnerable spot.

System is leak proof for us as it has been for Blaze. 70 7/8" hose clamps cost about $50...sucks ballz, but for a guaranteed no leaking its nice security. The room is coming along nicely, finishing touches going in over the next few days.

Definitely the biggest news for us is that we decided to keep our house for an extra 2 months after we move which enables us to veg as much as we could possibly need and do a full 10 weeks of flowering instead of 8. Huge news and I am very confident in our 1.5+ pounds per light. Roots are just busting out like crazy. New camera comes end of this week. Unfortunetly not much pics until then. I am finishing up the growroom build tonight or tomorrow with step by step directions and pictures. I forgot how much I miss walking into a room with 4 huge lights. The 750 digitals are...well they are magnificent. I need to wear sunglasses just to walk into the room and atleast with the eye test...they are far more powerful then the normal 1000 watts our friends use. The hoods we are using are great for about a 4'x4' spread, keeping the light about 12-14" from the canopy. They are 3 weeks into veg...going for about another 4 weeks of veg. If we can get 2 pounds per light Ill be fully satisfied.

I wanted to mention that the new Can Fan Maxx 10" fan is absolutely ridiculous. Over 1100cfm and except for the sound of the air...its dead silent. Noticebly quieter then our 6"...thats running on a speed controller!!! Its so powerful that if you set it on the ground it will move across the floor and gain a seriously amount of speed. Its setup like a turbine engine, much smaller then the normal inline fan. Pics soon.

For hanging out lights, we use 10" eyelet bolts that are drilled through the ceiling and into a piece of plywood that goes between ceiling joists. The end result is earthquake proof and gives a good place for the ballasts to sit in the attic. The 10" fan sits in the attic, while the 6" fan for aircooling the lights sits inside the room. Its an interesting configuration we were turned onto by a friend. 4 lights, a U of 6" ducting between all the lights...with the fan between both rows in the middle of the U. I am plain amazed at how well a single 6" fan works at aircooling 4 hoods. The fan pulls cold air from our window box and exhausts it into our attic. The 10" room exhaust only runs 10 minutes every hour.

EDIT. We also changed out electrical box to a CAP Controller MLC-8. This box takes a single 40 amp 240v connection and turns it into 8 240 connections for 8 1000watt+ lights. However...there is a nice twist. Instead of having one 120v trigger cord to turn the lights on an off, there are 2 which each control 4 lights. This enables us to use one box with 2 different light schedules for 2 different rooms. Saves time, money, and is far safer.

[Racerx]

Fantabulous!! I am looking at that same tutorial as well. Any headaches with leaks? Did you change much from the original design?
Adieu

Forget to address your question Bluebear. Not much was changed except the following. We decided to not run a second gravity feeding reservoir. A single 40 gallon reservoir is plenty and it forces us to change water more often. We got an absolutely insane deal on all of our equipment because of a friend so we have tons of nutrients, etc so changing is not an issue. The obvious design change is 16 buckets rather then 12...but its still 4 rows (just with an extra bucket on each row). We use a nice 350GPH water pump instead of Blaezeonup's 250 or 275gph pump. We use Airstones instead of air diffusers because they seem to produce smaller and more bubbles. We use a 35 watt air pump that is T-ed into 17 connections (one for the reservoir). It is plenty and one 35 watt produces more air then two 24 watts pumps.

Aside from that, we used regular 5 gallon bucket tops and then cut holes to fit the netpots into them and epoxied them. They are a bitch and a half to get off (practically require a screwdriver although snipping one part helps them get on and off) and are something we are going to change next grow.

[BlueBear]

Hey Racerx, couple more questions, where did you get your 750's and the cost, what kind of hoods and last, with the fan that is cooling the hoods bringing in outside air if I understood right, do you get any moisture touching the bulbs during rain storms?
Thanks for all of your answers.
Adieu

[MisterE]

If your ballasts are up above the joists and under the roof of the house and you get snow and ice on the roof, will you have a big melted dry spot up there? hahaha

[Racerx]

If your ballasts are up above the joists and under the roof of the house and you get snow and ice on the roof, will you have a big melted dry spot up there? hahaha

They are digital ballasts. They are cooler then a normal ballast. In the day they get a little hot still, but as soon as evening arrives you can sit your tushy on em.

Hey Racerx, couple more questions, where did you get your 750's and the cost, what kind of hoods and last, with the fan that is cooling the hoods bringing in outside air if I understood right, do you get any moisture touching the bulbs during rain storms?
Thanks for all of your answers.
Adieu

We got them locally from a very kind friend. The hoods are Cool Reflector 6". They are fairly large, about 20"x24", with a very nice reflector and a lot of cooling. They provide the 4'x4' light spread we are using in our room. I dont feel comfortable naming a price but they were cheap enough for us to afford em (and spending $5000+ on this room means every penny counts). As far as moisture, air is not being directly drawn from the outside, however we have some screens for whatever they will do. Its something to think about but there are a few twists in the line and a few screens implemented.

[MisterE]

Yeah cool, I have a digital also. It kicks ass.. I dont know why (other than cash) anyone would buy an old standard ballast anymore really. Digitals fire MH or HPS, run cool, run silent, have smoother power delivery, dont degrade every day, and maximize the output of the bulb. I'm keeping to very small personal grow, so all I needed was a 400watt.

I've had a thermometer placed right up next to my ballast (sits on a high shelf) and it's only 74 degrees or so.

[BlueBear]

Thanks for the answers RX, keep us posted.
Adieu

[Racerx]

Here are some pictures of the room from a bit ago. And some old pics of the plants. This is nearing transplantation. The ducting and fan is not hooked up in the pictures. No brand new pics yet.

[Racerx]

Ok so I have some changes from the original list of equipment. Here they are.

-One single 40 gallon reservoir, no gravity fed reservoir (we decided that we'd rather change out the entire nutrient solution once in awhile instead of always topping it off)
-Cool Reflector 6" hoods instead of the XL 8" hoods (we found that these cool better and the 8" ducts lose to much light out the ends and only a 6" fan is required to cool all 4 750 digital lights)
-8 socket CAP MLC-8A electrical box (Has 2 trigger cords so that 4 lamps are controlled by one trigger and the other 4 by the other trigger - 2 rooms one box). This is used instead of our homemade single trigger 6 outlet 240 box
-350gph water pump is enough, 500gph is not needed
-Only one single 10" Can Fan Maxx fan (not 2) needed for the room
-6" Can Fan for cooling the sealed lights instead of another 10" (10" was way overkill)
-Only one 35 watt airpump is more then enough for the entire 16 buckets, 85 watt not required and too loud)
-32 straight 1/4" barbs instead of 24
-100 feet of 1/2" OD for feed line
-120 feet 3/4" OD (not ID) return line
-100 feet of 1/4" OD (not ID) airhose
-50 feet of 1/4" OD (not ID) black hose for feed line
-120 7/8" hose clamps instead of 70 (This is a big deal, because hose clamps cost $0.80 each. Thats $100 in hose clamps)

Those are the big changes. We were able to reduce costs by over $500 by using the different hoods and getting rid of one of the Can Fan 10" Maxx fans (expensive). The new CAP MLC-8 240 box also allows us to use a single box for 2 of our grow rooms, saving space and increasing safety and control.

Its been difficult to get everything to be on the same plane, as everything must be exactly the same elevation or the buckets will have different water levels and not drain correctly. We had some nutrient burn from a little to much VitaBoost (wanted to experiment) but they are recovering just fine. More pictures soon.