No problem. Here’s one disassembled / assembled…
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I see, thanks for the pictures! I shouldn’t have gotten the ones that were bonded together. Oh well, I still have a use for them in the outdoor garden.
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No Fly Root Pouches
I have the world’s most aggressive fungus gnats that love to explode every grow, so last run I experimented with mesh netting, and it was by far the best means of control I’ve encountered.
So now that I’m using fabric pots, I decided to stitch the netting directly to the pot. You can get a ton of mesh for silk screen printing off of ebay on the cheap. That’s what I used. I got a little fancy with the drawstring, but given the somewhat disposable nature of fabric pots, I might just skip it on the rest and use clips.
2 gallon root pouches fit perfectly into the 2 gallon inner bucket of the active aqua system. The liners keep the bottom of the pots above the drain zone, so I think all I’m going to do is drop a think layer of chunky perlite in the bottom of the root pouch for drainage and set the float switch level just above the bottom of the fabric pot.
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Got the parts I needed in the mail today to replace the drippers (2nd to last picture). Things are running about how I want them, so I think I can transplant tomorrow. I did a quick test of the drip rate and it’s about 220mL in 5 minutes, which comes out to about 3/4 gal per hour for 2 stakes (per pot). That’s using the small 250gpm aquarium pumps, and it would probably increase a little using a pump with a little more head pressure… but maybe not by much.
So all that’s left is for me to set the flood levels, transplant and mix a reservoir which I’ll do tomorrow.
For media, I’ll be using Royal Gold Tupur, with probably about a 1" layer of rinsed chunky perlite on the bottom. I picked up a bag of the mother earth #3, so it’s not the biggest, but it’s substantially bigger than hardware store stuff. I’d think hydroton would also work, and even just coco/perlite might be fine, but I don’t want the bottom layer to be too soggy the first time. I’ll set the fill height right about to the top of the perlite layer, maybe a tad less but not more.
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Now for the tricky part… these are the float switches. After running some tests I noticed that the difference between the refill level and stop level is too much… there will be too much water sitting in the bottom because it needs to suck up several inches before it switches on again.
You see that the switches are offset. The pump doesn’t turn on until the power switch bottoms out, and it doesn’t turn off until the upper switch tops out.
I guess they do this for a bit of safety and redundancy. I think every switch on the unit is redundant because flooding is bad.
Ideally, I’d bring the levels closer together so there isn’t as much difference between them. However the easiest solution is to ‘freeze’ the lower switch from floating so it is always ‘on’ and let the upper switch do all of the control. That reduces the distance between the on and off positions just to the length of the one switch.
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Swing and a miss!
Turns out both switches need to be coordinated together. Both up turns the pump off, both down turns the pump on. Anything mismatch is an off state.
Here’s my ten cent ten second fabrication. I took some calipers and measured the ID of the hole to 0.375", and found perfect pen cap (rollerball onyx pen). I then cut it down the middle so I could slide it over the wire and into the slot. Then it clamps nicely onto the float switch. This pushes the upper switch down by about an inch, and makes the hysteresis loop much more responsive and narrower.
I’ll probably zip tie it for good measure, but I think we’re ready to rock.
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Ok this is seemingly a perfect mod. The drippers only need to run for maybe 2 minutes without media before they can switch off the system. Add in some media, and once you start getting runoff for about 2 minutes, it’ll shutoff.
I am imagining using a slightly lower EC solution… I might also ‘prefill’ most of the lower solution with plain water, so that the solution gradient is high to low from top to bottom. In theory this should help with reducing the possiblity of the wicking solution causing burning over time.
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@lefthandseeds where did you get the float switches?
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Those float switches came with the active aqua control unit. I have seen similar ones on ebay though, and the cheapest setup would be to use one to drive a relay to turn a pump on or off.
Basically you could run 5 or 12V through a float switch to switch something like this (see the green inputs on the side):
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A licensed grow facility I managed and completely overhauled had that same DWC controller/bucket setup….it worked OK…the person who set it up didn’t know what he was doing and had the system manifold all messed up…one half would fill completely and the back half not so much! It needed water pumping into the buckets from both sides…
Your system is much smaller so this won’t be a issue!
Can’t wait to see your system fully operational and full of beautiful plants!!
You seem to have a pretty good understanding of what’s going on and how to setup properly…but if you have any questions or concerns let a brotha know. 
A possible issue you might run into would be the coco getting water logged through capillary action as it keeps pulling water up…
Happy growing my friend
Alaskagrown
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Hey yea thanks! I’ve been using it as a standard flood and train system with hydroton for a while. It’s not bad – I’d recommend it for a home grow. There’s no way I’d consider it for a commercial grow though. That seems like a big headache…
I just prefer a top feeding system, and with this mod, it’ll be plant-led drip feeds without using moisture sensors in the pots. It’ll do 100 feeds per day if it needs to, or zero. Whatever the plants demand, they get without me even checking the system.
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If I remember correctly I re-setup the system for 1 hr cycles…
15 ON, 45 OFF lights on(was a larger system so took longer to flood)
Maybe 4 watering lights off
I’ve never been a fan of the mechanics rotary style timer’s!
Digital with battery backup is the only timers I will ever use these days! If the power goes out you don’t have to go through and reset timer’s…and I can set them up on a much more detailed timer settings!
Alaskagrown
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In this modified setup, timer almost doesn’t even matter. Here’s how I have it set. It’s just on all day. There is no timing, because the plants do that job automatically!
I’m running the initial drip now. Once the media saturates, the runoff will occur and then it’ll automatically shut off until the plants drink enough nutrients to wick up solution from the bottom and trigger another drip cycle. Hands off from here. Hope it goes well.
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I did a base water change today. Basically, I unplug the fill pump from the control bucket, run the drain pump and catch in a 5 gallon bucket. Measuring the base water, the system retains about 2.5gal in the bottom for the hempy part. Then I refill most of the way with plain water, and let the drip system fill the rest of the way.
The drain water measured 0.8EC, so it probably could go 2 weeks. It’s super easy to do the change though, so I’m not sure it’s worth it. The pH measured 6.7 when I was feeding at 5.9. I measured it at 6.5 today after I lowered in feeds to 5.7.
I’m trying a custom zero NH4 formula, so there’s no mechanism to prevent pH rise. I think I lower pH input is better for this reason.
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So far things are going pretty good. 
One thing I learned today is to make sure the res doesn’t go dry. I’ve had a busy week and at some point the level got too low to pump. So that means my pump was running all day at least.
I should probably be a little more careful so I don’t burn it out.
Second thing is that it seems like weekly base water change is a good rate. 2 weeks isn’t terrible, but it seemed like they enjoyed a bit more flush from doing it after one week. Fortunately it only takes like 5 minutes.
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Hempy buckets rock, I’ve also used them outdoors with well drained dirt, I just fill the bottom to just above the hole with gravel…self watering pot🤷♂️.
This is also kinda reminiscent of Dutch Buckets, I’ve not used them myself but the best setup of them I have seen used clay balls and was periodically top fed via a dripper ring, when the nutrient level reaches the level of the outlet; like the hole in a hempy, it starts a syphon and empties the buckets back into the Rez, works a bit like a soxhlet circulating syphon if you have seen them in action.
Tbh the issue of media, both constantly acquiring it and or cleaning or disposal is the main reason I went to dwc. Though I definitely hear you on the water/nutrient/PH issues; they are the Archillies heal of all of the water based systems…One of these days I would like to see if I can get dwc and aquaponics to play ball…. To me that’s the ultimate hydro solution.
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The Dutch buckets are pretty cool. I like that system.
This is kind of like an active hempy bucket I converted from an ebb and flow. It uses the float switch to monitor when the nutrients get wicked up from the bottom and then triggers the pump to feed again from the top.
I really like it so far. It’s very low maintenance and the plants decide when they want to get fed.
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How did these turn out? Automating SIPs of some type seems like the cheapest way to good yields. I was wondering if you met expectations for yields and if the Tupur changed the flavor for you?
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I meant to update here but have been getting piled on by life. There’s some pictures in my other BaOx thread, but it all went really well.
One thing I found is that I should probably bring down the EC to help increase flushing a bit. Salt buildup was the main challenge, but with the plants I had it was still not bad. Something like 1.4 ec would probably be the right level. I was up maybe at 1.7-8 because that’s what I was used to for hydro.
It also worked really well at the end. If they had be overwatered, I think I would have seen some botrytis on those dense buds. No botrytis on any plants.
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