Airpumpless Sluckets

[Northern_Loki]

Thank for the description. It sounds as thought you have a decent amount of aeration running already. For a very impressive system. From my personal perspective I’d opt to measure the DO, possibly borrowing a DO probe, of your current system as a baseline prior to adding additional equipment. But that’s just me (and sometimes I think backwards). Good DO probes are pricey so if you can find one to borrow first for a short period, that would be my recommendation.

Keep on eye out here, too. Larry has been helping to formulate a test to produce some measured results for what is going on in this thread. This include a comparison of fluming/flooming to forced needle wheel aeration as a first iteration. Some of the results may spur additional tests. It’s possible this may be expanded into additional aeration techniques at some point as well.

If you have some thoughts as to additional aeration type tests, please let me know. I probably won’t get to obtain an O2 generator to test in the near term since I’m, unfortunately, nearly my current budget. But sometime in the future, it’s possible.

[Ttystikk]

Not sure if I’ve mentioned it here, but I did a quick and simple upgrade to the waterfalls in my RDWC tubsites and now I just don’t need any other aeration. I circulate the water with a pump in my control bucket. My chiller broke so I’m not using one at all. In the summer. Works great!

[Northern_Loki]

Pretty cool, man. I might try to gin up a test around this. I have some tests running currently so perhaps on a second pass.

[Northern_Loki]

Made progress overall on the build-out:

1. Buckets are in a tent, lights installed, instrumentation wired-up and running.
2. Glycol chiller built, installed, tested.
3. Controller software written and is in a first pass state. Software is capable of logging all of the sensors and controlling the light intensities and spectra. If things don’t work out, I can set-up a disco.
4. Test runs of the system for the past month or so while progressively writing software.
5. Dissolved oxygen tests have shown some interesting results. @anon32470837 has been helping to sift through some of the data, we’ve been going back and forth tuning with the results are forthcoming.

Some representative plots from the system during test:

Environmental (Red is in the tent, green is outside of the tent):

Solution:

Lights (1 of 4):

Things on the short term agenda:

1. Need more power. I can’t run the lights full-bore on a 15-Amp circuit. Need to wire in something more substantial for safety.
2. There are four primary LED lamps with exhaust ports. They are wired two to a series. The temperatures at the LED plate will easily exceed 140F for anything over about 1/2 intensity at the second LED lamp in the series (140F is my limit). Also, even though the heat from the lamps are being exhausted (sealed room), the radiant energy brings up the ambient temperature to about +10F over the exterior room temperature at 50% power. I need to interconnect an icebox to the lamp and chiller to ensure temperatures stay under control when it’s hot out. Or, something along those lines.
3. Document the glycol chiller set-up and performance, per request.

edit: item 3 completed, here:

RDWC Glycol Chiller Experiment

What is a glycol chiller? This term generally refers to a chiller that consists of a reservoir of cooled liquid. Typically, the liquid consists of a mixture of propylene glycol and water. The cooled reservoir solution is then pumped through a heat exchanger (cooling loop) to chill a target solution or the surrounding atmosphere (air conditioning). In many applications, the chilled reservoir is cooled to a temperature that is much less than that of the desired target temperature. A control sys…

[anon32470837]

@Northern_Loki

If things don’t work out, I can set-up a disco.

hehehe

Looking forward to the start of the grow and seeing how all that data plots out. I love graphs!!

If you’re running close to 18kW of LED’s, no wonder your room heats up

That may be a tough challenge to handle without adding AC to the room - especially in the summer.

I cant run my puny 320 watt led in the summer at much over 60 watts without driving tent temps up into the 80’s. No growing for me until this fall after it cools off. About all I can do is practice starting clones

Good luck!

P.S. without pics, it didnt happen

P.P.S - Im jealous of your setup!

[Northern_Loki]

Haha. Thanks. No, not 18kW. I wish.

Total for the primary lamps are at ~2.4kW at the LED plates (all-on full spectrum). But, I don’t plan on running them full bore, either. Just for testing. Circuit is 15 Amps, need to upgrade that.

I’m going to add a loop onto the gycol chiller for cooling the environment and see how that performs…

@anon32470837

without pics, it didnt happen

Forthcoming. Do you want a pic of something specific?

@anon32470837

Im jealous of your setup

Similar to what you are up to, lots of diy

[Northern_Loki]

Oh, and this is the second time I’ve seen the effect of local lightning on the readings. The sensors are isolated, so it has an interesting temporary effect on the solution charge balance?

Notice the two spikes from the PH probe:

Could just be noise coupled in somewhere but I only see this occurring on the sensors that measure voltage potentials. And, the ORP shows a disturbance that doesn’t look like noise:

Interesting.

[anon32470837]

I am a picture junky, so everything!

An isolated power system is ‘supposed’ to stop those types of spikes, but lightening is strange stuff. How close were the strikes? You may be picking up EM pulses in any loops? Thats just a wild guess.

Very interesting info though.

[Northern_Loki]

Yep, that is a good point. Those probes would be quite sensitive to any type of voltage differential. I would think that the voltage gradient to be essentially nil at the scale of the cabling. The lightning was not obviously close but there was an electrical storm moving through the area.
BUT,
from my understanding, PH probes register ~60mV change for each PH unit. Here, we see a spike of around 0.1PH which would then equate to ~6mV. ~10mV on the ORP.

So, yea, that’s a very small voltage differential and the math to calculate the voltage gradient is cumbersome so I’m not going to do it. You are very likely correct. There is shielding on the cables by the shield ground may not be sufficient. Thanks for the thoughts on this.

[Northern_Loki]

I’ve been on pause for the DO experiments. I’ve cross posted some DO readings that I took last year into Slain’s thread, here:

Hybrid venturi/vortex aeration system for RDWC

For reference, here are a couple of plots from some tests I did last year on DO (no plants) under different operating conditions: [image] [image] For these, there were four modes of operation: pump speed set to low with the venturi off. pump speed set to high with the venturi off. pump speed set to high with the venturi injecting air. pump speed set to low with the venturi injecting air. The initial “high” DO is from the municipal source supply, which, as can be seen, eventually out-gases.…

Still “in-progress” otherwise, FWIW.

[anon32470837]

I have been meaning to ask you how this was going and if you had any plants in the system yet. Im really curious to follow a grow that has this level of data gathering and monitoring. Let us know when you get it growing

[zimbogro]

I read this thread from the beginning, and I must first say , what a dedicated and enlightening bunch of guys you all are.
As a two year old newbee, I jumped in the deep end, I must admit. Being in Africa, I dont have the luxury of buying things online, as and when needed. I researched for over a year, chose the grow style that I though fitted my situation, looked at all aspects of what I would need and ordered EVERYTHING, one time and had it shipped to me, One top up order was needed 6 months later, lol.

So here I am with 3 grows under my belt, 4th in Veg. I have 2 x( 8 bucket13Gal systems) ALL CCH2O Systems in a 10x10x11 tent. Epicenters outside the tent along with 13 Gal top up Res and chiller for each system. 4 spectrum King 600W Leds.
I have learned plenty and I have decided to chill and slow things down.

I have 4 plants in a 35Gal tub in a 8x8 with one 600w led in the centre and 2 x 140w Leds on the sides as side lighting. I built my first SCROG trellis with PVC pipes and fishing line ( I may bolster with 3mm nylon rope) later.
ANYWAY< my reason for joining !!!

This experiment is precisely about DO and ORP !

My theory was about determining the exact amount of 35% H2O2 to keep bacteria down and Oxygenation levels Up.
I got an ORP meter and found out that it is not affected by h2o2 unless deadly quantities was added.
My RO water at 0ppm and 6Ph measured 270mV after lots of h202, it only got as high as 325mV. Intersting note (the drinking water I have delivered to my house measured ORP of 340mV, lol).
So I am currently looking at Calcium HOCL (locally available) and, possibly an O2 generator…to be continued.

On the DO side, though I have an air pump and 12Inch circular micropore diffuser, I was thinking of having a pump take water out from one side of the tub and reintroducing the water back on the top of either the other end of the Tub or in the centre. This is with intention of not using a chiller. The purpose is that I have always suspected the CCH2O system is flawed, my eventual goal is to not take anything out of the 8 bucket RDWC systems but merely add a second pump that will take water from Epicenter and distribute to each bucket as top feed for waterfall effect to supplement air diffusers, and hopefully take them out all together.

Has anything I said, made any sense???

Cheers

[Northern_Loki]

@zimbogro

what a dedicated and enlightening bunch of guys you all are.

LOL, some may say nutty

@zimbogro

looked at all aspects of what I would need and ordered EVERYTHING

That is awesome and the right way to do it.

Has anything I said, made any sense???

I think I understand what you are doing.

1. oxidizing chemistry to control bacteria while, potentially, encouraging aerobic bacteria over anaerobic bacteria.
2. without use of a chiller, per se.

I guess a lot of this comes down to what temperature the solution sits at. And, whether it is somewhat stable. A factor, towards the health of a plant, has to do with the DO within the solution. It is a somewhat hidden factor that is difficult to measure and as temperatures increase, the less DO is available.
H2O2 will have the positive effect of supplying additional oxygen but at elevated temperatures, the oxidation rate due to the H2O2 will increase along with an increased rate out-gassing of the O2.
For ORP, you are measuring the oxidation potential of a solution but it won’t give you a precise O2 indication. Different chemistry will have different oxidizing potential. For instance, your drinking water appears to have some oxidizing chemistry. Possibly chlorine. ORPs potential is good for looking at trends indicating that something is changing in the system (such as an infection) and determining a general range that works for your healthy plants.

I like what you are doing. Being able to run a system without having a chiller would be of great benefit. Obviously with multiple grows you are seeing success. Out of curiosity, would you have a general figure of the min/max temperatures of the solution that you are seeing?

Would like to learn more about what you’ve discovered, do you have a grow log I can read?

[Northern_Loki]

@anon32470837

if you had any plants in the system yet

In this system, no. I’m easily distracted, squirrel.

Preview of things I’ve been working on (which this system is serving as the base), related to:

Source code: Project Mayhem C++ Source Index

/* Placeholder for OP additional categories */ Front-End Architectural diagram for the front-end control / user interface / API [image] Description: Interface to the core controller is abstracted through several microservice interfaces. Each microservice is contained as a Docker image which can be served from the same device as the core controller. One or more of the microservices can be provided by any other device of any architecture that is able to execute a Docker container and access t…

Front-end data graphs:

[zimbogro]

haha, I think nutty is implied.

With chiller I get temps down to 68F. I did not get the kind of root mass that I have seen other growers accomplish. Most get full 13Gal buckets of roots. Mine just, are not anything like that though, due to long veg periods the plants were huge but not the roots. In addition to high RH (70rh) in last 3 weeks of previous grow, my buds were very fluffy. I thought to get over the problems up top, I must focus on roots below. Luckily I had no mold or fungus as I used Purecrop1 (awesome product).

Right now with no chiller, water temp is 75F and tent temp is 79F.

What do you think of (dont know the right ratio) using HTH pool schock aka Calcium HOCL for a couple of hours before Res change (or right after res change) sterilise for until the next res change or a little dose long before nute top up?

[beacher]

I love the name ‘slucket’, and think of this when I read it lol

[Northern_Loki]

@zimbogro

What do you think of (dont know the right ratio) using HTH pool schock aka Calcium HOCL

@anon32470837 may have some thoughts. I think he was using some pool shock successfully for algae.

Personally, I’d rather avoid overly oxidizing chemistry (as I add H2O2). But, that’s also unrealistic. So, really, I don’t have a very good opinion either way. I don’t understand the potential negative effects and concentrations well enough.

@zimbogro

With chiller I get temps down to 68F.

That’s considered within the safe range to control the bad stuff while being “warm” enough to not overly slow growth.

So, do you think it’s the temperature that is slowing the root growth? You can also encourage root growth by tweaking the nutrients. E.g. lower nitrogen, increase phosphorous / potassium. Also, there’s the DO that is great for the roots. Something else may be unbalanced as a contributing factor along with the temperature. Just guessing. Your current temperatures seem reasonable, your chiller temperature also seemed reasonable, and you’ve clearly been thinking alot on this.

Fluffy, in some cases, is commonly attributed to too high of a temperature in the environment. Lights too close (high leaf temp) ,etc. Or, conversely, too little light. Transpiration / humidity problems (as noted), lack of ventilation / circulation.

I’d suggest opening up a topic on your grows, you’ll get some better ideas/feedback (as a thread topic) for your specific scenario from the OG folk.

[anon32470837]

@Northern_Loki

@Larry3215 may have some thoughts. I think he was using some pool shock successfully for algae.

@Northern_Loki

I’d suggest opening up a topic on your grows, you’ll get some better ideas/feedback (as a thread topic) for your specific scenario from the OG folk.

Yeah, start a thread on your grow, then tag me and @Northern_Loki, and we can discuss it. I can get long winded and dont want to side track this thread too much

[zimbogro]

@Northern_Loki

Would like to learn more about what you’ve discovered, do you have a grow log I can read?

My journals are hand written and evolved overtime, I think I have a good spreadsheet that I road tested during the last grow

[Posiflow]

@Northern_Loki Would love to here more on your findings, could you reach out to me off this post. jcarmody@slucket.com