Well, seriously getting tired of trying to guess the status of the water in my plants, and looking into this system:
Looks easy enough and the reviews are amazing.
Any feedback would be excellent, thanks!
My fav grow room addition by far.
Ive had my current set in my notil bed for close to two yrs without issue (touch wood)
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I used them for the first time in my greenhouse this year and like @Craigson15 has already said, itās a game changer. The consumption rates in the greenhouse can vary big time and a timer will either add water when itās not necessary, or not water enough when it hits 40C in there. It enabled me to go away in the summer and not give it a second thought. The health of the soil, organisms in the soil, and other critters that helped hunt pests, also did FAR better than the previous year.
As you will repeatedly hear, you have to fiddle a little at the start (and I would start by going too dry first), but then you are set.
For me thereās no going back and it paid for itself in just one season.
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Did you purchase the 5 gallon reservoir as well, or make your own?
Any particulars as to elevation for the gravity feed?
Edit - Also, how many ācarrotsā per plant?
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I tried to set up a gravity feed in a bucket suspended from the roof truss in the greenhouse, but it just ate up limited space. I opted for the pressure reducer and it worked like a charm. I donāt think I would do that inside though, unless you have something to contain or drain a run-out.
I took better photos than this, but I may have accidentally deleted them.
This is the kind of stuff I saw, now that there wasnāt an intermittent deluge of water being dumped into the pots. They werenāt too wet, but I had mushrooms growing in the understory. I had never seen this with traditional watering. With this more diverse understory came beneficials like predatory mites, and even minute pirate bugs. The spider mites came and there was some damage, but they never got out of control like they did last year. This really promoted a more natural diversity in there.
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Ive been looking into these as well. How do they handle nutrient mixes running through them? I dont run water only soils.
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I spoke to the guy from Black Swallow Soils about this before I bought mine and I donāt think running any nutrients through them is the best as it promotes algae growth and there isnāt much space for things to run through the top of the ācarrotā. You could get inconsistent flow and clogging. They are a close tolerance set-up.
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In my 25 gallon pots I ran two of the maxis to ensure that one backed the other up if there was a failure. In smaller pots for peppers, I just had one of the regulars and it was great.
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And in the end, they seemed to do quite well. Thatās snow on the roofā¦ quite the abrupt end to the year 
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Iāve been reading a lot of comments that indicate you need to run a ādrip cleanā type product to keep the lines clear of debris.
What Iām wondering about also, is would I then switch to an āall the time nuteā feed, or would you still just feed by handā¦
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Wow, very very nice!!!
Looks like Iāll be adding to my investment set up, this is just too good to not try.
With the depth of a typical 3-5 gallon pot, would the regular size carrot be sufficient? I see that they also have ālongsā availableā¦
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I do think that the regular carrot would be good enough/best for a 3-5 gallon pot.
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I run salt based fertilizers through my blumats without much issue. Iām using Canna A + B / w PK13/14 added sometimes. I do use pond enzymes/drip clean to keep the 5 gallon res clean, although I still have to do a monthly cleaning. I use an almost pure coco based medium in 1-5 gallon containers. I find that usually one carrot is enough, sometimes I put two carrots in 3 and 5 gallon containers. Iāve run canna a + b at 5ml up to 10ml per gallon of constant feeding, I settled around 6.5-7ml per gallon.
Blumats are definitely a worthy investment if you need to be able to leave for a few days and donāt have anyone to water for you. Once you get them dialed in, itās pretty much just dumping your feed solution in the res and keeping it clean. Getting the Blumats dialed in can be a little tricky, as the tiniest adjustment on the dials atop the carrots can result in your pots or bed getting too much water and running off. Also, another tricky part is that you pretty much need to have a consistent pressure range coming from your elevated res, if the water level in the res gets too low the pressure level running through the lines change and can cause the carrots to continue to drip, which will again cause the res to run dry and over water everything.
One trick Iāve found to help is to keep a separate water collection vessel under each pot, so if one carrot does run off, it is easy to diagnose which carrot is causing the issue. If everything runs to the same collection vessel underneath, you canāt tell which carrot is open too much.
Iāve also seen improved growth with Blumats, as the plants can really determine on their own how much water they are consuming, instead of waiting for me to come a long and dump water on them 
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Iāve run Blumats quite a bit and they are awesome. Definitely worth it if you travel at all.
I have a run out twice - not great, but as noted above if you use trays you wonāt have an issue.
I do not run nutes in mine, but would be interested to see if there were any issues.
Black Swallow rules too!
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I purchased them for my next grow. The salesperson said that they recommend only putting water through the system and to add nutes etc. by top dressing, foliage spray or hand watering. When you add liquid to the bed, the plants wonāt draw on the blumats until they dry out again.
Do those of you that use them find this to be true?
Thanks.
The soil never really ādries outā. Depending on how you set your blumats they typically will maintain the soil to a specific moisture level.
But there is no wet/dry cycle
I guess ādry outā is a relative term. The beds wonāt return to the moisture level that the farmer set on the blumat unit until the bed sheds the extra liquid added by the farmer. I got the impression that she kept her beds on the dry side of wet and mostly used the blumats to extend the time between her compost teas while not worrying about the drying out the rest of the life in her beds.
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More or less yes.
If you are top watering for teas or whatever yes the blumats will stay closed until the carrot dries out enough to open the feed tube.
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They work well for some set ups, I tried them, once dialled in they were good, the problem with them I had was once they are in place, you canāt move the pots, without having to re set the carrot.
If you accidentally bang a pot check the carrot is still set properly, if air gets down the side of it, it will constantly run water through the pot, and as I had happen twice, ended up with 50 liters of water all over the floor.
I am constantly moving my pots about so I stopped using them.
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This is sage advice 
If you need to move plants often blumats arenāt great.
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