Celt’s Cavern Of Chaos

[CADBOY]

Morning @bluenoserjoe,

I went to amazon first to see what was available, prices ranged from about $150 for Chinese knockoffs up to $1000s which are likely made in China as well

Afterwards, I went to Aliexpress, where most overseas stuff comes from, and ordered a model I had seen on Amazon for under $90 delivered, should be here mid-January.

Money is too tight these days to buy high end testing equipment, so Chinese knockoffs will have to do unless of course I win the lottery in the near future

I buy lots of stuff from alexpress, good deals if your willing to wait a month on average.

 

[The Celt]

I was born WELL before ‘85 lol and it will always be NFLD to me lol

 

[The Celt]

I buy lots of stuff from alexpress, good deals if your willing to wait a month on average.

A lot of my stuff come from there as well, especially playing with COBs

 

[CADBOY]

I was born WELL before ‘85 lol and it will always be NFLD to me lol

See, if you was born after 85 you be learning NF lol my family gives me crap when I write NFLD on the address hahaha.

 

[CADBOY]

A lot of my stuff come from there as well, especially playing with COBs

Cool. Will be fun to see a day cob build.

 

[The Celt]

Cool. Will be fun to see a day cob build.

Actually, I run a 400w 3200k COB system in my little tent. Has 4 100w COBs and ducted so that the 4” fan cools them. All the air goes through the light before getting into the tent.

 

[CADBOY]

Actually, I run a 400w 3200k COB system in my little tent. Has 4 100w COBs and ducted so that the 4” fan cools them. All the air goes through the light before getting into the tent.

Awesome bro. Keep them cool for sure.

 

[The Celt]

Ya, I prefer using down-draught air flow anyway and this light is adjustable from 50w up to about 430w...at 430w it’s starting to work the controller hard though so I rarely push it that high.

It uses a 48v 600w MW power supply through a 20A switch mode controller. It’s the controller that heats up when pushed too hard, the Mean Well stays cool

 

[bluenoserjoe]

Morning @bluenoserjoe,

I went to amazon first to see what was available, prices ranged from about $150 for Chinese knockoffs up to $1000s which are likely made in China as well

Afterwards, I went to Aliexpress, where most overseas stuff comes from, and ordered a model I had seen on Amazon for under $90 delivered, should be here mid-January.

Money is too tight these days to buy high end testing equipment, so Chinese knockoffs will have to do unless of course I win the lottery in the near future

Yea, sure not wanting to break the bank just to satisfy my curiosity. $100 not so bad. Off to see what I can find.

 

[The Celt]

Yea, sure not wanting to break the bank just to satisfy my curiosity. $100 not so bad. Off to see what I can find.

If you can’t find one to suit you, shoot me a PM and I will send you a link to the one I bought

 

[PE636]

My wife is also from western Cape Breton, took her and made her a Prince Edward Islander though. Well, a CFA Islander anyways. Another 20 yrs she'll have full status lol. Beautiful where she's from, though I probably wouldn't want to live there just due to the remoteness.

 

[The Celt]

Being a mountain man preferring the wild to civilization, remoteness suits me to a tee

 

[PE636]

I know what you mean! We live on the outskirts of a population 300 fishing village on 10 acres so its pretty damn peaceful here. But can make it to the booming metropolis of Charlottetown in about 45 minutes so sort of best of both worlds.

 

[The Celt]

I live about a 35min drive from Halifax, plenty close for me lol

 

[oldsmokey]

Being a mountain man preferring the wild to civilization, remoteness suits me to a tee

Me to when me and the Miss's retire I can't get out of town fast enough.

 

[InTheShed]

remoteness suits me to a tree

Fixed that for you.

 

[The Celt]

You knocked that one outta the park @InTheShed

 

[The Celt]

Evening all,

Bit of an update, but more notes and observations as I puttered away at retro fitting the system, it’s been slow going, have had a head cold or something the past couple days and breathing has been no pleasure and wear out easily.

Part of the retro fit required a refit of the reservoir halo ring as well. It was originally 22” in diameter but had to be shrunk down to 17” to make room for the larger return pipes. While I was refitting the halo ring I decided to make a shield as well to minimize foam oozing over the side.

Here is a picture of the reservoir top with riser and halo ring

The shield extends into the solution keeping the foam contained. The arrow is pointing to a valve that allows me to adjust flow by bypassing up to about 20% of the flow from going to the buckets.

As of this morning, I have 3 of the buckets retrofitted with the new return pipes. Having been shut down for a couple days, it started going septic again so I decided to fire it up and let it run full flow to get things back into aerobic conditions.

At startup, it was reading 69.2F and after 3 hours it had gone up to 71.8. Not quite 3degrees an hour. Ran outta energy so I am going to leave it run wide open until morning and see how much the temperature rises by morning. If it climbs higher than 72, I will try running it at 2hr on/ 1hr off and monitor temps. Until I get my DO meter, I want to run maximum aeration but balanced with temps.

BTW, all buckets are staying at the same level as the reservoir, even at wide open throttle. 1 small step, but success

While I was returning the system to aerobic conditions, I thought I would check the pH, even though I am still waiting on calibration solutions. Having gone septic, the pH also rose to 8.4. I checked again after running for a few hours and no change so I decided to give it some lemon juice and check results. 1 quart of lemon juice brought the system down to a stable 5.9 after about 20mins.

Although I am hoping the plants regulate pH like they would in LOS, should I feel the need to monkey with pH, I will be using lemon or pineapple juice as pH Down and hydrated lime as a pH Up.

Things are coming together and seeds will be dropped this week, with seedlings being introduced into the net pots the following week, time to get some green growing

 

[The Celt]

Morning all,

Had the system running at wide open throttle for 17hrs and temperatures rose to 82F, not a big concern, the system is super saturated with air. Even without a DO meter, I do know it’s overloaded with air which I will cover in detail later today (stumbled onto this doing something else). This also tells me I can run the pump intermittently to keep temps down and DO up

We had a much greater issue occur over night though, and one that was been a nagging concern since I first fired the system up a week or more ago. The pH rose back up to 8.4 over night, this is something that needs sorted prior to putting plants in

Off to town shortly to pick up lemon juice and pineapple juice and a few Kraft Karpets. No snow and I am not going sledding need them for the LOS part of this grow

 

[The Celt]

Morning all,

Not a lot to report, it’s looking like it may be after the new year before I am able to actually start the grow. Between Canada Post being useless as tits on a bull and not able to even come close to their own delivery schedules, one package started in Halifax (45mins away) on Dec 5th and I ‘might’ get it tomorrow. If I don’t I will be cancelling the order and Amazon can Flock Off and I will likely cancel my Prime subscription as I am paying for expedited delivery that I am not getting, it’s been that way with them for nearly a year now.

Rant over, maybe I will get ambitious and video some experiments