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Emilya Green said:
A light was lowered down into the bucket so that the soil level could easily be seen. A 3/8 inch hole was drilled 1 inch below the top of the soil so as to set the air gap.
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That hole looks high to me. The normal design has it about an inch below the top of whatever you are using to make the reservoir void, 4" drainage pipe in your case. That would put it about 3" above the bottom of the bucket measured from the inside.

This is done so that there is an air gap always present even when fully watered. Your hole looks higher than 3", but hard to tell. If it is, you won't get the air gap until the plants drink enough to lower the water level to that point and you'll see it in droopy, overwatered looking plants.

Looking forward to the grow! :thumb:

Oh, and welcome to the SIP club!
 
Emilya Green said:
Tonight I built 3 SIP containers using 5 gallon buckets, some garden drainage pipe and a chunk of PVC. The first step was to prepare the expandable perforated pipe to fit in the bottom of the bucket. This took a wild guess, some squinting and shoving until I got two pieces cut for each bucket, that for the most part covered the bottom except for a wick hole in the center and on each end.

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So as to keep the pipes soil free, using plant wire I attached a piece of 6ml plastic to cover each end, and then trimmed the excess plastic. Six of these were prepared as the reservoir in the bottom of the buckets.

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A hole was cut for the fill pipe and it was put into place.

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New FFOF was added and packed hard in the center and end spots. It was filled to about 2 inches above the tops of the pipes.

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A light was lowered down into the bucket so that the soil level could easily be seen. A 3/8 inch hole was drilled 1 inch below the top of the soil so as to set the air gap.

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Last, a piece of plant barrier fabric was cut to sit on top of this reservoir area, with a hole cut for the fill pipe.

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New FFOF was used to backfill the plants being moved from their 3 gallon containers. Great care was taken to pack down the soil all around the sides and around the fill pipe as the plants were set in.

This first time, the plants were watered from the top and Geoflora VEG was applied. They took a surprising amount of water to both saturate the soil in the top section and push it solidly down onto the bottom layer on the other side of the plant barrier fabric, and then for the water to fill the rez area and finally start to leak out of the overflow hole. This should have primed the pump, and now they will be bottom watered until the next feeding time in 2 weeks.

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Well done Emilya! Thanks for the detailed tutorial! A friend of mine has been using these for his eggplant and tomatoes for decades using fishing totes. I can't say what size, but tubs to hold cod and haddock, what a family commercial fishing vessel would use. Too big to move without wheels anyway. Nice touch with the materials! This is going to be a good one! Hope the experiment is a success!
 
I've built all his DIY stuff except that cabinet he grows in. All the DWC stuff, cloner, automated burpless curing bucket, they are excellent. Good Canadian lad, he recently started a commercial hashmaking equip company. Equip is the shizz.
 
I think you are saying that with my drainage hole as high as it is that I will be storing too much water and thereby making the soil above too wet. Keep in mind that my hybrid design does use the plant barrier, and I am not clear what this is going to cause that is different from what the growdoctor is doing by letting his roots grow down into the lower region. Roots may ignore my barrier too and go right through. I am going to wait to see if the plants look overwatered in a few days and if I need to lower the drainage hole to 3 inches, it should be an easy matter to make that change and duct tape over the first hole.
 
Emilya Green said:
I think you are saying that with my drainage hole as high as it is that I will be storing too much water and thereby making the soil above too wet.
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Not that so much as it is that you'll be filling the air gap each time you fully water thus cutting off the air supply to those bottom roots. It's more about the air than it is the water, soil or roots actually.

Emilya Green said:
Keep in mind that my hybrid design does use the plant barrier, and I am not clear what this is going to cause that is different from what the growdoctor is doing by letting his roots grow down into the lower region.
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Not so much about the roots as it is the interface between the bottom of the soil mix and the air gap. We want air at all times.

Emilya Green said:
I am going to wait to see if the plants look overwatered in a few days and if I need to lower the drainage hole to 3 inches, it should be an easy matter to make that change and duct tape over the first hole.
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Probably wouldn't even need to cover it at all. My smaller pots have dozens of holes above the water line as I'm trying to get as much air to the roots as I can. Then, when you periodically top water you just have to go slow so it doesn't all run out the sides. There's actually a very good watering thread on this site where the author shows how she waters sloooowly and completely. I'm sure I have a link to it somewhere. :rofl:
 
Emilya Green said:
Roots may ignore my barrier too and go right through.
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Are you trying to keep roots out of the reservoir area? If so, why? In my design I get water roots to fully fill the connector pot, and I figure water roots can be an advantage in this type of system.

If it's just to try to keep them out of your pipes, they won't get into them. They'll get root pruned by the air gap (assuming you establish a permanent one).
 
Azimuth said:
Are you trying to keep roots out of the reservoir area? If so, why? In my design I get water roots to fully fill the connector pot, and I figure water roots can be an advantage in this type of system.

If it's just to try to keep them out of your pipes, they won't get into them. They'll get root pruned by the air gap (assuming you establish a permanent one).
Click to expand...

A light is slowly coming on... I am not certain at this point what the barrier fabric is even doing, and can see why many designs eliminate it. Roots do go down into the wet, and the air gap ends up being inside of my piping with a 3" high drainage hole. I was trying to envision the air gap being created between two separated regions of soil, thinking that somehow the roots stayed up in the top section. Duh...

No wonder it took so much water. lol... I have some draining to do!
 
Emilya Green said:
Roots do go down into the wet, and the air gap ends up being inside of my piping with a 3" high drainage hole.
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Bingo! :thumb:

This is a hard concept to wrap your head around especially if you are an accomplished wet/dry root grower. Completely different watering concept. And I firmly believe it is all about the air gap so I do a few things to try to maximize that aspect.
 
Azimuth said:
Bingo! :thumb:

This is a hard concept to wrap your head around especially if you are an accomplished wet/dry root grower. Completely different watering concept. And I firmly believe it is all about the air gap so I do a few things to try to maximize that aspect.
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It really is a bit of a mind flip, but I am starting to get it. Thank you for working with me here, all of you.

So with 3 inches of water in the bottom in a 5g bucket... how long do I typically get between fill ups? I still need to rig up an indicator stick so I can see the level.
 
You must create an air gap inside the reservoir. The cloth, textile, whatever's only purpose is to keep soil out of reservoir. You need the air gap inside the tubing, not above it. This is also why closed tubing eg's use a PVC drain pipe to drain above the tubing. Your hole currently appears higher than the tubing. This means the tubing is full, past full, and you have a dirt hempy. Dirt hempies are just runaway wicking and you'll get root rot and overwatered plants.
 
StoneOtter said:
Knowing the world goes otherwise I've kind of wanted to make the move but as many times as I've heard "this is the year", it never happened. This goes back to buying alcohol too. My dad would have a "fifth" delivered with his beer order. It took until just about yesterday to understand the "fifth" is a liter. That was back when mammals flew.
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A fifth is not a liter but 4/5 ths.of a quart.
 
Emilya Green said:
It really is a bit of a mind flip, but I am starting to get it. Thank you for working with me here, all of you.

So with 3 inches of water in the bottom in a 5g bucket... how long do I typically get between fill ups? I still need to rig up an indicator stick so I can see the level.
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Not long enough to bother with the indicator, other than a dipstick. I like ye-old dipstick. Trying to float something in that small an amount will just displace prec. water. False floor design maximizes reservoir size but the easiest and biggest rez design is a cloth pot on top of a plastic tote with lid on. attach a wicking foot to bottom of cloth pot - 'tote' size of a dishpan/foot soaker works well with a 3-4 inch net cup. I've seen 17 and 27 gal totes with lid on as intended by manufacturer (not cut down to drop inside), used with 7 gal on top. Wick size controls wicking speed. Too deep/ long wicks a lot of moisture. Can slow down by changing wick contain to gravel or hydroton. PS full time airpumps in rez no Bueno, have been told about and experienced pH swings (in fertigated and plain, oddly). Recommendation if choosing to experiment is pulse timed, 15 min/4 hours, or 5 min/hour I've used without pH swing (have a special water pump I used to monitor pH etc., but not necc either, has just been for experimental observation)
 
Emilya Green said:
So with 3 inches of water in the bottom in a 5g bucket... how long do I typically get between fill ups? I still need to rig up an indicator stick so I can see the level.
Click to expand...
Initially you'll go a few days but the plants will quickly begin to drain the water daily. I usually fertigate from the top once a week or so and don't fill the reservoir those days as the plant won't use it. Later in flower you could probably water from the top until it fills the reservoir to give the plant access to extra water, but initially that isn't necessary and works against a smaller plant.

I just use a long enough stick to push down the fill tube to check reservoir levels just like ResDog does. I have a sugar maple in the yard and use one from there. Makes a nice connection to my grow.
 
Azimuth said:
Initially you'll go a few days but the plants will quickly begin to drain the water daily. I usually fertigate from the top once a week or so and don't fill the reservoir those days as the plant won't use it. Later in flower you could probably water from the top until it fills the reservoir to give the plant access to extra water, but initially that isn't necessary and works against a smaller plant.

I just use a long enough stick to push down the fill tube to check reservoir levels just like ResDog does. I have a sugar maple in the yard and use one from there. Makes a nice connection to my grow.
Click to expand...
Heyy azi in a 5 gal how much does it take to fill a rez with that 3 or 4 inch space in the bottom ??
 

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