SkunkWorks Coco Hydro System
The next part of this logistical breakdown of my grow room is the diy bucket system i built for the bloom cab.
I guess the best way to describe it is that it's a hybrid between an Ebb & Gro & a soil grow. For short I call it SkunkWorks.
The system is a ten site deal consisiting of 3.5 gallon buckets nesting inside of 5 gallon buckets.
The 3.5g bucket bottoms are drilled out for complete drainage.
Before filling with coco & a plant the bottoms of the 3.5g buckets are lined with 1/4" coco matting to prevent loose coco from entering the drainage buckets below. The coco mat is totally optional. If the holes are drilled large like these I use it but if the holes are pencil size the matting is not needed.
Next the buckets are filled half way with coco chips and a plant is transplanted into the buckets the same way a soil transplant is done
Once the plant is transplanted it's ready to go into the system!
In order to collect runoff for reusing, the system must be elevated several inches above the runoff collection bucket. For this I found soda bottle crates ( yes Blue Dog these crates are from you guessed it, a dumpster! lol) to be the perfect solution!
At the bottom of each 5 gallon bucket you'll see that they are all daisy chained together with Ebb & Gro bulkhead fittings and 1/2" Hydrofarm black tubing.
The last bucket in the chain is connected to the drainage collection bucket. (The Texas Longhorns bucket) The drain line is coiled around the collection bucket and then hooked to the bottom of the collection bucket.
With the system being elevated and the drain being connected at the bottom of the collection bucket, it will create a siphoning action ensuring that most of the runoff is pulled from the system and into the collection bucket.
Inside the collection bucket is a remote float switch made by Little Giant, an Eco Plus 185 gph pump, and an airstone
After watering the water will drain out of the system and into the collection bucket. As water fills into the collection bucket the float switch will turn on the pump and move the used water back into the main watering rez where it can be refreshed and then reused.
The main watering rez is the top half of a GH Waterfarm controller. Another hydroshop dumpster find!
It's a ten gallon rez outfiitted with a 350 gph pump that connects to a watering wand via 10' of black tubing. There is also an air stone in there to keep the solution fresh.
An important feature to this is how the collection bucket drains back into the main rez. The tubing simply could'nt be ran into the rez. If the collection bucket drain tubing is under the water in the main rez it can siphon water back into the collection bucket and flood the grow room. The solution for me was to use a 1/2" elbow fitting inserted into the lid of the rez. The collection bucket drain tube connects to that elbow ensuring the water is dumped back into the rez without any chance of creating a siphon action back to the collection bucket.
To connect the black tubing to the watering wand I use a male hose mending kit and clamped on the tubing. I also added an additonal straight line bulkhead fitting to eliminate kinks at the wand. These are also vital connections so I used a hose clamp & zip ties to prevent any leakage.
The rez pump is on it's own power strip that has an on/off switch. A simple flip of the switch turns on the pump. Then I simply squeeze the trigger on the watering wand and water the plants!
The wand eliminates using watering cans or other vessels and keeps the water in the plants with no chance of spilling and making a mess. It also eliminates bending and reaching so I can just sit on a stool and water the garden! It's a real back saver! 30 seconds of watering each plant ensures each plant is watered with at least one gallon of water each watering.
With every watering, the garden keeps about three gallons and returns 7 gallons back to the rez. The garden is watered about every other day.
This thing was built to be automated to save my back & time but it can all be done manually very ez. I also desinged this with the commercial grower in mind. My system is only ten sites but you can see how it could run 100s of sites if needed.
It can also be built for a hobby or closet grower by using 2 gallon nesting buckets instead of the 3.5s & 5 gallon buckets like mine.
A good start for the hobby grower would be to aquire an Ebb & Gro 6 site expansion kit and go from there. Those expansion kits come with all the tubing, fittings & buckets to build a six site system. Plus the inner buckets are already drilled out with the expansion kit.
Another classic for sure.
Only winners in that!
5 stars!! 
