Irrigation

[K.puff&stuff]

Hi guys anyone can point me to DIY irrigation for my 10x10 grow tent. looking for something that will water 22 plants with timer and all that.
Anything on the forum for that i'm geting tired beding down watering a plant at a time killing my knees man.

 

[HigherTheHigh]

I know a few lads that run these, they replace the pipes after every grow, which costs around $20, im buying a 4 pot system myself next month, i know how you feel of kneeling down, especially when there scrogged and have to practically crawl in the tent.

Search: Auto pot system in google, alien do them aswell as the main company AUTOPOT.

Hope this helps buddy!

 

[Bonsaiweed]

I know a few lads that run these, they replace the pipes after every grow, which costs around $20, im buying a 4 pot system myself next month, i know how you feel of kneeling down, especially when there scrogged and have to practically crawl in the tent.

Search: Auto pot system in google, alien do them aswell as the main company AUTOPOT.

Hope this helps buddy!

Just a heads up. You will want to unlink that, and just put the name and where to get it. The administrators frown on live links that can become inoperative, as that will reduce the educational value of your response.

Just trying to prevent a hand spank for you.

 

[HigherTheHigh]

Just a heads up. You will want to unlink that, and just put the name and where to get it. The administrators frown on live links that can become inoperative, as that will reduce the educational value of your response.

Just trying to prevent a hand spank for you.

What if i were to say i like a spanking .

Cheers for the heads up buddy!

 

[Bonsaiweed]

What if i were to say i like a spanking .

Cheers for the heads up buddy!

Hey.... to each their own.

 

[K.puff&stuff]

I thought this hydroponics system you can add dirt to these things do they have 5 gallons pots or just use the system with your own pots

 

[HigherTheHigh]

Yes they are coco/soil friendly, iv seen some huge gardens with these being used, 2" of clay pebbles in the bottom and either coco/soil mix in top, no timers, just fill the tank thats it.

They have a range of pot sizes.

Here is a link to there website (admin remove if not okay) 1Pot Systems Archives | AutoPot Watering Systems UK

They are a great system, the spare parts are pennys too, hope this helps you and your knees buddy!

 

[K.puff&stuff]

It look great my question is if you have to go between plants to crop or even inspect is there going to be enough room
Can the pots be space apart from each other spoke to soon the can be spaced out . wonder what shipping cost would be

 

[Guy Cavallero]

Blumat is a great tried and tested system for watering . I'm going with a 5 gallon pail, small 50-60 gallon pump, a riser and a multitap manifold. Run 1/4" lines (all the same length) to each pot, and adjust your drippers accordingly. Most of this can be bought at Lowe's in the Hunter or Rain bird irrigation area.

 

[K.puff&stuff]

ITS very interesting stuff it would help with water business. but adding nutrients will block the lines no? bending over water looking under leave and stuff hurts my back and knees man this system would be nice if it can hadle nutrients withough getting line blockage. my plants seem to be playing games one thirsty so i feed on 1 side dont want to feed other side because don't want to flood them and get root rot but next day one or 2 other side show they want water feed that gang then go next day to other side feed the girls. I don't no if its the smart grow pots but my medium dries up fast there growing still i cant even tell were i top them last. but this walking back and forth with gallons of water thats sucks feel like there slave. I feed them advance nutrient basic :miro , grow, bloom. They seem to take it in well.Guy Cavallero let me know how it works out so i can try your system and beside i cant even get fed ex or DHL purolator to come up here. so I have to find a way, If possible send me a list of stuff I would need for 30 grow pots 5 gallons each

 

[JimmyZee]

I second the Autopot system. I bought a 1 pot system with an airstone & an airdome to test outdoors & so far its been a lot less hassle than the other 5 plants I have growing... Works well with powdered nutes (if you dissolve it in a bit of water first) & liquid nutes, but if you're worried about some sediment getting into the feed lines, you can get a small filter with the kit.

 

[HigherTheHigh]

You can easily flush the pipe lines out, wait till the tank is empty and on the far end is a valve with a hose connector on, the people who i know that use them flush the lines out with hydro cleaner, does not affect the plants what so ever, they maby do that once in veg and then change the pipe after harvest which only costs around $20 but at least this way your always on top of servicing, like jimmy says its far easier and hassle free to an extent.

 

[TheFertilizer]

Blumat is a great tried and tested system for watering . I'm going with a 5 gallon pail, small 50-60 gallon pump, a riser and a multitap manifold. Run 1/4" lines (all the same length) to each pot, and adjust your drippers accordingly. Most of this can be bought at Lowe's in the Hunter or Rain bird irrigation area.

Yeah I did something similar myself. I think these pictures will give a better idea of how to put it all together and stuff. Not ultra complicated, just a few caveats, like you want just one outlet on the manifold to be uncapped and flow back into the resevoir, to prevent vaccuum locks and siphoning issues.

These little mini resevoirs consist of...

1 - 8 Outlet Orbit Manifold - $9
1 12" 1/2" Riser Pipe - Under $1
1 1/2" Coupler to attach Riser to Pump - Under $1
1 bag 25x Barbed Tees ( for connecting and emitting) - $4
1 bag 20x Shut-Off Valves - $4
1 Submersible Pump - $10
1 50' Length of Vinyl 1/4" Tubing - $8 on Amazon ( I think this stuff is easier to work with, it's soft and flexible, but you can get poly tubing in any town for $4 per 50)
1 5 gal bucket - $3
1. 5 gal bucket lid - $3

I used 50 feet of line for one res, going off to 5x 6" diameter "water rings". You should make the rings half the diameter of your pot so they fit in the center, so whatever diameter that is, multiply it by 3.14 for your perimeter and that should give you the amount of distribution hose you'll need per pot. So for example, a 12" wide pot, 6" diameter water ring, you'd want 6 * 3.14 = 18" of hose per pot. So 18 * 30 = 540 inches / 12 = 45 feet. Then you'll need to figure how much feet each line should reach, and you need to keep the line length the same for every pot, so if one line need to stretch 10 ft (from one corner of your grow room to the other ), then they all need to be 10 ft. You can try to save some money/line by putting your res in the center and trying to make all the hoses reach from a central point, but it's still key to keep the hose lengths the same to maintain equal flow, and you might even find adding a couple feet for slack and allowing the lines to reach outside your tent to your res would be best. But at 10 ft per pot, obviously that's 300 ft. So let's say you get that 50 ft line for $8, that's about $0.16 per ft and you probably will need to get it in orders of 50 or 100 so let's say 400 ft. * $.16 per ft = $64

400 ft 1/4" vinyl distribution line = $64

What's also going to get tricky is you're going to have a hard time finding a 30 port manifold. You'll probably need to settle on a 10-12 port manifold and divvy up the plants between 3x manifolds. You'll also need to do some extra plumbing to split 1 pump off into the 3 manifolds so that you're not buying more pumps (you shouldn't have a hard time, should be do about with a T valve and a couple elbow joints all 1/2"), but you'll probably need to look into a strong pump in the 400 gph range so you're looking at more of a $20-25 pump and maybe account for $3-5 for the plumbing to rig up enough manifolds to it. In any case the 3 manifolds will probably be about $8-10 each.

$5 Plumbing for manifold to attach to pump
$25 400-500 gph submerisible pump
3x 10-12 outlet manifolds - $30

Then as for fittings you'll need about 4 barbed tees per pot. So 90 barbed tees, they come at about $4 a bag of 25, so figure $16. The shutoff valves come in bags of $4 but with only 10, so $12.

$16 Barbed Tees
$12 Valves Shutoff

Then lastly, you'll need a large reservoir to hold that and your pump and manifolds, so I'm guessing a 40-60 gallon tote, and I suppose that'd probably run about $10.

So about $152 total for a 30x 5 gallon pot setup of similar design. Which might sound like a lot, but if you start pricing those Autopot systems you'll see that a 30 pot system with one of those would be quite expensive.

Blumat is also pretty adaptable and they have gravity fed systems ( no pumps ) that use water sensing carrots, but I think a 5 spike kit system is like $95 and I'm not sure how many plants one reservoir would cover.

Doing it with a subpump, distribution line and a little plastic tote reservoir is probably your cheapest option. Then you can set the pump to run on a timer, or like I have done use it "semi-automatically" so that you turn the pump on, and just open the valves to each pot individually one at a time. But to get a simple 7-day digital timer is about $10-$15 more.

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• TheFertilizer
• Mar 9, 2018

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• TheFertilizer
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• TheFertilizer
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• TheFertilizer
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• TheFertilizer
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• TheFertilizer
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• TheFertilizer
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• TheFertilizer
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Also just to really showcase the difference of why you should splurge for the vinyl distribution tubing, you can see in these pictures how much less manageable it is in the growspace to have poly tubing. It likes to coil up and be a general pain to work with, and with as much pots are you're talking about, I think it would be a nightmare. Plus it's very stiff so fitting these barbed tees into there might be a little difficult unless you heat up the tubing. I can't find vinyl in any hardware store, but if you can ship that off Amazon it's worth it even though it's like 2x as much as poly tubing. With 30 pots, poly tubing would be like some kind of octopuss tentacle nightmare.

Poly:

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• TheFertilizer
• Feb 6, 2018

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• TheFertilizer
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• TheFertilizer
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Vinyl:

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• TheFertilizer
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• TheFertilizer
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• TheFertilizer
• Feb 6, 2018

I cover my design a little bit more here to give a better sense of how I put my water rings together and everything.

Growing A Legend - An Auto Tribute To Jack Herer


But yeah, it's a very flexible design scheme, the main thing is a submersible pump, going to a manifold with distribution line, inside of a reservoir of water. You can use different types of emitters from drippers to sprinklers, to just poking holes in the tubing. I like these barbed tees because they're basically wide open and not likely to get very clogged, as in comparison to a drip emitter. As far as running nutrients through these, I'm not sure how the pump would handle the sludge buildup, but I think you'd probably find a lot of information about that from RDWC enthusiasts since they basically use the same types of pumps in their resevoirs--so anything meant to keep an RDWC system clean should work.

 

[K.puff&stuff]

TheFeterllizer Mn thank you for taking the time and effort for getting all info down with pictures. I'm starting to understand what your saying. I'm sure other that are reading this also has help them . I going to look into this slowly but surely for the next grow. I going to finish these girls manually But I got 20 Laughing Buddha that have been germinated with 2 purple fusion this Watering tech will be for those guys because no way i'm going to bend over and shit in the middle of summer.
I'm going to use your idea. I will keep this thread open and post the part maybe we can all share thought and put something together. Again thank you all and TheFeterllizer for this great info i will fallow the list of parts man

 

[Guy Cavallero]

That's the shit right there. Thanks @TheFertilizer, it's was his idea that I am replicating too (in mot so many words, lol), in my earlier post. The Blumat system is the same though...maybe a bit more technical but same principal.

 

[TheFertilizer]

TheFeterllizer Mn thank you for taking the time and effort for getting all info down with pictures. I'm starting to understand what your saying. I'm sure other that are reading this also has help them . I going to look into this slowly but surely for the next grow. I going to finish these girls manually But I got 20 Laughing Buddha that have been germinated with 2 purple fusion this Watering tech will be for those guys because no way i'm going to bend over and shit in the middle of summer.
I'm going to use your idea. I will keep this thread open and post the part maybe we can all share thought and put something together. Again thank you all and TheFeterllizer for this great info i will fallow the list of parts man

No problem, I was right there with you thinking bending over and watering plants sucked, so I'm glad to help out.

That's the shit right there. Thanks @TheFertilizer, it's was his idea that I am replicating too (in mot so many words, lol), in my earlier post. The Blumat system is the same though...maybe a bit more technical but same principal.

Thanks, not really all my idea, I learned most of it from @gr865 and his setup. He also has a place to get neat little quick-connectors I'm going to install eventually as well. I think I'll claim the little "micro-resevoir" as my idea, but as far as the manifold and 1/4" line, there were some other members that helped me out with that too. Heck just knowing what a manifold was really made most of the difference.

 

[gr865]

Hey Fert,
Thanks for the shout out!
I would look at changing those feed lines, clear line will cause algae buildup, ran into the same problem before.

Good job on the setup buddy,

GR

 

[TheFertilizer]

Hey Fert,
Thanks for the shout out!
I would look at changing those feed lines, clear line will cause algae buildup, ran into the same problem before.

Good job on the setup buddy,

GR

Thanks for all the help! Still plan on getting some of those quick-connect valves you showed me too, and then I think all the tinkering with the setup will be complete.

I'm not sure if the camera is playing tricks and making those lines seem clear, but all opaque, black vinyl here.

 

[TorturedSoul]

i'm geting tired beding down watering a plant at a time killing my knees man.

It's low-tech, but a long-neck funnel (such as can be found at any auto parts store for adding transmission fluid/etc.) might allow you to continue hand-watering your plants without bending over. I've also seen metal ones that have... where you can bend/shape the neck (and it's pretty long on these). And you could probably add a length of tubing to suit.

You could buy one, or buy one for each plant and mount them semi-permanently (probably not a viable option if you run a SOG with 81 plants, lol) .

 

[K.puff&stuff]

The riser pipe can it be longer then 12 inches. Lets say a 25 gallon tank I need to get the pump to go all the way done maybe what 4 1/2 feet. I guess what i'm asking is what size pump to be able to work. And remember I have 22 plant that max so I need a pump to be able to push water to them what size or it doesn't matter? Hope you understand TheFertilizer