Soil watering systems

[Bilbobudkin420]

Hellooo.
Right any suggestions for good soil watering systems? Even DIY suggestions are welcome but please include timings for watering and info on switching between water and nutes please. As a matter of fact any input is welcome aslong as its for soil

 

[Guy Cavallero]

@Fertilizer once shared an idea with me about an automatic watering system for our plants. Basically you put a small aquarium or pond pump in the bottom of a 5G bucket with a 12 to 15 inch Riser coming out through a hole in the top of your pale. Once you're out to the top of your pale with your Riser, it would have a small manifold attached to it made by a company called orbit or Rainbird. These are the companies that would normally be supplying irrigation for planter boxes and Gardens Etc. You take however many equal lengths of pipe and attach them to said heads on the underside of this manifold and basically roll out your quarter inch hose to each of your desired plants. Then put a spray head of varying Types (your choice dripper/spray)on the end of that quarter inch hose and adjust accordingly. Using a timer, something that does small fractions of time throughout a 24-hour cycle, you can set your timer to turn on for 15 seconds every 6 hours or so which will trigger the manifold pump to pump a liquid of the Riser into the manifold and equally out to all of your plants because all of of your quarter inch lines are the same length. This will help to stabilize pressure.

 

[Blew Hiller]

I use a garden hose and 2 gallon watering can. I water every 3-4 days during veg and 1-2 days during flower. I don't add additional nutes unless there is an issue with the plant, in which case I use Big Bloom every other watering.

 

[Bilbobudkin420]

@Fertilizer once shared an idea with me about an automatic watering system for our plants. Basically you put a small aquarium or pond pump in the bottom of a 5G bucket with a 12 to 15 inch Riser coming out through a hole in the top of your pale. Once you're out to the top of your pale with your Riser, it would have a small manifold attached to it made by a company called orbit or Rainbird. These are the companies that would normally be supplying irrigation for planter boxes and Gardens Etc. You take however many equal lengths of pipe and attach them to said heads on the underside of this manifold and basically roll out your quarter inch hose to each of your desired plants. Then put a spray head of varying Types (your choice dripper/spray)on the end of that quarter inch hose and adjust accordingly. Using a timer, something that does small fractions of time throughout a 24-hour cycle, you can set your timer to turn on for 15 seconds every 6 hours or so which will trigger the manifold pump to pump a liquid of the Riser into the manifold and equally out to all of your plants because all of of your quarter inch lines are the same length. This will help to stabilize pressure.

Yer this is exactly the kind of info I was looking for. Thank you @Guy Cavallero any suggestions on changing between nutes and straight water?

 

[Guy Cavallero]

I guess the best thing that I could suggest would be two timers two pumps.....essentially two different setups. One for straight water & one for nute's. You going away on vacay or something?

 

[Bilbobudkin420]

I guess the best thing that I could suggest would be two timers two pumps.....essentially two different setups. One for straight water & one for nute's. You going away on vacay or something?

Na I just plan on expanding my operation so tryna get a feel for what would be easier for me. Rather than filling up tanks of water and lugging em back and forth.

 

[Weaselcracker]

Here's an old post about the watering system I run sometimes. It's been through many incarnations but at the moment I'm having trouble finding some of my other posts that show the system better.
Hopefully this gives you the gist of it.


QUOTE="Weaselcracker, post: 2822307, member: 222044"]This is what I rigged up for the solo cup grow competition that's going on at the moment, as Vlad knows because he's in it too. I have an electric pump sitting in a reservoir. It sends water/food up the white pipe to a manifold (the black thing) which splits it into eight 1/4" lines. In the first picture I only have 6 lines hooked up. That's about the only picture I have of just the watering system by itself, I'm afraid.
The manifold was part of a watering kit that I got along with a bunch of other assorted junk/treasure in a work trade. It came with a whole bunch of 1/4 waterline, and a large pile of fitting- all sorts of drip emitters and sprayers, lots of connections, flow rate control valves, clamps- all sorts of stuff. It's from a generic big box store and is mostly cheap junk. I'm sure you can easily find equipment like this. There are flow rate controls for each of the eight lines in this manifold but they're a bit finicky so I just leave them wide open. I don't really trust the sprayers and drip emitters and stuff because they seem like they'd clog very easily and can't be trusted- so I just leave the lines open- timer set to come on for one minute for these little plants, 3 times a day. The pump is supposedly 185 gallons/hour and in one minute on, the plants get over a cup of water each- more than needed but that's ok. One minute is the lowest setting in my timer. I thought about restricting the flow rate with something low tech like little hose clamps but I can't be bothered.
Without the emitters, the system is hard bones enough that it's pretty trustworthy. About all that can fail is the pump.

Another basic passive watering system is Swick.
And there's another one - the name slips my mind at the moment- but some material that wicks water from a res into your pots- watermat or something. Could be making that name up...


EDIT - found the one I was looking for. These manifold systems are cheap and all the little dripper/ sprayer gizmos that come with these kits are also cheap crap. I don't use them. I also drilled out the flow valves (those 8 bumps in top of the manifold) because they were too fiddly. So everything is wide open lines and the amount of water delivered is controlled by the timer. Thei system is very versatile and all the components can be. Changes and upgraded in fairly obvious ways.
Scuze the typos I'm in bed with a detached retina and an eyeball full of blood can't see worth a shit.


------------------------------------------


I put the hexapus back together, a little differently this time, with a larger reservoir. ( 25 gallon garbage can )
I don't need it for anything right now- just seizing my chance to put it together for when I do- since I will need it for growing in coco (I think) and for hempy (I think) and for emergency vacation waterings. The base of it is made from three shelf brackets.

[/QUOTE]
[

 

[Chris Scorpio]

I made mine, actually still use it to fill my water juggs just no timer

The 5 gal buck gets filled, and used fittings to add a garden hose adapters to it

IMG_20180503_085813.jpg

• Chris Scorpio
• May 3, 2018

IMG_20180503_085818.jpg

• Chris Scorpio
• May 3, 2018

Then I would add this rain barrel timer. It's a O pressure timer, so no water pressure needed. I tried 2 others and this was the only one that worked

IMG_20180503_085844.jpg

• Chris Scorpio
• May 3, 2018

I'd then add 1/2" line to the pots and T off with 1/4" line to the foam soaker line around the rim of the pot

I timed the volume and in 15min could water all six plants.

My plan was to use two systems, one nutes with a air stone to keep nutes mixed, and other with plain water.
Then I could run them, alternate times, when I went camping for a week or so

 

[Weaselcracker]

I had the feeling if I bumped everything up to 1/2" lines it might work better and I might tap into better systems and find a less cheaply built manifold.
I also ran it that way. Chris, with one set up in plain water and one with nutes. At one point on vacation I went with three of these systems going. Plain water and mixed in flowering, and anther in veg with a light nutrient mix.
With my system -setting up the timers properly and tweaking the system to work the bugs out before leaving on vacation is key. Almost all the problems I had were timer setting related.

 

[Chris Scorpio]

I had the feeling if I bumped everything up to 1/2" lines it might work better and I might tap into better systems and find a less cheaply built manifold.
I also ran it that way. Chris, with one set up in plain water and one with nutes. At one point on vacation I went with three of these systems going. Plain water and mixed in flowering, and anther in veg with a light nutrient mix.
With my system -setting up the timers properly and tweaking the system to work the bugs out before leaving on vacation is key. Almost all the problems I had were timer setting related.

Yer system looks Great Weasel, kinda like mine on steroids..lol

I tried drip system and it didnt water evenly at all, thus the soaker hose was the Ticket for my 5gal soil pots

 

[Bilbobudkin420]

Yer system looks Great Weasel, kinda like mine on steroids..lol

I tried drip system and it didnt water evenly at all, thus the soaker hose was the Ticket for my 5gal soil pots

Yer I was thinking more a soaker than a drip system. For some reason I dont like the idea of it just getting one little bit of water in one little section all the time.

 

[Bilbobudkin420]

Here's an old post about the watering system I run sometimes. It's been through many incarnations but at the moment I'm having trouble finding some of my other posts that show the system better.
Hopefully this gives you the gist of it.


QUOTE="Weaselcracker, post: 2822307, member: 222044"]This is what I rigged up for the solo cup grow competition that's going on at the moment, as Vlad knows because he's in it too. I have an electric pump sitting in a reservoir. It sends water/food up the white pipe to a manifold (the black thing) which splits it into eight 1/4" lines. In the first picture I only have 6 lines hooked up. That's about the only picture I have of just the watering system by itself, I'm afraid.
The manifold was part of a watering kit that I got along with a bunch of other assorted junk/treasure in a work trade. It came with a whole bunch of 1/4 waterline, and a large pile of fitting- all sorts of drip emitters and sprayers, lots of connections, flow rate control valves, clamps- all sorts of stuff. It's from a generic big box store and is mostly cheap junk. I'm sure you can easily find equipment like this. There are flow rate controls for each of the eight lines in this manifold but they're a bit finicky so I just leave them wide open. I don't really trust the sprayers and drip emitters and stuff because they seem like they'd clog very easily and can't be trusted- so I just leave the lines open- timer set to come on for one minute for these little plants, 3 times a day. The pump is supposedly 185 gallons/hour and in one minute on, the plants get over a cup of water each- more than needed but that's ok. One minute is the lowest setting in my timer. I thought about restricting the flow rate with something low tech like little hose clamps but I can't be bothered.
Without the emitters, the system is hard bones enough that it's pretty trustworthy. About all that can fail is the pump.

Another basic passive watering system is Swick.
And there's another one - the name slips my mind at the moment- but some material that wicks water from a res into your pots- watermat or something. Could be making that name up...


EDIT - found the one I was looking for. These manifold systems are cheap and all the little dripper/ sprayer gizmos that come with these kits are also cheap crap. I don't use them. I also drilled out the flow valves (those 8 bumps in top of the manifold) because they were too fiddly. So everything is wide open lines and the amount of water delivered is controlled by the timer. Thei system is very versatile and all the components can be. Changes and upgraded in fairly obvious ways.
Scuze the typos I'm in bed with a detached retina and an eyeball full of blood can't see worth a shit.


------------------------------------------


I put the hexapus back together, a little differently this time, with a larger reservoir. ( 25 gallon garbage can )
I don't need it for anything right now- just seizing my chance to put it together for when I do- since I will need it for growing in coco (I think) and for hempy (I think) and for emergency vacation waterings. The base of it is made from three shelf brackets.

[[/QUOTE]
Sweet weasel. Cheers mate a lot of good info. Im definitely leaning towards making it myself. Mostly im cheap but I like tinkering with ish a lot aswell lol

 

[TheFertilizer]

@Fertilizer once shared an idea with me about an automatic watering system for our plants. Basically you put a small aquarium or pond pump in the bottom of a 5G bucket with a 12 to 15 inch Riser coming out through a hole in the top of your pale. Once you're out to the top of your pale with your Riser, it would have a small manifold attached to it made by a company called orbit or Rainbird. These are the companies that would normally be supplying irrigation for planter boxes and Gardens Etc. You take however many equal lengths of pipe and attach them to said heads on the underside of this manifold and basically roll out your quarter inch hose to each of your desired plants. Then put a spray head of varying Types (your choice dripper/spray)on the end of that quarter inch hose and adjust accordingly. Using a timer, something that does small fractions of time throughout a 24-hour cycle, you can set your timer to turn on for 15 seconds every 6 hours or so which will trigger the manifold pump to pump a liquid of the Riser into the manifold and equally out to all of your plants because all of of your quarter inch lines are the same length. This will help to stabilize pressure.

IMG_20180401_002547.jpg

• TheFertilizer
• Apr 1, 2018

IMG_20180309_005723.jpg

• TheFertilizer
• Mar 9, 2018

IMG_20180209_150027

• TheFertilizer
• Feb 9, 2018

IMG_20180206_222159

• TheFertilizer
• Feb 6, 2018

I got some good pointers from @gr865 and just skipped drippers or sprayers and used the barbed tees as emitters. You could probably just drill holes into the line too. I think @Troy01 has a good write-up on this as well in his signature, and I put a little mini how-to in the Jack Here Auto tribute grow thread. But really I think it's simple enough to work out what's going on with the pictures.

I think these are a little small for a big setup, but the nice thing is you can do basically the same thing with a larger reservoir, and have a float-switch setup controlling a line from your tap so it will fill automatically.

As far as nutrients versus plain water. I think gr865 might be able to tell you more about that. I have been going water-only with a soil mix. I think that if you were to use a synthetic lineup then you probably wouldn't have much problems, but using a mix with natural ingredients might lead to things going rancid. These pumps are designed for RDWC however, so I suspect the traditional wisdom regarding how to handle nutrients in those kinds of setups would carry over.

 

[Bilbobudkin420]

IMG_20180401_002547.jpg

• TheFertilizer
• Apr 1, 2018

IMG_20180309_005723.jpg

• TheFertilizer
• Mar 9, 2018

IMG_20180209_150027

• TheFertilizer
• Feb 9, 2018

IMG_20180206_222159

• TheFertilizer
• Feb 6, 2018

I got some good pointers from @gr865 and just skipped drippers or sprayers and used the barbed tees as emitters. You could probably just drill holes into the line too. I think @Troy01 has a good write-up on this as well in his signature, and I put a little mini how-to in the Jack Here Auto tribute grow thread. But really I think it's simple enough to work out what's going on with the pictures.

I think these are a little small for a big setup, but the nice thing is you can do basically the same thing with a larger reservoir, and have a float-switch setup controlling a line from your tap so it will fill automatically.

As far as nutrients versus plain water. I think gr865 might be able to tell you more about that. I have been going water-only with a soil mix. I think that if you were to use a synthetic lineup then you probably wouldn't have much problems, but using a mix with natural ingredients might lead to things going rancid. These pumps are designed for RDWC however, so I suspect the traditional wisdom regarding how to handle nutrients in those kinds of setups would carry over.

Kooshty. So what would that be? Running a nute mix all the time just weaker?