Hey i've never grow'n dwc before and i was thinking of setting up a 6 x 5 gallon bucket system, so about 90 liters or about 24 gallons of water. how much air will a pump need to provide to run the system? the only info i could find said 2 liters of air per min for every gallon of water which would work out at 48 liters per min which seems a lot. do really need that much and how loud would it be?
No, 48ltr/min isn't a lot. I run 35ltr/min in two 10gallon buckets. I recommend you don't piss around with little aquarium pumps. Your better off going for a mini air compressor.
thanks for the input.. i was looking at a pump from hydrofarm that's 45 lpm. how loud is your 35lpm? ive never ran a bubble bucket before and am wary of the noise.
DWC is noisy, there's no getting around that. I always recommend 1 litre of air per minute for every 2 litres of nutrient solution, so pretty much the same as your formula depending if it's UK gallons or US gallons A 45 litre per minute pump with several stones will be quite loud. Hanging the pump by bungees and putting 1" polystyrene sheets under the buckets really help with the noise
cool. vibration reduction is the key then. i take it that its the noise of the pumps hum rather than the sound of water bubbling which is loudest? my set up is near the heating system for my house and any noise from my press (oss fan and extraction fan) sounds like the heating system running... but a loud bubbling noise could be hard to explain...
The bubbling certainly makes up its % of the overall noise, but it's so constant with the shear number of bubbles it's more of a hum than a bubbling sound. I have a 25 litre per minute piston pump and outside the tent it's not really any louder than the compressor on a fridge. You can hear it outside the room with the door closed but only just