Anyone has build plans for a RDWC?

I am a fan of simplicity and control. I would probably be doing RDWC for the bud room if I had a basement, but I would most likely keep standard buckets for veg. I'm working with a 4x8 area with limited head room so I just don't want to attempt to fit in a big res or other equipment. If you just did RDWC in the bud room you could still do a perpetual harvest because you could vary the nutrients in the veg buckets until the plants were big enough to get the full force ppm. It still wouldn't be ideal because end bud stage plants need different nutrient mixes compared to beginning bud stage.

I guess my main beef is I want a perpetual harvest and it just isn't possible with RDWC unless you have 2 bud rooms and 2 veg rooms with 2 res's in each room so you could run an early bud stage nut mix, late bud stage, early veg, and late veg.

Every time I do a water change and I'm able to completely clean the buckets every crevice with ease and start new water I am thankful it's not locked in place with tubes and such where I have to clean out tubing, ect. No thanks.

 

Building your own UC4XL is a 29% savings over buying it at the regular price (No discounts like Growers House)
(NOTE: This UC4XL materials list does not include the 2" bulkheads made from Current Culture. Although they can be bought on Hydrobuilder on a buy 10+ or more discount and each bulkhead would be about $14.25 so cost could increase by $90 total if one wanted to use the CC ones. This would result in a 20% savings instead of the initial 29%)



Building a UC8XL is a 19% savings over buying one at regular price.
(For me if I were to buy it at my local shop for $1,550 I'd be saving %36.5 percent but would probably just order it online at that point)
(NOTE: This UC8XL materials list includes 2" bulkheads made from Current Culture, but bought on Hydrobuilder on a buy 20+ or more discount, save 50% on the advertised cost. Could definitely save another $75-$100 if you used different bulkheads and didn't need the CC bulkhead wrench but figured after needing to buy so many bulkheads it may be worth it to get the discount, spend a few more bucks and use the ones CC sells)

 

You could do two individual 2 or 4 bucket systems in a flower room and have one 4 bucket system in a veg room (doesn't even have to be a XL kit, since you're only vegging them for about 3 weeks in it). OR you could find net pots that would fit directly into the tops of your undercurrent system, veg them in the smaller 3.5 gallon DWC buckets like you posted for $99 and then drop them into the UC for flowering.

I don't understand why you would need two flower rooms for different cycles!

And CC doesn't even recommend changing out water every 7-10 days. They say if you adjust your PPM's properly and aren't overfeeding them they should drink enough of it up within that 7-10 days that you can just keep a reservoir hooked up to the top off float and consistently keep the system at the same level throughout the entire grow. Their main spokesperson goes in depth on it in a youtube video. So you should only be having to clean it between harvest and the next cycle of plants going in them.

 

I was referring to a central reservoir system. If I ran perpetual I would want two different nutrient mixes for bud room plants. One for beginning flower and one for late stage because I like different mixes for each. I do only sterilize between harvests, but I still appreciate how easy a bucket is to clean compared to tubing and fittings.

It just doesn't make sense to me with the complicated nutrient supplementation of silica, humic/floric acid, cal/mag, budcandy sugars, NPK, micronutirents, ect, that all of these nutrients get taken up at the same rate. All you do is test the PPM and it tells you how much of each one of these elements the plant needs? All it does is tell you how strong the solution is. I do a water change to get back to a base level mix of nutrients. Otherwise after a few weeks you have no idea if you really have enough humic acid still in there to make sure your nutrients are chelated. You don't know how much cal/mag is still left. All you know is this generic ppm number.

My plants always respond with happy growth when I change the water too.

 

I don't change my NS either. I think if you need to change it out in the few weeks that the plants are growing, you're probably doing something wrong. Most people who have problems get it from the NS being too concentrated and not checking it until it gets so concentrated that it starts to damage their plants. I guess the nutrient ratios need to be well suited to marijuana, but choosing a nutrient range that has this is good practice anyway

 

I have that pump. It's pretty good. Loud though, all those types are loud. I like to have 1LPM for every 2L of NS. That works really well in my opinion

 

Definitely wouldn't keep the neighbours up, but you will hear it in the next room. I found mine become quite a bit quieter when I hung it upside down. And also when I pushed a cotton bud in the intake hole. For some reason this didn't appear to slow the air flow speed down, but it should have, it may have, but I couldn't tell. It made it a lot quieter. Worth trying out for yourself anyway. I had a 10 way manifold and a 2" air stone ball on each line. I was impressed with it, but I've since gone back to duel bellow pumps because they are quieter

In fact, for the moment I've actually gone back to soil because it's quieter

 

There are a lot of different ones out there but personally I like these. They seem to move a lot of air considering how quiet they are. But with a big system, you would need to use quite a few of them and might not be worth the bother



It powers 4 of these budget stones pretty well

 

They sounds great I'll have to try some out. I would imagine they would slow the flow down so a piston pump would be better than a bellow pump.

Does that air stone lower the noise at all? I'm imagining that the smaller bubbles would make more of a fizz noise as opposed to a rumbling of the cheap air stones

 

I have one of those 951gph pumps. They are a little noisy but honestly I can't hear it over my fan. My fan is by far the noisiest thing in my grow room. I can reach out and touch my tent from where I sit but I can't hear the air pump over the fans. I watch movies and stuff in here. My tent is in my bedroom.

Those pumps are great because they pump a lot of air but they do get a little warm. Personally I would get one of those over the $16 aquarium pump. I know that aquarium pump is nowhere near the capacity. It's probably 1/4 the output. More air is almost always better. It's really hard to have too much. I had two plants drop out of my six bucket setup and I finished most of the rest of the grow with this 951gph air pump between only 4 buckets. That's over 235ghp per bucket. I keep it by my fan so it can blow on the heat sinks built into the outside.

I have another friend growing down the street. He was running a similar aquarium pump you have linked a few posts up, but on a huge walmart container DWC with 4 plants in it. He ended up with root rot issues last crop towards the end when the power went out for half a day his plants dropped into a downward spiral for a few days and cut his harvest in half. I knew he was running minimal on air. I talked him into buying one of those cheap 951gph. He got 2 for next crop one for both containers he's running and the new crop looks much improved.

 

Air is as important as supplementing good organisms if you want consistent results with hydro.

I've diversified my nutrients a lot since I started. I now use GH armor si, hydroguard, budcandy, humic/floric acid, florablend tea and others besides the standard npk. I have noticed my new roots are totally kicking ass. They have that white look and a lot more fine hairs. Thats when you know you're doing something right.

A product I've been doing lots of research on and will be buying is Real Growers Recharge as my beneficial organism supplement from now on. It actually also includes humic/floric acid in the formula so I can eliminate that supplement once I start running recharge. I'm just running out my current supply of hydroguard because I am happy with that. Recharge is so much better though when you look at everything included. I don't think I've found a competent bad review either. Everyone loves the stuff. It says soil but it works in hydro. I heard about it from a hydro guy on youtube.
Recharge Natural Soil Conditioner