Hey guys, I'm about to order some Blumats. @Chunk , Hey friend, I'm gonna copy off what is working for you and do the big bed bag with the kiddie pools underneath. 2 of them. How many Blumats did you use per bed? I saw a double-res in Scoobie's thread. Have you guys noticed the need for the double-res? The system will work fine with just one right? I'm thinking of doing two beds. and I was going to set them up separately with a 5 gallon res for each instead of trying to chain them together. That way I don't have hose running all over the damn place. Any other detailed Blumat help is welcome. Thanks gang
How do you plan to elevate individual rez's? They work by gravity to feed the water through the lines. If you're doing a bed, they have a soaker hose for large containers. There's also droppers to attach to the tropF carrot. I'd imagine there wouldn't be many tubes all over with a bed compared to individual pots.
@Irie67 I was gifted the 12 pack of Blumats from LD/CC so I'm using 6 "carrots" in each bed. While I've had what I consider to be explosive and rapid growth of my plants, when I harvest and rotate the new clones in the bed I find the soil in these new holes to be less hydrated that I feel is optimum. I think the roots seek out the well hydrated portions of the soil that are adjacent to the carrots. @Sc00byD00bie turned me on to some distribution drippers that are made by Blumat that allow for additional additional watering sites and operate off of the individual carrots. I ordered the 10 pack on Amazon to augment the carrot type drippers in my beds and I think these will be enough to get more even hydration. They also offer some support stakes that elevate these drippers which is important to keep them from clogging but you can also use plastic picnic forks to do the same thing. As for the two tiered reservoir system, I would recommend it due to the high volume of water your plants will use when they hit peak growth. I have a 35 gallon plastic barrel on top of a 55 gallon plastic barrel with a pump in the bottom barrel. The pump lifts water from the storage drum and when the supply drum is full, there is an over flow hose that drains back into the storage drum. Every couple of weeks, I drag a garden hose in and fill the 55 gallon drum. The pump is on a timer that runs 30 minutes a day to keep the upper supply drum topped off. The picture below is from when I first set it up but is a good representation of the system. I've since leveled the top drum and plugged into the timer. I should add that the storage tank gets hit by the light from the hoods, and has developed an algae slime which I corrected by draping black plastic over it. I highly suggest installing a shut off valve between the reservoir and the drip lines for the times when you may need to do maintenance. (the blue tubing on the side of each tank is a level indicator) All due credit to @Sc00byD00bie for his help and guidance. HTH
according to blumat: "In order for the water to flow well, the tank should be located 1 m higher for each 10 m of tubing." you can use any container, even buckets but take into consideration how long a full res would last in full flower, too small and you will need to fill it daily. a double res btw would allow you to use even a small bucket since you can keep filling it multiple times a day. re double res: since its set up to fill the top res periodically (water gets pumped to the upper res via pump and timer and access water overflows back to the bottom when the top is full) the top res is always full, or nearly full and thus it maintains a constant amount of pressure on the water lines. i believe this helps eliminate shift in calibration and possible air bubbles in the line. the other benefit is that you only have to deal with filling the bottom res, which is much easier then filling the top res each time, logistically speaking. this also leaves you room for error if you forget to fill the bottom res on time, the top res will still be full of water so your system doesn't dry. if your system dries out and the soil around the carrot dries out you will have to refill water in all the sensors and possibly re-calibrate. an alternative to double res setup is to hook up to a faucet with the blumat pressure reducer, assuming your tap water is ok. another alternative is a pump system which they sell on amazon for a few hundred dollars (search for "blumat pump system") but im sure you could build it for cheaper. HTH
also a few things i would recommend: get the maxi sensors, they are deeper then the normal ones and i think better suited for our purposes, especially if you intend to use a thick mulch layer. get the distribution drippers, they are great! each carrot/dripper is suppose to be able to hydrate circle around it which is about 1' across.
also get one of these blumat digital sensors: its $42 on amazon but i dont think you can find a cheaper reliable tensiometer to properly measure soil hydration.
I have a friend growing in #15 Smart Pots that has one Maxi stuck in the side of his pot with 3 distribution drippers and one regular carrot with 3 distribution drippers and is killing it under a 315w LEC (CMH)
Hell yes. Makes sense guys. I'm on this. You guys just pieced it all together for me @Chunk Thanks so much. These are awesome tips @Sc00byD00bie Ive been reading your thread so I already got the Blumat moisture meter in my amazon cart. As far as their kits, I feel like I can probably piece it all together cheaper than what they're selling them for. $34 for a bucket with a hole in it. haha. I will be setting this all up exactly as recommended here.
you will love them trust me. oh one more thing, look on amazon for "blumat superflex" and get some of that if you can. the 8mm line they sell with the sensors is really hard to work with.
I cant offer any better advice than what these guys are offering. I got the starter pack, st it up in my #7 smarties, filled my resovoir and left on vaca for 5 days. Unbelievable that it worked so well and the cheapest insurance a grower can buy for irrigation. I like the soaker hose idea for those big beds that @missinglighter suggested. I can see a dual system set up to keep everything well hydrated. It's all just basic plumbing fixtures. IDK for sure but i think you need to have a manual back up system in place until you get the drip setup right. It took me 3 days to get mine set so I felt comfortable leaving for vaca. And to that end I highly suggest you ensure that all the soil in the kiddie pool is very well hydrated before trying to get the drippers set. Chunk and scoob have the blus dialed in and all showing all aces.
I was thinking about going this route. I just switched to the no till gardening.. im using 10g root pouches but i have 30 pots x2 rooms for flowering. what system or systems would you recommend? I was looking on their site and they have a bunch of different systems but what would be the best option for me
I'm doing the same but only 20 ten gallons. This is my plan. The line runs across the pots so you can have an aisle. I have no aisles. Lol
You will need a sensor for each pot and I'd look at use the the pressure reducer with faucet or the pump system for such a large setup, otherwise I think you will need a very high elevated reservoir to run so many pot. Sent from my iPad using Grasscity Forum
Here's a closed loop system. You could put a loop for every two rows with a rez instead of having the plants placed like the diagram. The hose adapter is easy to set up. You could make a manifold to feed all the loops. The water would go down one tube and T with a manifold line that has a T for each end of the loop. You could set up one T off the manifold for each row. It would go down it then cross over to the next row then head back to the manifold. I think this would work best too.
I got mine setup this weekend. I sprung for the shut off and quick disconnects. Monitoring the meter... Maxi's on the ends with regs in between. 4 sensors per 35 gallon planter.
Here's some info I found from another forum that has a big Blumat thread: Quote: I had been hand watering in coco every freaking day. The plants looked great but it was a lot of work. I knew from hand watering and my own anal record keeping that every plant was different in how much water it sucked up each day so a basic drip system might give me some convenience when I have to leave my plants for a few days but it couldn't be relied on to regularly feed my plants. The Tropf Blumat solves that problem and is a perfect complement to a medium like coco that you can constantly feed. Now I just have to refill the reservoir every few days and I can have some free time back. I didn't do everything right the first time around so I thought I would share some of what I have learned in the process. I am sure some of this is obvious to the pros but to newbies like myself it may be helpful. Rubbermaid reservoir is iffy - my first try was with a Rubbermaid tub. It would have probably worked but I never was able to get rid of that Rubbermaid smell and it did not hold the temperature down well at all and I was having stability problems in my reservoir when I was using the Rubbermaid. They probably require additional light proofing as well. Igloo cooler works well as a reservoir - it keeps the temperature stable, is light proof, and the new cooler smell can be washed away. An Igloo cooler is very thick in spots so if like me you smoke out before taking on any DIY projects, be sure to note that the hull adapter that comes with the patio kit does not allow for a very thick hull. So before you drill into that brand new ice chest, make sure that the spot you have chosen to drill is thin enough to accomodate the hull adapter. I learned this the hard way and now I have a $15 ice chest that won't hold any liquids. It makes a great bench though. The closest US drill bit to the 12 mm hole that is required for the hull adapter is 7/16 inch. This is a little small but the hole can be expanded slightly with a rat tail file so that the hull adapter can get through. The rubber washer for the hull adapter goes on the water side. Don't ask why I know this. A submersible water pump puts out a lot of heat and is not a good idea for this type of reservoir. With the right nutes an air stone is all that is needed if you are running nutes. GH Floranova nutes are not a good idea for a low-maintenance reservoir. I should have realized this when I saw how sludgy the nutes were but at the time I was intent on simplicity and a one part nute program is as simple as it gets. The pH was going up a full point overnight and there was lots of floaties in the lines. At first I was blaming it on the cheap Rubbermaid reservoir but I finally came to the conclusion that the Floranova was the main cause of the instability. I think some have said the GH Flora series nutes are fine but the organic Floranova line does not work. House & Garden Cocos A&B are the shit by comparison. I am using the two-part plus the Drip Clean and the pH is incredibly stable. I have let it go for up to a week and it maintained 5.8 the whole time. It mixes very clean and my plants love the stuff. Like everyone else says, get lots of the 3 mm hose. It is so much easier to work with than trying to get the 8 mm supply line to bend to your will. I ran the supply line and feed line T's in a loop around the outside edge of my tent. I then cut off 30 inch lengths of the 3 mm hose to run to the Blumat sensor. This is way easier and tidier than trying to make what comes with with patio set work. It's easy to find the patio set online but individual parts are hit and miss. I ended up ordering direct from Blumat and while it is cheaper for the parts, overseas shipping to the US is brutal. Make sure you get everything you need - the base shipping is the expensive part and they can squeeze a lot of those little parts in a small box. Unless you are making a gigantic order, the size of the order isn't going to have much effect on shipping costs. Shipping took a little over 2 weeks to the US. It started out as DHL on the Europe side but it ended up coming to me via USPS. The only way to get the 8 mm supply line off the barb connectors is to cut it off with a razor blade or utility knife. This is probably a good thing but I like to find things out the hard way. You cannot pull them off, period. I spent more time than I care to admit trying. The 3 mm drip hose will come off the barb connectors with a little bit of a tug but I wouldn't reccommend this without a shut-off valve and a way to bleed the line first. The 8 mm supply line CAN be pulled off the connector on the Blumat provided shut-off valves. This is by design - when the connector caps are tightened to the valve it secures the connection so that the tubing can't be pulled off. This allows me to remove the reservoir for cleaning but I do worry about the wear and tear from pulling it off this way but so far it hasn't been a problem. I probably should have followed Sunnydog's advice and bought the T's from Kent Systems and made my own manifold and reservoir connection using more readily accessible parts but like I said I like to learn things the hard way. So what he's talking about with the Kent T pieces is that it works to fit the 3mm feed lines to hook them up to the black hydro hose tubing which is very flexible. Size 3/32" plus a hole punch. More info on TP: Quote: Transplant help! I'm going to transplant into bigger containers. Can I take the blumat out of the coco. Transplant, then put the blumat back in? Or do I need to submerge the blumat in water for an hour again, and completely drench the coco before putting it back in, just like when I first started using them out of the box? It will be fine. However, you should check your water level in the cone and top off if needed. Also, do not leave it unattended, as after a few minutes, the valve will open(as it should, as it senses dryness) and you will have a mess. It has happened to me!