Hey guys, Im working on my first RDWC system and have already grown my mother plants in it. The problem we encountered (was expecting it though) was that the water is reaching upwards of 80F, the solution of course would be to add a water chiller. My dilemma is the volume of water in the buckets and how applying a water chiller in my reservoir would effect the temperature of the buckets when taking into consideration the volume of my feed line. I want to make sure that the water isn't too cold as the feed line runs it over the plants roots and into the bucket, yet still be cold enough to drop the temp of the bucket to safe temps. I currently have a .25" feed line running from the manifold to the hydroton constantly running, but Im not sure if this is enough water flow. Should I try adding another .25" feed line to each bucket, or should I use the 1/2" bulkheads (that I bought thinking I needed them) and attach a feed line directly to the side of the bucket so that the cold water mixes with the bucket water before reaching the roots? I recorded a short video to help explain my setup and dilemma. All advice its welcome from this noob!
I'd run much larger feed lines off like a 1200 gph pump, for that many tubs. That's just to recirculate. Then I'd just plumb a chiller to the res via a 300-600ish gph pump and some 1/2" tubing. Also, you need to lightproof those lids.
Don't know how much sense that made... What I'm basically saying is that you want to recirculate as much water as you can, as fast as you can, between the tubs and the res. 1/4" tubing just ain't enough. The bigger the better. That goes for the pump as well. I use a 950 gph pump, to recirculate, a 2 tub system. The chiller then will be a separate little pumping circuit just from the res to chiller and back, via a separate smaller pump. Once you're recirculating enough volume between the res and tubs, the chiller/res circuit will essentially effect the whole system.