Hello I have been viewing these forums for a couple of years now and learned a lot about growing reading posts on this forum. I decided to make a post myself to help others, like this forum has helped me. One thing that there is not a lot of posts on here about, is timers. Just the type of timers you use in your grow can greatly effect how much control you have over your entire grow set up. I have been using ebb and flow SOG style. I started out buying the cheapest supplys I could on a tight budget. Buying lights and nutes can get pretty expensive, so I decided to go cheap on timers to save some money. I bought the cheap dial type timers. Here's the thing though, these timers can only be adjusted in 30min increments. On the other hand digital timers can be adjusted down to the minute! Using the cheap timers my pumps that flooded my plants with nutes would have to run for at least 30 min straight during watering times. My plants started showing signs of over watering and root rot pretty quick. So after losing a lot of my plants I went out and bought a digital timer, which was programmable down to the minute. With this timer I set more customized watering times. Like have them turn on a few times a day for 10-15 min at a time. I could easily adjust these timers, if I saw my plants were drooping a little I would just turn the watering time down a little. Or if they looked to dry I would turn the watering time up a little just a few minutes made a huge difference! Now when your doing a hydro grow you want good timers, but you also need a lot of timers! The digital timers can get kinda spendy at $20-$30 each, and when your working on a tight budget buying 4-8 of these could break the bank. Luckily I found out if you dig around online for awhile you can find them fairly cheap. I found these good name brand ones online for around $10 bucks each. Example eBid-Winkel: Wildman Supply . Timers like these are extremely programable and help you control your grow a LOT more. I managed to get mine set so well with watering programs now that I don't have to worry about my plants much at all. They just grow on their own. I set up different timers with programs for each stage 0-2 weeks 2-4 weeks 4-6 weeks 6-8 weeks. I have a different timer set for each stage of my SOG. You can more precisely control your fans and dehumidifiers with these as well. I hope this was helpful and thanks for reading my first post!!!
Didnt think about those. Seen em a hundred times. Was about to blow a bunch of money on a conrol box. Thanks!
Digitals are nice. However you can find mechanical timers that adjust down to 15m increments for about $8 at local stores. I don't know why you would think they only come in 30 minute increments.
Well I had one that was 30 min but your right a lot are 15 but either way digital timers are more precise down to minute.
[quote name='"Growguy897"']Well I had one that was 30 min but your right a lot are 15 but either way digital timers are more precise down to minute.[/quote] True. I noticed that home depot carries the same timers for just a couple of dollars more. I would just grab one local instead of messing with Ebid. Good find.
[quote name='"hope2toke"']I have a shitty timer. The christmas tree actually flickers when the lights go off[/quote] Too funny.
I know they have these GE timers at home depot but the ones on this site are not only a couple dollars cheaper but more like 10th dollars cheaper shipped take a look eBid-Winkel: Wildman Supply
Wow 10th dollars? That is a whole lot of pesos. It must slow business in the world of small electronics. I don't really trust digitals anyway. Years of electronics work taught me that anything with a circuit board is more prone to failure than simple mechanical switches.