Self-watering system? Help! I leave for 2 weeks.

I had a VERY TRUSTED family member come over which was tricky because it broke the first rule of Grow Club.
Any automatic watering system has a risk of over or under watering or simply crapping out.
If you searched for one and didn't find it, that speaks volumes.
Luck to you.

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I will never forget in the 80's my 5 year old granddaughter sitting at kitchen table with scissors and when asked what are you doing? she replied "Cutting Grandpa's trees." It was my first inkling that my son may have stopped over.

 

It's not really very hard man. Get a tray for them all; one that they'll all fit into,

and get yourself just - listen - ANY kind of timer. It doesn't really matter what kind.

You're gonna have to have a significant amount of water, those plants take - well, -whatever they take, every few days, and you'll be watering probably what - three, four times in two weeks? If it's a really light, high draining soil maybe more?

Ok well - the main thing is to get them all in one tray, where you can pump some water in there, and everybody's gonna get a drink.

Ya know - I dunno really even, what kinda general tools ya've got there but you ought to level the darn tray.
The way you level trays is by folding up newspaper under one end or the other, gradually adding a couple of thicknesses on one end or the other and you're on. I mean- you get the drift.

If you start trying to drip into each one of those plants, you're gonna be facing that you'd need to cut all the little dripper tubes the same length, and - you'd be doing all this balancing, when - it's far, freakin' easier, to get get a couple of cardboard boxes from the dumpster behind some store, cut em down and tape em together so they're a tray with one of your kitchen knives and some doggone dollar store packing tape,

and line that mufus with a couple of layers of plastic, and - you're on.

The cool thing about these kinds of rigs, is that - you need about the smallest, and the cheapest of pumps, to put water in there, not some kind of 59.95, praying to the gods of complexity, water spraying all around, all this - nope.

Don't need it. Get some kind of pump off Amazon that's just a little fountain pump, for about 8, 10 bucks

Like - bro for instance only, I just hit ''amazon small fountain pump'' - http://tinyurl.com/m89cvnm

Now - listen bro my parents had a pet shop ok? And I grew up, building all this kinda home brew, you know the deal, stuff you can put together yourself.

These little things work freakin great.

The only thing that you've gotta worry about with em is that - ok with a pump, it's not really intuitive to ya until you give it a little t'ink, but - you measure how high you can pump, from how high the water is, you're pumping from.

In other words, if I had a little pump, doesn't really matter what size, and a HUGE long cord on it - and dropped it down into some water, 20 feet deep, put a tube coming up, all this - and I sized it, you know- so it would push past the drag of all that tubing, - all this stuff, to make sure, we can get some water to the top here - okthis thing is gonna push water up, like - when it has some specifications it'll push some water say, 3 feet high? It's gonna measure that 3 feet it can throw the water up into the sky, -in a tube, for fountains, this kinda thing - from the top of the water it's sitting in.

I went a long way to say this: Each day when you give the plants some water, your water level's gonna drop isn't it. And so, to get over the lip, the edge of your container, you're gonna be pumping up a little higher each day before the water falls back down and goes into your tray.

Well - this would, -it would have it, so that each time it watered for the next two weeks, it would be pumping a little less to your plants, because the top of the water in your tub or whatever, it would be going down.

Ok but- this is real easy to fix. And what ya do is, ya figure out a way to pump that water while you're gone, out of something with a float in it. Ok?

Now - you don't need, to pump fast. All ya gotta do buddy is figure out how much water you're giving them all now combined. Without runoff, just -you know- how much do you think they're drinkin. Lately.

And then, you just figure out how long you have to turn that little pump on, with one of those little 15 minute timers, to pump - about that much water, - or exactly that much,

into your tray for your plants.

By getting the water level always the same like that - by using a float - you can make sure that baby pumps like a freakin champ because these little pumps - it's really easy to control how much they pump. You can lengthen and shorten the tube you pump with, you can put a little 79 cent or $1.39 plastic irrigation valve, then adjust that flow, so that in 15 minutes' pumping, you're Baada-Bing, Baada-Boom.

Ok so - we're breaching the old 'float' story. These little things cost about 4.99 and it's called an evaporative cooler float. Very, very, simple, you feed it with a quarter inch line, the water comes to a certain level in your one container you pump out of, and typically this is like a five gallon bucket, or a tub or whatever. You feed this and keep it full, by having another tub or whatever, sitting where the water from the one, drains down into the other.

A good easily visualized way of doing this - not that this is the answer for 2 weeks, but for awhile - would be putting a float into a 5 gallon bucket, put on a lid and feed the float with a little tube you stuck in the bottom of another 5 gallon bucket, and just sat on top of it.

The one would drain into the other, until it was empty, giving you perfect levels, until that one couldn't refill your bottom one there, completely. Then of course, as the water level went down in the bottom bucket cause it wasn't being fed any more, the pump in the bottom bucket would wind up pumping a little less each day - cause the TOP of the water level in that bucket would be dropping, so - you know, it would be able to throw a LITTLE less each day UP - and - lol ostensibly - over the top edge there of the bucket, out of the little hole you put for your tube to go through, however you did that part.
But, you've got the fact that maybe that's not enough.

So then, you're getting a tub and doing this. Now - a tub can hold 15 gallons of water. You're getting way more in the range of how much water you think you need, and then there are 30 gallon tubs. Like I said my folks owned an aquarium shop so if you can,
if you fill a tub with water and leave,
double tub that baby so it can't split and leak.
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With all that said then there's this.
You can even just fill up your bath tub. Throw some light feed in there and you're on. The thing about the bathtub is it's made tough - it's not gonna break while you're gone. The drain on it might leak, though.

Now. Like I said my folks had a pet shop and I've seen every rig ever devised by a human being to pump something somewhere and there is the option

of using some water out of the back of your toilet which has a float.

Obviously, ya know, you don't tell everybody how you found this out, but here's how this goes.

The back of a toilet has a little float in it AND, it's got a damned drain so nothing can go wrong. AND, a toilet's not gonna split like a tub might. AND - it's ALREADY put TOGETHER: sitting right there beside your BATHTUB.

What you do is get some aquarium or pond plant food tablets, and you throw some of them in the back - in the back dude, where there's that level of water that won't change - and you feed your plants with that.

The water's not pH'd you know, except whatever pH change the ferts can make. But the thing about it is, all ya gotta have, is the fuckin' pump, and the cheapest timer made, and you are on for water, f o r e v e r.

That pump will start pumping, and that toilet float will ease down, and even as the water is going out, the water feeding that toilet is gonna be coming in.

Whenever you hook these little rigs up, get a thing of super glue and leak a little in around where your hose is sliding onto things, so when you're gone, you feel like there's no way in hell anything can go wrong, like the pump push the tube off right there at the supply, and sit there and merrily run, re-circulating the water around and around, and none go down the old tube-a-roonie.
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Hey bro this is called a disclaimer.
Pay attention no matter what rig you use, if it involves any pump.
any kind of tube, into any container of water, if that baby fills up,
it is going to drain that container out to the last friggin' drop, if you
don't design it
so it is specifically designed
to stop the setup of an siphon, by filling your tube, using the pump,
and then when the pump stops, the tube being still full of water, just pumping that baby out,
like your ex wife and her lawyer, pumping out your bank account over the child support: to the last, miserable, crying drop, with you sitting there shaking your head, crying, with a 3/4ths gone bottle of vodka dangling from one hand. Sitting there you know, crying, ''oh, how could it be, it isn't fair, it - it isn't...(big swig, wipe mouth, shake head).. it iisn't... faiR!''

Hey bro - the power of siphon doesn't give a f*** LoL

but listen it's real easy though, to break siphon.

What you do is - if you use like a little fountain pump, that - well - even if you use a larger pump, a little 20 dollar one that'll sling a hundred gallons an hour or something, and you're using like - 3/8ths tubing, irrigation tubing, to feed from say, a bathtub - and you've got it throttled down, you know, because you bought a little $1.59 plastic hand turned valve, to adjust how much it pushes from - say a bath tub or the back of a refilling toilet - you've got the lid pushed aside on that toilet back, and the pump's dropped in there. the irrigation tubing is coming out of the back of it, draped down, runs to the grow, and you've got all that shit somehow tied in place so the f***n CAT can't f*** it up, we would hope, LoL .. you know what I mean? (This is where having a barrel of water sitting there makes it so much simpler LoL ) -

but anyway LISTEN - about this SIPHON - you GOTTA make SURE this doesn't HAPPEN and the WAY you DO it - is - UP at the TOP of your loop there, at the top of your bend, at the - hey bro it's said 'at the highest point in the path of your tubing' - typically obviously this is about the place your tubing comes out of the top of your water container, whatever it is, -a barrel, the back of the toilet, wherever - you put a T into the line, and you run a line, - just open - UP - about a foot or whatever, so there's no blankin' way in HELL it's gonna blow water out all over the place - and then when you pump, the water comes up, over the bend, and - when you stop, -then the water, - it splits - and the water down in your line that's hanging, of course, it just runs, drizzles, drains, down there to your tray, and all that's well and good, because - that AIR - ya see? That AIR WAS ABLE TO GET IN THERE, IN THAT T.

Now - setting up how much this thing pumps per hour, is obviously, drop dead simple. You just time how many seconds, it takes to pump a gallon or liter. And you just throttle it down, you know, so that if the pump runs 15 minutes, it's pumping just about exactly the amount you wanna pump, -and you're on.

The good thing about the reserve types, is that you can pH the water.
The good thing about the house line driven ones is that - you don't have to build anything.

If you use the back of the toilet method you just drop in a bunch of these. http://tinyurl.com/n827hpd

Like I said, I grew up for some years, in a tropical fish/pets/plants shop my parents owned, so I've seen people build every rig known to man. And of course in doing it professionally, you naturally read every book, and blogs, and see things that people show photos of, and it all just kind of blurs into one big ''I know that...'' so I can't really remember who it was, that taught me about the using the back of the toilet as the perfect self-leveling source for the water, and putting the pond pellets in. It was one of my mom's friends, she kept her house plants watered like this, by putting them in the bathtub - leveled, of course - and boom -
-but then again I also realize, you're running your stuff under some lights, and this kinda thing. So... kinda hard to say what's gonna be the easiest for you, but it's either

using floats or not,
using water from the mains or not.

And - how safe it is to do whatever you're gonna do.

Obviously if it's possible for you to just take your light to the bathroom and string it up from the shower rod, and put the plants in the tub, drop a little pump into the back of the toilet and pump out of that say, 15 minutes and feed the plants just a little, daily -

or even better of course use a wal mart timer that is digital and make it run a few minutes, every several days - they're just right there on the shelf at Wal Mart. http://tinyurl.com/n7u7gft

I'm not gonna tell ya bro which timer to buy because you know what you wanna do. I'm a guerrilla like a mufus, I personally have the plan that I'll never deploy another extra cent or technnology to grow pot because this is a war between me, and the DEA, and I'm gonna win and spend my money buyin' a beer when I'm pissin on their graves.

You might not be that kind of dug in type, and you might not already be the big kinda diy rigger, but I'm not kidding when I tell you that those who are hard core, are often women who love flowers, and I've seen them do some cool shit. Like that trick of throwing some pond plant feeding tablets, and a little - just a LITTLE - fountain pump, in the back of a toilet - and the lady I knew that did it, she just kept the bathroom light on you know? Because she was just... you know, running her little house plants, - but you can just go get your fuggin light,

push the shower curtain back or take it off you know to realllly take away any chance of something falling, or a fire, or whatever - and run a light, off one of the plugs there in the bathroom,

sit the plants in the bath tub,
and pump right out of the back of the toilet. - You might have those parts, AT your house NOW.
Like - the good thing about these is there's hardly any extra expense at all, and - I'm not shitting you - you can actually just go to the DOLLAR store yO - and get those ''JOBS' PLANT SPIKES'' - and figure out a way to put some of those in the back of the toilet, hanging in a sock is typical - and that'll feed those plants.
The thing is though, they don't have the ability to hold out for months and months, like the pond tablets do.

Just go to wal mart and look in the aquarium section. They probably have aquarium plant food tablets, or pond plant food tablets.

Peace on ya man let us know what you do.

 

Holy shit, longest response ever. LOL.

 

LoL that's what I get for sitting up late smoking the home-grown, huh !

 

That's actually something I kinda learned from explaining this kinda thing to people around my parents' shop. A lotta times in a business, people think you're just telling them something to make em shut up and leave, when really, - nothing could be further from the truth.

And I'm SO baked. I just came back and deleted about a half page of bullshit I was going on about just because I liked the feeling of the flow of the keys under my fingers when I'm typing fast.

 

If you have a big container to hold water in(a trash can, drum what ever). Mix a bunch of nutes in there if you have an air stone that be perfect to help keep things mixed up for you.

If you have a pump doesn't need to be too big I have used 290 GPM(Cant be smaller) pumps. If you attach 1/2 inch hose to this then get drip emitters .5 GPH or 1.0 GPH, attach 1/4 hose to that. These emitters are nice because you can push them into the 1/2 hose.

Have 1 drip emitter per plant. Get a timer and put the pump on a timer. When the pump comes on(should be in the res tank) it will suck the water out and push it through the 1/2 hose. Then it will push it through the emitters(thing you attached to the 1/2 hose and attached the 1/4 hose to the other end.)

This will cause it to drip on to your plants. All that is left is to set the timer correctly.

If that interests you, look up Drip Emitters, they are really cheap.