Yoda's Recirculating bubble Buckets

Hello everyone,
I've been perusing this thread for some construction ideas to adapt to a new mother plant system. Kudos to Budslinger / Yoda for the great idea, and to the others who have contributed their knowledge & experience as well.
I read the first several pages to get the good how-to stuff, and the last several to see current updates. One question I noticed popping up more than once - how to empty the damned thing for nute changes / cleaning??? Someone had used some kind of dump stick (?), another suggested a shop-vac, might have missed others. There's actually a very simple way to empty, that I invented & have patents pending (yeah, yeah, let the bullshit fly, I know...).
Pop the lid from the res, disconnect the 1/2" line from the pump, plug a scrap piece back onto the pump outlet, and shove that piece into a standard garden hose. Turn on the pump & watch magic happen. If you're particularly devious when it comes time to do this, you can run the other end of the hose into your neighbor's car, bedroom window, wherever.
Once the res is almost empty & the pump starts sucking air, turn the pump on its side & tilt the res; almost all can be drained. Turn off the pump, dump several gallons of water in, give it a quick scrub and/or bleaching, followed by another pump / flush cycle with fresh water & you're good to go.
BTW, if you use bleach, I strongly recommend an extra rinse & flush, followed by a good air drying.

Another common question / comment cycle centered around positioning of the buckets' inlet and outlet heights (which one on top?) to help prevent roots from clogging the return lines.
My thinking is, if both are at the same level in the bucket, at sufficient height to establish a healthy nutrient depth, the roots will never be able grow into the drain. And, if a pump failure ever occurs, you will have reserve nutes in each pod that will not be able to drain back to the reservoir. That's particularly important for me, since my res will be below the RDWC pods.

Has anyone ever tried this? Or think of any reasons to not try it?

And never mind the humor parts of my post, I needed some laughs today. This is all good stuff & nothing to laugh about in this thread!!!

 

I posted a few back that I use a spare hose with the pump in the res to drain to a sink and finish off with a shop vac for cleaning and the same method to do a res change, the water level hits the pump and it does about a 80% water change for me

To do almost 97% from the res you can use a battery operated pump with a hose

 

most of the time the roots float in the water & with the pump just set to just let the nutes trickle through the system you will not get blocked return lines.

i find that having the res at the same hight as the buckets and the return lines at the bottom of the buckets, it's easy to drain when needed & the only time one of my returns slowed down was when i turned my pump up to much and the roots then followed the water flow, i turned the pump back down and it has not happened again since.
don't forget that what ever hight you put the return pipes at in your buckets, the water below will not drain out
middy

 

I have a 2 bucket setup (1-5gal res & 1-5gal grwo bucket). I have a 70gph pump with 3/8 line since that was all Menards had. I am having a problem of my res bucket being about half as full as the plant bucket. Would using 1/2" tubing fix this? Or should I add another bucket? (I wont use it for now, but will in the future)

 

[quote name='"tharealmclovin"']I have a 2 bucket setup (1-5gal res & 1-5gal grwo bucket). I have a 70gph pump with 3/8 line since that was all Menards had. I am having a problem of my res bucket being about half as full as the plant bucket. Would using 1/2" tubing fix this? Or should I add another bucket? (I wont use it for now, but will in the future)[/quote]

Definitely go with atleast half inch line and I would say a smaller pump wont hurt either

 

I am making a new one with 1/2". 70gph is the smallest I can find locally. I will
Just throttle it down and add a second bucket.

 

Good call...I've seen people using as small as 60gph for 4 bucket setups. My first attempt I used a 396 for a 4 bucket and it totally didn't work. I ended up with a 185 and still I plugged a line with roots

 

Is there any way to section off the bucket so the roots can't get in there. Maybe like a cup for a jock strap. Lol

Or the urinal cake screen.

 

If i'm understanding right you're looking for a tiny scrreen to fit in your outlet hole 1/2''? I use a airator. It's the screen that fits in your kitchen faucet and airates the wtr. They are available in any plumbing section iin big bx store

 

That's what I'm looking for. Does it stop clogs??

 

Yes it has for me. I used to have roots grow thru my drain down into my res and start mainlining nutes and then clog it causing overflow .my systm is ebb&flow dwc so the res is below the deep dish tray not parallel but it should work

 

Awesome. Off to lowes I go.

 

Screen for pipes work too

 

Yoda always making sense and being helpful.

 

if your smallest pump is to big and you need it slower you can put a ''T'' after the pump, one side to the buckets and the other side stays in the res with a open/close fitting on the end .
just open up the fitting to slow down the flow.
middy

 

Yoda is the King Budmister

 

I am pretty sure that has been posted by a few other people beside myself, justmeagain and Yoda... You just remove the outlet hose off the pump in your rezzy and attack a long piece of half in heater hose cut to whatever length you need to reach the drain area and turn your pump back on untill the system is just about empty and then use a small shop vec to suck out the remaining couple pints. In order for this to work your return lines MUST be at the bottom of your buckets so that your buckets can drain back to the rezzy once you start pumping the level down.

I am not sure why this is still a problem in this thread... It is such a simple concept.

***Note- I have a 366gph spare pump that I actually drop in the rez to drain my system and it actually drains the whole thing in about 4 minutes as opposed to waiting 12 mins with my 32gph system pump. This comes in handy because I like t refill my system 2 times with clean water to flush off the roots and get the system nice and clean so that when I refill it and add my flowering nutes I am actually starting clean with no residue to mess up my starting ppm readings.

60 gph???? I use a 32gph for 6 buckets!!! Works like a trickling dream!! 60 for 4 buckets sounds way too high still!! Especially once the bucket is packed with roots and the flow is not as clean and easy as it was when the system is empty.

Funny story... I have 3/4 return lines so in my infinite wisdom I thought I would really do my system good and have great flow with a 366gph pump since my return lines were 3/4 instead of 1/2 inch. Once I had everything together and filled the system I turned it on expecting to maybe have to adjust my flow down a "tad"... So I flipped the switch and within seconds all 6 buckets were about to overflow and the rezzy water level dropped to almost nothing!! Even with that pump flow turned all the way down it still was wayyy too much for my system. The 32gph pump was the 4th one I tried cause I THOUGHT the more flow the better but in the end I should have just listened to Yoda in the 1st place. Even the 32gph pump can overflow a bucket easily if my return line gets restricted but it had only happened once cause I was using a pipe screen which is wayyy too fine and stops alot of little stuff that would normally just through thru the lines without a problem. Moral of this story.... LISTEN TO THE OLD DUDE!!! He has alot of knowledge in the 400year old little green brain of his!!

Guys these types of screens are way to fine and WILL catch little root pieces and they will be stuck on the screen and held there with flow holding it against the screen. If you get a couple little pieces of junk stuck on that screen you will have a flood. It is OK to have pieces flow back to the rezzy thru the return lines.. What you don't want is to have the roots that are still attached to the plant work into the return lines. 99% of the time no screen is even necessary if you don't have too much flow cause you wont have a heavy suction in the drain line pulling the roots into it. If you trickle water in your drain lines will have flow back that is virtually undetectable. I would go with no screen instead of a fine screen. If you wanna use anything then use bulkhead fittings from a flood table and they have a strainer on them that is a good size to still let small pieces flow thru. They come with screens you can attach on the end and also extensions if you want or need to make them longer. I personally just use the fitting with the screen on the inside of it without any of the extensions. The bulkhead fitting by itself is in the last pic. The other pics show the additional pieces and show them assembled. Also these will NEVER EVER leak. Much more reliable than push thru grommets.

Are you tired of saying it yet?? Do you feel like you wanna start telling the ones that wont listen to ??

 

So i was about to dive in to the whole Under Current with 2'' pipes and Uniseals that everyone says is not worth the money and found this thread. Budslinger thanks for saving me a ton of money and a way better concept. I love the top feed and gravity return not to mention about $300 savings.

 

Hey, I've been reading this thread for quite a while now.
I just made the system you posted, I love it very much. I however did not have enough room for a big rez so for now I'm using just a 5 gallon bucket. But I don't mind- Its way better than lifting a lid on a tote with 3 huge plants on it and feeding.