First off, I want to say how much your work on this board is appreciated. I have read back through the last years posts and have seen you many times helping others to learn, giving your time and experience selflessly. Your patience and good humour coupled with your open mindedness is amazing, and I wish I could rep you more, and if I ever get the ability to do in the future I will.
My grow is in an overall state of flux, but the main thing that I have to be concerned about is having a foolproof watering system. Foolproof as far as any flooding of my growroom would be catastrophic and lead to immediate discovery. I live on the 2nd and third floor of a rented house, my grow is over my landlords daughters apartment.
I have lived here for 2 1/2 years, and I have an extremely low profile. I have confidence in my security from detection as I have no visitors that I don't control access of, I am not well known in the small town I live, my time is my own to spend as I wish because I am on disability, I have one inspection a year which is done at my convenience, I live alone in a quiet residential neighborhood ( a cop lives directly accross the street), I have no family within multiple hours distance, etc. I have wanted to get back into growing before ( I grew inside in the late 80's and early 90's) but, was stymied by the problem of ventilation and odor control. I stumbled onto this site and with the help of a community of stealth growers sharing, I was able to figure out the answers to those problems.
I have mulled over your well thought out suggestions, and was thinking of building in redundantcies such as multiple timers on backup pumps and such, and it is just too much risk. That and it starts to become complicated which is asking for failure. The beauty of gravity drain in the flood and drain system is foolproof and the main draw for me. Right now I am contemplating building as low a profile res as possible for my lower chamber and relying on ventilation to control heat in the res and some sort of tek, prob FIM, to control height. That would alter the SOG approach some but I am hoping not much.
The Al B Fuct approach is the template I am using, hence the seperate res, but I am altering the 2 week harvest to a 4 week harvest, and 4 res to two res. I have mutiple bookmarks on your teks from this thread and one of them is the weekly flowering ec levels that you use as so does Al B. It makes sense, and is proven. My grows will be comparitively small, but I think can be just as efficient and of sufficient yield for 1/4 to 1/2 lb monthly once the bugs are worked out. I am in no hurry, time is not an enemy. I don't plan on buying seeds till at least two full cycles through my setup, so that would mean sometime in mid to late fall. Right now I have only the top chamber built with a few cfls and nursery trays. I will be ordering a 400w HPS, ventilation gear and pumps, hoses,and fittings, next week.
Once again, thanks for your mentoring to so many on these boards and to your giving to this thread in particular. We all can make this one of the best threads on the site, which it actually already is, but it could become even more epic over time.
thank you very mind for the kind words.. i really do enjoy helping out and hearing success stories.. it makes me happy to know i am helping someone somewhere get the medicine they need and should be able to get!
so now back to your set up...
im sure within the confusion of everything i wrote it got way more complicated sounding than it should...
it would only require 3 pumps.. nothing big by any means... just 3.. and only 2 of which are on timers...
1 pump would be strictly for the top flood tray/res... if the top levels' res was on the floor, it would still be somewhat a gravity feed... the pump would stand only to push the water to the top tray.. it would run down the tray and back into the res via a return line gravity style..
the other 2 pumps would be for the bottom levels' res... only 1 of which is on a timer... the controller bucket (the stepping stone as i refered to it as) kicks on by itself when ever the water level rises enough to turn the float valves on... so if there is a pump in the res that is pushing water through the trays, which gets drained into the bucket, the pump in the bucket would automatically turn on (as needed) and empty back in the res... i really think this would be ideal for you.. mainly its because it would allow you to have a large res for the bottom and top levels... (no need to have a low profile res that doesnt hold enough water... especially when you only need to raise the trays maybe 6" off the ground)...
there are timers that you can get that can run 2 x 120v things from it... so you could potentially get 1 timer for the 2 pumps you need to run... thus cutting down on timers you have to worry about.. and again that 3rd pump will turn on and off automatically as needed.. so you dont have to worry about that...
as far as actual water leakings or home floodings you should have NOTHING to worry about.. the controller bucket is water tight.. its actually a modified version of the ebb and flood controller bucket i have made by the same company.. only difference is that my timer buckets have a timer that runs the ebb and flood cycles.. still has the same float switches and everything.. so i can promise you that its more than reliable...
even if you dont go that way, there are plenty of ways to ensure your system is water tight...
if you are open to some other ideas i have a few more also.. ones that would work and save you from using any timers at all.. just would need a pump per res... let me know if you are interested and ill spit it out..
everything else is sounding solid.. its nice that you have such a laid back aggressive approach.. ready to get things going but not over eager is a good thing.. too much excitement can sometimes lead to failure...
hopefully this thread continues to grow and i can continue to help people.. the hardest part of helping isnt the questions i have to answer.. its getting people to actually read this thread initial and start asking questions.. i have noticed tho that the people who asks questions in here are really concerned with growing good green... not just the "i have a closet in my bedroom at my parents house" type growers.... and for that i thank you all.. it makes it a lot more fun and interesting for me!