Blumats. Who's using them?

lusidghost said:

I started harvesting, so I've gotten to inspect the plants roots. Some of them look amazing, and some of them were rotted. The ones that were rotted were the same plants who were most affected by being wilted when my pressure reducer screen clogged. So I think since they were in such tiny pots, a little drought was enough to wipe out the bulk of their roots. They just weren't able to process the nutrients, which kept getting hotter and hotter since their was no runoff. I'm pretty convinced that the Blumats would have worked hadn't the screen clogged, and that probably wouldn't have been an issue if I was using regular sized pots.

I switched to rockwool slabs for my next cycle just to have an easy grow. During the grow after that I'm going to setup one tent with rockwool slabs and the other with 3 gallon pots and Blumats to see how it goes. I'm not bailing on them just yet.

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Jjgrow420 said:

Just pulled the auto (grape walker kush). Roots are looking great. This was fed with maxibloom and some powder Koolbloom in the last few weeks.
The hash off the scissors was insane, and tasted like grapes. There were no roots around the blumat itself but the rest of the pot was loaded View attachment 5084665View attachment 5084668

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LeastExpectedGrower said:

Looks great. After a few grows with GH Trio, I'm moving to Maxibloom for my next. Tired of the tweekiness of the 3-part and the Maxibloom/Lucas thing seems to work for so many and keeps things streamlined.

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Jjgrow420 said:

Ya I'm moving over to maxibloom. Had issues with the trio (Lucas). Res always gets chunks of crud in it while the maxibloom one stayed clean and clear the whole time minus some scum on the bottom. Plus is like 20 bucks for a bucketload. Lol and performs just as good if not better

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LeastExpectedGrower said:

I just never feel like I was quite dialing in GH Trio well enough, and the published schedules really could only give me sort of ratios rather than being functional on their own. Also the time involved in mixing ended up being novel for a few months but after that was a pain.

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lusidghost said:

I started harvesting, so I've gotten to inspect the plants roots. Some of them look amazing, and some of them were rotted. The ones that were rotted were the same plants who were most affected by being wilted when my pressure reducer screen clogged. So I think since they were in such tiny pots, a little drought was enough to wipe out the bulk of their roots. They just weren't able to process the nutrients, which kept getting hotter and hotter since their was no runoff. I'm pretty convinced that the Blumats would have worked hadn't the screen clogged, and that probably wouldn't have been an issue if I was using regular sized pots.

I switched to rockwool slabs for my next cycle just to have an easy grow. During the grow after that I'm going to setup one tent with rockwool slabs and the other with 3 gallon pots and Blumats to see how it goes. I'm not bailing on them just yet.

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Roger A. Shrubber said:

the only problems i've had with them so far were really my own fault. you have to let your pots get at least half way dry before you set the drip rate, or they'll flood your pots if they get very dry. seems like the mechanism operates too slowly in that circumstance, so do not set the drip rate when the pots are saturated, wait till they're quite dry

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crimsonecho said:

i can only suggest setting up a reservoir for your blumats because the pressure reducer on a faucet hasnt been very reliable for me in the past.

there was a time where it just stoped reducing the pressure alltogether and the brown thin lines which connects to the main thick lines were just blown from the connections and it almost flooded everywhere.

luckily i was attending to my plants when it happened and upon closer inspection i noticed the part of the hoses near the connections were looking bloated like there was abnormal pressure in the line so i unhooked the line from the faucet and realized the pressure reducer had failed.

i contacted the company and they sent me a replacement (without any charges internationally, twice cause first time it got held up at the customs) same thing happened with the replacement too after about 5-6 months so i just though this aint worth the risk and went with a reservoir instead of a live feed. they work great that way and you can monitor how much they drink that way too.

all in all i love blumats and their customer service is A+++

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lusidghost said:

I bought a Growtek setup that will be here on Monday. I'm still deciding if I should sell the Blumats or use them in a vegetable garden this summer. I still have a bunch of the soaker hose that I bought when I first experimented with them a couple of years ago.

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crimsonecho said:

i’d just set it up in my veggie garden man they do work great unless they fail
but they dont fail often and there are precautions to take for if they do. the most important one of them imo is to use a reservoir and not hooking them up directly to an outlet. in an outdoor veggie garden that kind of failure wouldn’t be catastrophic though.

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lusidghost said:

Good advice. I have 55 carrots I think, so I'll definitely over-do it on that end. Blumats have left me a little gun shy due to the issues I had, to be honest. But I won't mind screwing up some chili peppers nearly as much.

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crimsonecho said:

like you set the drippers at your desired moisture levels and they turn on when the moisture levels gets below that. the spinny brown dial thing on top is a pressure controller for a valve inside and it works with osmotic pressure of the carrots inside the soil.

when soil dries and the water inside the carrots creates pressure as it pushes to exit the carrot and this pressure opens the valve inside the top part of the carrot and drippers activate to water the pots and when there is equilibrium in the osmotic pressure between the water in the pots and the water inside carrots, the water inside carrots doesnt push to exit anymore and the valve closes.

the dial you spin is kinda adjusts how much osmotic pressure its gonna take to open the valve. so the tighter you turn it’ll take more pressure for them to open and the soil will dry out more before they kick in and its gonna take longer to reach that equilibrium.

atleast this is how i understood it lol

that said blumat suggests dialing them in when the medium is proper wet and keep adjusting from then on to find a sweet spot. in my experience i had a tiny flooding incident like you had but it was when i loosened the dial too fast because the soil was too dry. adjusments has to be made very carefully ime.

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Jjgrow420 said:

This is not true. The dial presses down on the little hose. When the pressure in the carrot rises or falls it moves the little pin on the bottom of the hose under the dial and starts/stops flow of water

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crimsonecho said:

yeah thats kinda what i meant with the word “valve”

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