Perpetual with DWC, Chilling Strategy?

Underground Scientist

Underground Scientist

Well-Known Member
I'm trying to figure out if anyone does perpetual grows without duplicating chillers or other gear. What I've started in soil is a 2 plant every 3 weeks cycle. So if I were to do 2 DWC bubble buckets always at different growth stages from the other 4 in flower and 2 in veg and clones rooting. It's probably fool hardy, but if I had a bunch of Rez changes every weekend, and topping off during the week, I could handle it. Maybe I should bite the bullet and scrap the perpetual. That would still leave me with plants in veg and flower. If I have to break down and buy a chiller and build these out RDWC, I still have 2 systems. Could it be done on 1 chiller? Like copper coiled heat exchangers in the buckets? IDK, all ears guys.
 
visajoe1

visajoe1

Well-Known Member
I think DWC is the wrong way to go for perpetual. I'm doing a single DWC now, and I cant imagine having to manage 6 different buckets at different growth stages and probably different strains. brain melter. for perpetual i would go drain to waste, if you wanna go hydro, using the medium of your choice (rw, coco, tupur, etc)
 
Organic Miner

Organic Miner

Well-Known Member
I had a RDWC system doing a perpetual grow, but was a duplicate setup; one for veg and for flower. It was pretty freaking awesome, but some may claim I over engineered it. Everything was duplicated, just bigger in flower. I will have to find some pics and upload. I grew some monster plants with 8 weeks of veg. To each their own though. I was finally getting the rotation nailed, when we sold our house and I had to rip it all out. I cried !
 
Underground Scientist

Underground Scientist

Well-Known Member
Organic Miner said:
I had a RDWC system doing a perpetual grow, but was a duplicate setup; one for veg and for flower. It was pretty freaking awesome, but some may claim I over engineered it. Everything was duplicated, just bigger in flower. I will have to find some pics and upload. I grew some monster plants with 8 weeks of veg. To each their own though. I was finally getting the rotation nailed, when we sold our house and I had to rip it all out. I cried !
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So were you chillin' both?
 
Organic Miner

Organic Miner

Well-Known Member
Yep, had 2 chillers. Best investment I ever made. I dicked around with dyi stuff, but at end of day it was more cost effective to just buy one. Got them off amazon. I think the veg was 1/4HP and the flower was 1/2HP. These are large, but so was my system. I ran an 16 bucket 100gal veg system, and 240gal flower system. So, you could get away with much smaller chillers. Both of my setups ran ar 68 degrees, even with the room temp at 82.
 
Underground Scientist

Underground Scientist

Well-Known Member
Organic Miner said:
Yep, had 2 chillers. Best investment I ever made. I dicked around with dyi stuff, but at end of day it was more cost effective to just buy one. Got them off amazon. I think the veg was 1/4HP and the flower was 1/2HP. These are large, but so was my system. I ran an 16 bucket 100gal veg system, and 240gal flower system. So, you could get away with much smaller chillers. Both of my setups ran ar 68 degrees, even with the room temp at 82.
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Right, I could do with the 1/10 and that probably wouldn't get much of a work out. My room is about 80 with the exhaust on half speed. When you hook em up, are you cycling the nutrient solution right through them? 260 bucks, its a chunk of change, but like you said...the DIY is just an inefficient, probably unstable, pain in the ass. There are $100 chillers on ebay that could do 2 buckets, but I'd probably be better off to just scrap 3 stages in flower and just do 4-6 buckets all at once. On another hand, I would feel better if I screwed something up, I would only lose or hurt two instead of the whole crop. Ugh...pain in the ass. I've just been thinking that plants grow better DWC, and I could worry less about unused nutes in the media, flushing, what the media is doing ph wise, trying to wait for perfect wet/dry cycles. I'd rather just keep an eye on ph, keep bennies in there, top up with water, and do a regularly maintenance nute change. I know it's like anything, I'll have to dial it in. I don't know, at this point, I have the gear to do whatever I want, minus the chiller.
 
Underground Scientist

Underground Scientist

Well-Known Member
Underground Scientist said:
Right, I could do with the 1/10 and that probably wouldn't get much of a work out. My room is about 80 with the exhaust on half speed. When you hook em up, are you cycling the nutrient solution right through them? 260 bucks, its a chunk of change, but like you said...the DIY is just an inefficient, probably unstable, pain in the ass. There are $100 chillers on ebay that could do 2 buckets, but I'd probably be better off to just scrap 3 stages in flower and just do 4-6 buckets all at once. On another hand, I would feel better if I screwed something up, I would only lose or hurt two instead of the whole crop. Ugh...pain in the ass. I've just been thinking that plants grow better DWC, and I could worry less about unused nutes in the media, flushing, what the media is doing ph wise, trying to wait for perfect wet/dry cycles. I'd rather just keep an eye on ph, keep bennies in there, top up with water, and do a regularly maintenance nute change. I know it's like anything, I'll have to dial it in. I don't know, at this point, I have the gear to do whatever I want, minus the chiller.
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My room outside the box is about 64 this time of year. My other idea was to use a good sized tote and toss in some frozen jugs. Use a temp controller to monitor control bucket temp, operating a recirculating pump and put a stainless steel wort chiller coil in each. Found some for $19 each. The problem is, if I let the tote get too warm, I will essentially be heating my rez. Half the year I could just be freezing/cooling jugs from the winter air. Or you can get an aluminum radiator for about 40 bucks and put a wort chiller in the rez and do some air cooling.

The other thing I'm not 100% on is if you RDWC guys are changing solution as often as the stand alone setups. Still digging and figuring out how I want to be setup.
 
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Underground Scientist

Underground Scientist

Well-Known Member
Underground Scientist said:
My room outside the box is about 64 this time of year. My other idea was to use a good sized tote and toss in some frozen jugs. Use a temp controller to monitor control bucket temp, operating a recirculating pump and put a stainless steel wort chiller coil in each. Found some for $30 each. The problem is, if I let the tote get too warm, I will essentially be heating my rez. Half the year I could just be freezing/cooling jugs from the winter air. Or you can get an aluminum radiator for about 40 bucks and put a wort chiller in the rez and do some air cooling.

The other thing I'm not 100% on is if you RDWC guys are changing solution as often as the stand alone setups. Still digging and figuring out how I want to be setup.
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I've torn an AC down where I could use it as a chiller, but I'm not feeling it. It isn't going to have the efficiency, and I just don't need to be wasting tons of electricity cooling water on a small setup.
 
Organic Miner

Organic Miner

Well-Known Member
My res's had auto fillers with RO water and each had its own PH/PPM monitor. Mind you, I sunk some cash into this setup, but it purred like a finely tuned Ferrari. I didn't swap out res's as often as some do; but also didn't over feed.

Another thing, my buckets were all insulated. I made extra effort to ensure room heat stayed out and cool water stayed in. I think a few extra bucks for Home Depot insulation paid off.
 
mytwhyt

mytwhyt

Well-Known Member
I used frozen water bottles for my igloo,led grow thread... Worked great, but what a pia it was... It also convinced me to buy a 1/10 hp chiller.. Insulating everything lets me run 3 waterfarms at a time...
 
Underground Scientist

Underground Scientist

Well-Known Member
mytwhyt said:
I used frozen water bottles for my igloo,led grow thread... Worked great, but what a pia it was... It also convinced me to buy a 1/10 hp chiller.. Insulating everything lets me run 3 waterfarms at a time...
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I'll end up getting one. I'm limited to 6 flowering, I might just do 4 dwc in the big box, and keep 2 soilless in the old veg box. Just run 2 boxes independently start to finish and tweak my skills on both and may the best method win.
 
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