2L DWC descrippy, by DP:
donpaul.p;1604673 said:right mate, here is a quick guide, hopefully you can follow it, i cant do a video as my fone is to crappy,
so you start off with a 2ltr pop bottle, now where i have marked it with tape is roughly where you want to cut it, so id cut this at the bottom of the tape, then the top part becomes the growing medium to hold the plant in, same as a net pot, so in theory you could use clay pellets in the top the same as hydro or a big dwc. then the bottom part becomes the res, make sure the res is covered to stop light getting to the roots and the liquid as this will cause algae to form in the res
i cut this a bit to short, the top part needs to be about an inch bigger than the one in the pic, you will see further down what i mean
so now you have the part that holds the plant and the res
below is a working model so you can see exactly what i did, now the top part that holds the plant has holes poked around the neck so the roots can grow out of here as well as out of the hole where the lid usually screws on, these next pictures will show you my actual 2ltr dwc and how it works, i poke a hole in the top of the res so i can feed an air pipe through and this then attatched to an air stone in the bottom of the res, i have grown with an air stone and without and to be honest it made very little difference, but i prefer to use it as the water dont get used up as quick when the plant is young so i like to have air in their to stop any issues with the roots
here you can see the air pipe coming out of a hole near the top of the res
below is the top part that the plant is held in and this is the part that allows the roots to grow through it into the res
now below you can clearly see the roots coming out of the hole where the lid usually screws on, but you can also see the holes i poked around the neck of the bottle as the roots also grow out of here, now i fill the top with soil and then take the lid of the bottle off, this stops soil falling out as you fill it,
some growers prefer to leave the lid on the bottle and drill holes in it to let the roots grow through, how ever i found the roots become restricted as they dont have much space to grow through, by leaving the lid off the roots are not forced through any holes and they grow freely as you can clearly see
now for the res, what i do is test fit the top part into the bottom part, then i mark where the lid of the top part is when its put together, this gives me a guide on how far to fill it with liquid, i always make sure their is about half an inch gap between the bottom of the top part and the liquid in the res, doing this stops the bubbles in the water loosening the soil and allowing it to fall into the res, so their is about half an inch of root that is not in the res, this is the best method and works well
now you can see both pieces so you can work out the rough size
not the best guide mate but it should give you some idea of what i was doing and did, if you have any problems give me a shout, its pretty easy once you have made 1, it works well and the roots and the plant grow like crazy when the roots hit the res, i dont put any liquid in the res till i can actually see the roots starting to grow out of the top part, as soon as i see this i fill the res up, they are not very stable with no water in the res, and later on in the grow it can become top heavy so it needs to be on a flat surface, as the plant uses up the liquid in the res then this makes it top heavy, once the res is full its pretty stable,
when the plant is in flower it will drink all the liquid in the res in about 36 hours at the most, so keeping on top of it is something that needs doing, i check mine daily to check levels and top up as needed,
hope thats some help to you mate
