Auto Drip Irrigation For CoCo

You gotta love Amazon Prime. My filter and drip line spikes were delivered this morning.

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This filter should keep the system clean.

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Hey Troy, nice irrigation setup you've got. I just put together a couple little systems for my two 4x4 tents. I was wondering if you chose a diaphragm pump for a specific reason or if it was just something you had on hand?

It's interesting how many different ways there are to do this. Mine are simply 5 gal buckets, with a 160 gph pump attached to a 12" riser coming out of the top of the bucket, with a 8-port manifold at the top of the riser pipe. Then I just run the same length of 1/4" tubing to each pot ( regardless if it needs that length, to keep the flow/pressure equal as I can ). If the manifold leaks it just goes back into the bucket. I spliced in little shut-off valves into the tubing, and one extra for recircuation into the resevoir or to take samples, and also to prevent siphoning through the sub-pump once it shut off since it's an open design.




My water rings are like yours with the barbed tees, but I put mine facing downward instead. Plus I can't seem to generate enough pressure to be able to really run out of more than 3 outlets per pot. I'm thinking if I switched to a larger pump it would help, but so far it's been doing a good job anyway.

I grow in soil so I used a 7-day timer, and just have it come on Mon, Thurs and Sunday. It pumps 400 mL a minute, and since I usually watered a quart every 3 days I just run them for 2 minutes at a time.

So do you have problems with the barbed tees clogging up at all? I only run plain water in mine so far, but have been thinking about putting some nutrients in the resvoir. Nervous it will clog stuff up though.
 
Nice looking watering system. I initially had purchased the diaphragm pump for use with a DWC on my last grow. The main item I needed for the pump was it had to be self priming. It is a pretty neat pump for the money. It has an auto shut off pressure that is adjustable up to 125 psi. Not very usable in our application. It is designed for things like a water system in a mobile home where you want pressure on the system when you turn on the faucet.

I positioned my barbed T's up so that I could see how much water was coming out of each one for tuning as well as when my plants have filled the tent I can verify if water is flowing.

I had the same problem as you with no more than about 2 lines on each manifold. I solved it by making a PVC manifold with 3 raisers. I have 1 - 2 line manifold on each. Not sure if increasing the pressure would help. My pup puts out 120 psi and unless clamped blows the hoses off the connection to the manifold.

My tent is a bit of a jungle now and I have been watering them 2x a day (growing in CoCo.

 
Nice Troy, that's a lot of good information. I suppose I'll stick with the pump I have given that information. So if I understand you right, you created 3 risers going from one pump, and then connected each riser to a 2 port manifold? That seems pretty interesting. So theoretically, I could modify my design by splitting the riser off to a T pipe, then hook an elbow-joint on each end of the T, and put a 2-port manifold on each?

Also makes sense about why they're turned upward now. I've just been pulling my water rings up to inspect the flow and it's a pain in the butt. Probably gonna turn mine upward now too, but I'm not sure they'll be putting out enough pressure to fountain like yours. To make sure mine all had the right flow, I disconnected each hose end from the water-ring, and put the end into a mason jar and timed the output for 1 minute. I guess overall the system is actually capable of 400ml/Min per outlet, so it's really pushing more like 2.4 liters per minute through the whole system. I try to aim for a 1-2 minute run every 2-3 days, and with my living-organic soil keeping it moist is optimal.

I've been thinking about checking out coco. Have the drip system for it now afterall. My whole reason for going with soil was the attractiveness of not working as hard and using water-only, but it hasn't been panning out. Tough dialing a soil mix in, my plants are yellow as heck this cycle. They're still filling the tent out nicely though.

 
My initial design was like yours with a 6 port manifold. I could only get enough pressure to run 1 or 2 rings.

I just built a PVC line that goes down one side of the tent - bends and goes along the back of the tent -

I had to buy a reducer to connect the pump to the 1/2" PVC - I think my pump tubing is an OD 3/8. BTW my pump and solution container is outside the tent.


I then put in 2 T - Slip Slip Trhread, I L Slip Slip Thread and one 90 degree slip thread (for the end).

If I were to redo it I think I would go with only one drip line from each raiser and have 6 raisers. It seems like there isn't enough pressure to push through the 1/4" tubing.


Sorry for quality of picture the tent is rally full.

I wasn't getting much pressure when I had the 6 manifold and really increased with the 2x. I was away for 5 days and it did a great job (needless to say I was worried). I set mine to run for 2 minutes a day and it pumps about 2-3 gallons among the 6 plants.
 
I decided to give up on using emitters and instead decided to use barbed "T's". I have a on/off flow valve on each ring and it does a good job of balancing.

I also found the 6 port manifold wasn't diving enough water so created a L shaped PVC line with 4 raisers. I put a 2 prong manifold on 3 of them and a 3/8" to 1/2 connector to the pumps water line. Finally I turned the cut off pressure from 90 PSI to about 40 PSI.

So far I'm happy but have some final additions. I purchased a in-line filter and some drip line stakes to hold the rings in place.

Here's a video of it pumping at about 5 liters a minute.

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Troy, very cool video. Looks perfect to me.
 
Troy, very cool video. Looks perfect to me.
It really worked well for me and I used it for my complete grow. Now that I have harvested or moved the first grow plants out of the big tent, I need to re-set it up for the 6 new girls that took their place.

One thing I learned and will modify in the next grow is placing all the adjustment valves near the front of the tent to easier adjust the flow. The way I had them initially was the valve was at each plant. To adjust I would have to crawl in and try to adjust.
 
It really worked well for me and I used it for my complete grow. Now that I have harvested or moved the first grow plants out of the big tent, I need to re-set it up for the 6 new girls that took their place.

One thing I learned and will modify in the next grow is placing all the adjustment valves near the front of the tent to easier adjust the flow. The way I had them initially was the valve was at each plant. To adjust I would have to crawl in and try to adjust.

Yea that would make it handy, instead of crawling around in there. Might break a limb if not careful.
 
Yea that would make it handy, instead of crawling around in there. Might break a limb if not careful.

I just finished up re-setting up the watering system for the new girls. I also added one thing that wasn't listed before. Someone here turned me onto a quick disconnect fitting for the drip system. Makes it easier if I need to take a plant out. Just tested it and it is running really nicely.
 
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