[Stan]

Is it possible that the heat was cumming from somewhere else? You even stated that insulating the reservoir on top had a big effect. Likely even from the reservoir sides and bottom, as well as the temperature differential as you run the water through the system.

I really believe the high water temps I would get in years past was due to running the air pump 24hrs a day. My coolers have always been shaded and off the ground using bricks. This year was the hottest year to date since I started growing hydroponically yet my reservoir temps were lower this year compared to prior years most likely due to only running the air pump at the same time the water pump would kick on.

I got the idea from someone that built an aeroponic system using that spray method, let me know if I can help you with it. He told me how he built it, and he pressurized it to around 90 psi for a fine mist and small water droplet size. He used a cycle timer for short bursts, around 3 seconds every 5 minutes or so I think (it was 3-4 years ago I talked to him). I have been meaning to build a aeroponic system like it ever since. With such short bursts, even with so many of them, he didn't go through as much water as you would think. That's why I'm so interested in how much water your plants were drinking up using the aeroponic method.

If you can I would like to know how your friend had set up his system. I would love to be able to use a cost effective High Pressure instead of a Low Pressure as I've read up they will use mush less water than I use now. Also would use less nutrients to.

P.S.
I always mark the inside of all my reservoirs. This way I will know exactly how much water to replace as the plants drink it up. That way the nutrient solution isn't to diluted or concentrated when I replace it. Knowing the volume of water I'm adding back also allows me to be able to average out how much water each plant is drinking daily.

Comparing different size plants isn't all that hard either. Just break it down to percentages. Like if a plants foliage is 25% bigger, I would expect it to drink 25% more water. Here is an example:

Example 1
Plant 2 is about 25% bigger than plant 1
plant 1- drinks 2 gallons of water per day
plant 2- drinks 2.5 gallons of water per day

Plant 2 is drinking 25% more water, but is also 25% bigger. Therefor I cam conclude that for it's size plant 1 is drinking the same amount of water as plant 2.

Example 2,
Plant-2 is 50% bigger than plant 1
plant 1- drinks 2 gallons of water per day
plant 2- drinks 3.5 gallons of water per day

In this example plant 2 is 50% bigger, but is drinking 75% more water than plant 1. Considering plant 2 is 50% bigger than plant 1, I would expect it to drink 50% more water as well. So 75% minus 50% (size difference) equals 25%. So I can conclude plant 2 is drinking 25% more water than plant 1 in an equal comparison, even though the plants are different sizes.

Anyhow that's how I do it.

Will start doing this next year and will log everything down. Will make a graph for the years grow.