New guys take on a DWC, with pics.

[PaulF]

Originally Posted by biloyp

Your cucs will want to spread out and your tomatoes will want to grow up and out. To me it seems that you may not have enough space but keep going with it and see what happens. As for pollinating, I believe both need some help from bees or maybe shaking them might help (not sure). I am gonna grow lettuce and pepper since peppers are self pollinating and lettuce don't flower. I am going to try and grow lettuce and peppers fro now and maybe jump into tomatoes later. I would say keep going with what you have, keep good records and post so we can all learn and contribute to the world of hydroponics!

Hey biloyp-

I'm with you, I think the cukes and tomatoes are going to need a lot more space. But for the time being I'm going to do as you suggest and just keep on going with what I have. Pollination of the tomatoes will be handled with a little oscillating fan mounted on the wall, from what I have read they are very easy to pollinate. The cukes I will pollinate by hand by taking male flowers and dabbing them on the female flowers, should I even make it that far! I will hopefully keep this post updated with progress as I go.

Originally Posted by halfway

Paul, do you intend on supplementing with hps for red spectrum when it comes time to flower and fruit those maters and cukes? I am interested in seeing your solution.

The lighting system is what is preventing me from moving to flowering veggies because of initial expense and continuing expense. You caught a great deal on the light setup, so that puts you well ahead of the curve. Adding the red spectrum (to me) seems to be the challenge.

Great setup!

As much as I would love to supplement with HPS I am trying to keep the budget on the shoestring level. I know there are HPS conversion bulbs available that will work in a MH fixture but I am just going to stick with the MH bulb as the conversion bulbs cost more than I paid for the entire MH fixture shipped to my door!

Keep an eye on E-Bay if you are interested in doing an indoor HID setup. There are a bunch of hi-bay fixtures on there right now for the same amount I paid for mine. My biggest concern is what it will do to my electric bill. The lights are designed around a 220 volt power source. So I am assuming that the amp draw is going to go up being fed from a 110 volt feed. Therefore I assume the 400 watt bulb is probably drawing the same as say maybe a 600 watt bulb, although that is only a guess at best! But even at 400 watts running 16 hours a day I am sure there will be a significant jump in my monthly bill.

Don't underestimate the lowly MH light for your entire veggie grow from start to finish. There are A LOT of documented grows out there that used MH from start to finish and have had great results. Admittedly they are for marijuana but the principles are still pretty much the same. I'm not in this at all for pot growth but I have to say, the folks that have documented their marijuana grows online have helped me a lot with ideas and tips!

Judging by what I see online, if people put as much effort into growing vegetables in their closets as they do growing pot I think a lot of grocery stores would have no need for a produce section!

[GpsFrontier]

My biggest concern is what it will do to my electric bill. The lights are designed around a 220 volt power source. So I am assuming that the amp draw is going to go up being fed from a 110 volt feed.

You can tell exactly what the light is costing you with a kill a watt meter, they come in all diffract models, as well as with different features, and price ranges. But they will all tell you how much a particular appliance is costing to run, and I have seen them at Lowe's and Home Depot for under $20 (possibly even less on eBay).

[PaulF]

1 Week In

My first weekly update. It works, I shouldn't be surprised but it is actually working!

So far so good. With the light on a 16 hour cycle the grow room makes it almost to 70 degrees during the day. Not overly warm but better than I had initially thought.

Check out the growth on my cukes! They are rockin'! Surprisingly there are NO roots coming out of the bottoms of the pots yet. I am a little surprised at that to be honest but the plants are definitely growing well. My other seedlings are still a ways off from being ready to transplant so it's just gonna be the cukes for a bit longer. I'll be anxious to see how they look in another week.

[biloyp]

Hey Paul,

Yeah you are correct about the current draw concerning the 400 watt @ 110 vac and the 600 @ 220 vac. They are about the same so the power savings won;t be so great. But I have seen a T5 HO (High output) floursc, fixtures online wfor about $175. To that is a bit much. On that same site, you can purchase T5 Blue or Red Spectrim lamps for a decent price. So if you are electrically inclined, buying the parts necc. it is possible to build your own. I am thinking of doing this but for now, I want to get my DWC, lettuce and leafy green system gong first. But when I do build my own T5 light fixture, I will be willing to share how to do it.

Anyways, I spent some time getting my supplies together for my first ever DWC system. I initially went on Amazon.com and found everything I needed to start. Net cups, propagation material, Nutrients, PH/TDS meter, heat mat, growing medium etc. Anyways, the total came to about $120. But the shipping was about $60 alone. So I shopped around and ordered from 4 different sites and got everything I needed for under $100 and shipping way under the $60.

So my lesson learned was to definitely shop around for your supplies. When my supplies arrive, I will post more and some pics as well. Take care and Happy Hydroponic'ing.

[PaulF]

hey biloyp-

Thanks for the encouragement! Please do post pics when you get started. For me a lot of this is a guessing game so it is always good to see others peoples arrangements.

Today makes two weeks on from my planting and things are going pretty good. I am implementing some big changes for next week though!

1: I ordered an el-cheapo E-Bay LED panel. It supposedly is equivalent to a 250W HPS but draws only 14 watts. It will help with the tremendous amount of electricity that the MH is currently drawing and do away with the annoying 60 cycle hum that is so prevalent in my house. Even being housed behind the TUFF-R, which admittedly does do a good job of muffling the hum, it is still annoying. So we will see if these LED panels actually work.

2: I ordered a 1500 Watt space heater to go in the grow room. I am thinking of putting the heater on the same timer the grow light is currently on. And I think keeping the room at a constant 75 degrees F during the light on cycle should be very easy to do for not much cost. The whole grow room is only 16 Sq Ft! An added benefit is that the space heater has a blower in it to help stir the air in there.

And I thought I would post up the pictures of week 0, week 1, and week 2. There is some definite growth happening but STILL no roots out the bottom of the pots! I can see a root system going in one of the pots but it has yet to acutally leave pot and extend down into the nutrients, although the bottoms of the pots are submerged so the roots are by default bathed in the solution. My tomato seedling have great second leaves and are getting rather spindly so I think they will be planted over the weekend. I can't wait.

Zero week. (Anyone who has been through USAF basic training will be familiar zero week. )



Week one.



And week two. Definite good growth since last week.

[biloyp]

1500 watt space heater @ 110 vac is about 12 amps. Just make sure your timer can handle that much current plus whatever else you have going through your timer. If you can run it off of 220v then the current draw will be about half that.

An LED panel that draws 14 watts, to me that sounds like a lot for LED's. Are these the real bright ones cuz not all LED's are the same. But if they work for you then go for it. BUt now you have a space heater drawing a fair amount of current and LED lamps drawing a good amount. To me that is a lot of current. Just plz be careful of the heat buildup through your timer.

Your plants are looking pretty good. I was thinking about your cucs and how they will want to crawl up a little but definitely out. I used an old screen door or trellis to let them crawl on.

If I can get a bit of time between a bedroom renovation and work, I can't wait to get started on building my DWC and also propagating for outside planting as well.

Well keep up the good work and again plz be careful with the heat buildup.

P.S. Not sure what Zero week is but I am an retired Coastie and might it be similar to your last week in boot camp?

[PaulF]

Big changes for this week!

My electric bill showed up and the 400W metal halide light only increased my electric bill by $15.00. So I guess it wasn't all that bad. But sadly the light developed a very annoying habit of shutting off on its own anytime there was a power draw somewhere else in the house, i.e. fridge coming on, power tool being run, etc. etc. etc. I think it is an undercurrent issue. These lights really are designed to be run on 220 VAC not 110. So I guess I decided to redo my lighting at just the right time.

I did my first nutrient change. My tote had popped open on one side due to the water making it bow out. I left it like that for 3 days. It turns out 3 days is more than enough time for algae to start growing like mad! So I ended up draining the reservoir and spending about 20 minutes wiping every square inch of the interior that had green algae all over. I mixed fresh nutrient solution and bumped up the strength according to the General Hydroponics directions. It seems to be working awesome! I also secured the top of the tote with some clothespins, low tech, but it works.

My LED panel that I bought on E-Bay showed up. I was pretty underwhelmed. They claim it produces as much light as a 250W HPS bulb. I'm thinking probably not. Here is how it looked in the finished install. It just didn't seem to produce enough light to put it anywhere else. This was probably $33.00 thrown away but who knows, maybe it will work out great.



I decided I was going to need A LOT more light to replace the MH fixture. So I built a very low tech CFL fixture. I used a piece of 6" air duct style pipe I bought at Lowes. I put two bulb sockets in it. I bought 100W CFL bulbs, one in the 6500K range and one in the 3500K range. I thought it was a pretty clever way to cover the full spectrum of light to be honest! It only took about 20 minutes to put together and cost a bit under $30.00. Here are the parts sitting on my table.



And here is the finished light hanging in my grow room. It provides an astonishing amount of illumination! In the first picture you can clearly see the two different colored bulbs. Notice in both pics you can see my little ceramic space heater. This has helped out a lot I think. Also notice my seedlings sitting under the light. They are waiting to be transplanted.





And finally a grow update. I planted the tomatoes two days ago and they have shown growth already, I'm impressed! The cukes are really starting to roll now. I hope this keeps going this well!



To close out this weeks update I'll tell you that the flexible air stones I bought suck. They get clogged up with something, I'm not sure what and need to be wiped off every few days or they start putting out almost no air. I may just drop the air hose in the reservoir and let it bubble like that.