Air supply

rkymtnman said:

wow, that sounds daunting. are you dead set on dwc? it'd be a nightmare to worry about pH, EC, root rot etc in 150 stand alone buckets.

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They’re all connected together to a reservoir I guess it rdwc is what I’m doing. The water pump that supplies the water to each bucket is sitting outside the reservoir so the water temps don’t get too high

JamesJames3 said:

They’re all connected together to a reservoir I guess it rdwc is what I’m doing. The water pump that supplies the water to each bucket is sitting outside the reservoir so the water temps don’t get too high

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yep, that's rdwc. have you thought about using a waterfall in each bucket instead of airstones/airpumps?

rkymtnman said:

yep, that's rdwc. have you thought about using a waterfall in each bucket instead of airstones/airpumps?

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Just like a constant drip into the bucket?

JamesJames3 said:

Just like a constant drip into the bucket?

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more like a constant splash but yes. you could skip all the airstones/airpumps.

JamesJames3 said:

Just like a constant drip into the bucket?

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JamesJames3 said:

Just like a constant drip into the bucket?

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You just need decent pressure and something to restrict the water flow on exit to make it spray a bit to agitate the water surface.
I use pvc caps with holes drilled in them to make a sprayer.

Thanks guys

JamesJames3 said:

Was wondering what you guys used for large scale growing on air pumps. I’ve got grow rooms that I’m setting up that will be 50 buckets and 100 bucket rooms.

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For really large systems an air compressor can feed all your rooms. Just calculate how many CFM you need and run a good sized pressure tank to prevent excessive cycling on and off. Scroll compressors can be very quiet and supply constant large volumes, properly sized they are the way to go for large commercial grows that use DWC. Kaeser comes to mind. You can even run an air to air or air to water aftercooler (intercooler) if you wanna drop the temp on the compressed air. Pipe in high pressure lines to all your rooms and put a regulator where you tap in. Really large grows can run on one compressor but it's good to have a backup.

Renfro said:

For really large systems an air compressor can feed all your rooms. Just calculate how many CFM you need and run a good sized pressure tank to prevent excessive cycling on and off. Scroll compressors can be very quiet and supply constant large volumes, properly sized they are the way to go for large commercial grows that use DWC. Kaeser comes to mind. You can even run an air to air or air to water aftercooler (intercooler) if you wanna drop the temp on the compressed air. Pipe in high pressure lines to all your rooms and put a regulator where you tap in. Really large grows can run on one compressor but it's good to have a backup.

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Hes talking over 3000 buckets. amusing 15lpm per site.
If my math was correct hed need like 1800CFM total. 6 figures worth of compressor

At 15lpm per site I get 1589 CFM. This one is just an example, it's close at 1300 CFM. This is what I am talking about. Commercial grade. IMO way less maintenance hassle than a shit ton of smaller pumps plugged in everywhere.

This Kaeser is close at 1300 CFM, but they make bigger ones...

Thing is at the PSI involved you wont need that big of a compressor. Get with the sales company and they will help you size based on your requirements. Then you will have an optimized setup.

But hey, what do I know.

Renfro said:

But hey, what do I know.

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obviously more about this subject than I do. my numbers were way off and probably was figuring too high of psi to each site.
Was just trying to get the point across that it will be expensive and probably better ways to do it.
Im actually interested in finding out why I was so far off.

Your compressor feeds a high pressure storage tank, say set at 100 PSI. The lines in the building distribute the high pressure. Where you want a place to jack in some plants you pop a regulator and a gauge so you can drop the pressure to where it needs to be. Jack your plants into the lines in groups that can be fed by a certain size line, like 1/2" feeding a manifold that runs say 20 sites or whatever...

The key is that the compressor can feed so many CFM at say 100 PSI, but we won't be using it at that much PSI so the compressor doesn't have to supply nearly as much air (we are compressing it). So I believe when the numbers are ran by the folks at Kaeser, they would size the compressor much smaller than you would imagine.

In the end you end up with a cleaner setup where you dont have pumps plugged in everywhere and pumps dying every other day (more pumps = more failures). I think two pumps is ideal for a certain distribution area, one of them as a backup pump.

For example, the hydrofarm air pump I just looked up, it puts out 25 lpm at 2.464 psi for 12 watts.

The low PSI makes the task really easy and the high pressure system supplying it can likely be regulated at a much lower pressure than 100 PSI thus easing the pumps job.

Basically we need say 3 PSI and 15 lpm per site. That job is not so insurmountable as it may seem. I am sure the folks at Kaeser would be able to supply a compressor system thats energy optimized for the task.

There is also the potential to integrate a heat exchanger after the compressor to drop the air temperatures.

Cool, thanks for the crash course. I enjoy being educated.
That makes way more sense that way. I could see the distribution system, it just seem like itd take a massive compressor
I dont even remember what I calculated or how but I guess yesterday I felt like I knew more about those than I do.
Hopefully the op comes back, that seems more reasonable that it first appeared and may be feasible considering the size of what theyre working with. Ill stick to what I know and just tag you in stuff like this lmao

What we need is an air demand analysis spreadsheet. Then we could plug in some numbers like 3000 "tools" running at 3 PSI and 15 LPM and then see what we require at the source.

I can just imagine that we have a compressor with a 100 PSI tank thats full, say it's a 100 liter tank, and you are drawing off the regulator at only 3 PSI feeding a 15 LPM airstone, that tank would run for a long while before the tank pressure dropped below 3 PSI. A lot longer than the 00:06:40 that you get dividing 100L by 15 LPM.

My assumption is that they would supply a larger volume / lower pressure type system.