++Hellraizers++ DO AND DONTs and in and outs of the ebb&grow/ebb&flow systems

phillipchristian said:

That's what I'm working toward for early next year. Might DIY a small 4-6 site system and trial it for a while. I have everything I would need short a few air stones. The Current Culture systems are SOO expensive for some pumps and PVC. You could DIY a system for like a 1/5th of what they charge. I'm thinking 10gal. buckets with a 16gal. control bucket. I wanna do shorter distances than they advertise. No need to waste all that space.

That's gonna be a HUGE reservoir. Hope you don't plan on swimming in it too. You need to add some chemicals to a water cooling reservoir that you might not want to be bathing in.

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hellraizer30 said:

How much should i add to the res?

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cerberus said:

yeah they charge a lot because people hate DIY, and the UC is pretty tech but imho if you can't build that system you have no right trying to run it. good call bro.

I was thinking i might be able to skip those chems, and just run chlorine in the summer, and some sort of anti-freeze in the winter (unless 10K worth of heat keeps her open all winter!) lol

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hellraizer30 said:

Ok phillip il go with 25% plus il use distiled water

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cerberus said:

fragile plants = tech
lots of fittings = tech
lots of float flaves (at least what i have seen)


still a great system.

p.s.

i have afriend that just froze out all the radiators on his condinsorless chiller because the tmps got to cold and no glyc.. :/

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cues said:

Back to the subject, my biggest tip is to take the pumps out every 4 weeks and flush them through with white vinegar, whilst running for an hour, then flush with clean water and replace. Stops calcium build-up blocking them.

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phillipchristian said:

I'm a real estate developer so I know a lot about plumbing and electrical. I guess to me it doesn't really seem that complicated. Buckets, Grommets, PVC, T-Ball Valves, Mag Drive Pump, Air Pump, Air Stones, Wort Coil, 1 Float Valve. No more work than a DWC or Ebb & Flow would be.

As for the plants being fragile, I think all hydro plants are fragile. Maybe UC more than other but I don't know cause I haven't tried it yet.

That sucks about your buddy. I blew a 5hp chiller like that a while back when the pump when out. Got a HVAC guy to repair it though. Wasn't too bad on the wallet. Had to throw portable a/c units in the room and some DIY fixes for other things on the fly. Plants never really recoved fully though. They were getting fried for like 5 hours before I knew what was going on.

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cerberus said:

I think we agree on this 100%, in my life tech doesn't mean hard just means being on top of it. The uc seems to be more fragil than other water, lower ppms, much higher wattage, yada yada.. that being said, i'll have a UC grow at some point.


yeah it sucks for him, but he's going to give me the unit to get it out of his garage, "i don't know if you can fix radiators or not, i don't care. get your truck and get it outta here" his loss my gaine.. i don't think i'll need it w/ the 25,000 gal rez but hey, overkill? lol

so, you see any issue with running reg pool supplies during the summer and being able to swim in it?



@cues, i also like using bioclean in a 5 gal w/ hot water and run for a half hour or so, then rince. clean pumps run better.. i'm assuming your talking for nutes and not chillers.

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phillipchristian said:

Yea, you do need to be on top of that system it seems. I have flood tables now that are filled with hydroton and my plants sit in mesh pots fille with hydroton. I've been talking about doing something else for so long but out of all of the hydro systems I have tried this is just SOOO easy. I don't have to really worry about anything. The UC doesn't look so complicated from a engineering standpoint, but it sure does seem like you have little margin for error with the plants themselves. Fantastic results though. That's why I wanna try it.

How big is the chiller? I really don't think it's even worth it to put it on the pool. I asked Pat over at Chillking about putting my 5hp chiller on my pool after I got it fixed and he said it wouldn't even make a dent in the temps. The ambient air and sunlight will heat the pool but then the hot water return from my room would just be too much in that large of a reservoir. That's why chiller reservoirs are so small. The reservoir on my 12hp chiller is 30 gallons. I have a 65,000 gallon pool and it needs a 10h AquaCal Heat Pump (Chiller) just to keep it cool and I'm not pumping any hot water into it. I think you'd need a big chiller to do what you plan on doing. You could probably keep the pool relatively cool just by evaporation and sprinklers but you really need the water to be like 60 degrees to use it as a heat exchanger in your room.

I don't see any issue with you being able to swim in it during the summer but I would think that the chemicals used to maintain pools can't be that good for a chiller.

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cerberus said:

this last line is a concern.

as for the pool temps, i used to have a 10'x20' solar panel attached to it, constantly feeding it hot water and the thing never never heats up; always shaded, north facing, i live in cold-ville BUT that being said over heating the pool and killing my cooling system is a mistake i can not afford..

I was thinking about grabbing his compressorless (its chillkings/hydroinovations compresslerss) and having it as a back up.. with it's own 55gal drum.

thanks for all the heads up, much appriciated

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