Med pressure Aero

Alot of it is that you don't want to cook your nutes. If your res is 60, but the piping is sitting under 2000 watts of light for an hour in black tubing, you could have issues.

Meh, I kinda doubt it............it's gonna be 2400 watts, but those nutes are going to be under so much pressure (anywhere from 100-125PSI) that it'd be pretty fricking hard for anything bad to grow in that area.

At least that's my theory........have some PMs in to some hardcore HP aero cats that I'm waiting to hear back from, but I'll let you know what they have to say on the matter.

Might just hook up my 1/15th chiller for shits and giggles.................meh, so many decisions, so little time.

Gonna fire up the system tomorrow, assuming I can source one more 3/8" tee............

Plus, I use 35% H2O2 pretty religiously (twice a week), and that kills the shit outta baddies..........

I was more saying that cooking the nutes may be a concern. I really don't know what the temps are that this is supposed to take place, but I've heard it talked about quite a bit, as I'm sure you've heard it mentioned as well. Probably someone on here that can elaborate on that more. Hope you have the video cam handy when you get it fired up. I wanna see some mist!

Bob Smith said:

Mike, are you running a chiller with your system?

Dex, what about you?

I have two chillers I could use (a 1/8th and a 1/15th, would most likely use the 1/15th because it's only gonna be like 10 gallons in my reservoir), but I'd love to be able to get away without using one (and the associated electrical costs, including a pump running 24/7 to feed it) - I mean, even if I chill my water down to 65F, by the time that water is drawn through my pump, accumulator tank, and then through the hoses, it will have been out of the reservoir for an hour or two and gotten to room temperature...........so what good is chilling it?

If the chilling is only to keep pathogens from flourishing in my reservoir, I have other ways to handle that problem.............and there's so much oxygen available to the roots at all times (both when misted and when not misted) that I can't see anerobic bacteria having the chance to flourish, no matter what the water temps.

Just rambling, would love to hear your thoughts on the matter........

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An igloo cooler full of water makes a reasonable heat exchanger. Fill the cooler with water, coil up 20ft of feed pipe (i use 1/4") and weight it down so its submerged. Insulate the pipe between the cooler and the solenoid so the room temp doesn`t affect it. The water in the cooler won`t heat up too fast as you`ve less than a cupful of nutes in the coiled pipe. Add an aquarium heater if you need to bring the nute temp up in winter.

Thanks for the tip, Atomizer, but I'm more curious as to why the temps would matter, especially if doing drain to waste.

There are no pathogens present (as there might be with recirculating), and dissolved oxygen should never be a problem with how fine of a mist there is...........so why would we care about water temps?

If you were using a spacious 50-100 gal tote i`d agree. A 4" pipe full of roots will seriously limit the mist and air movement. You may need to consider using cooler nutes to offset the higher temps and use higher flow to compensate for reduced mist distribution. The 4" tubes will result in a large proportion of the mist reverting back into liquid before it can reach most of the roots. I don`t mean to sound down on your 4" tubes but hp aero and confined spaces don`t mix well

Atomizer said:

If you were using a spacious 50-100 gal tote i`d agree. A 4" pipe full of roots will seriously limit the mist and air movement. You may need to consider using cooler nutes to offset the higher temps and use higher flow to compensate for reduced mist distribution. The 4" tubes will result in a large proportion of the mist reverting back into liquid before it can reach most of the roots. I don`t mean to sound down on your 4" tubes but hp aero and confined spaces don`t mix well

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Not a problem at all, bro - I'm well aware that it's gonna be virtually impossible to get the "true" HP experience going in those tubes, but I'm gonna give it a shot.

That's the main reason I'm switching back to recirculating from my original idea of a drain to waste - I'll probably have to water more than is "optimal" to ensure all plants get fed, so doing a drain to waste would've been too large of a waste of water for my liking.

I still can't see how chilling the water makes any difference..........I'm gonna go with just my cool coil in there (probably keep my reservoir around 65-70) and see how that goes, and if the roots start looking funky than I'll hook up a chiller.

Bob Smith said:

Mike, are you running a chiller with your system?

Dex, what about you?

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Heh, I actually have to heat my root chamber

Haha! Your root chamber is what 18-24 cu ft? Yeah, I imagine it needs it's own climate control. Mine stays warm and humid as hell.

Mike Young said:

Haha! Your root chamber is what 18-24 cu ft? Yeah, I imagine it needs it's own climate control. Mine stays warm and humid as hell.

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I think the IBC crate is around 4x3x3 off the top of my head, so you're close Flowering will be a pair of ~30 cu ft chambers. The stone walls and floor are 50F. So that's the temp of anything sitting on the ground or against a wall. I wired up a couple of stove top heating elements in series for under the crate. They run at about 1/4 power out of a wall socket that way. Cheap and effective. The crate is raised and it has a plate across the bottom so the heat spreads out. I wish spring would arrive.

Atomizer is strong willed it happens, but if you can't reason you'll never learn so, I'm glad for all the heated discussion, as long as the goal is the same and we're getting there with open exchange of ideas.

Mike perhaps insulating or adding something as a heatsink under your reservoir would give a chilling effect without using all that energy.

Normally in hydro you keep the reservoir temperatures low a) to prevent harmful micro, b) because the roots like luke warm water, not hot, not cold, extremes can shock the plant.

In aero with all that oxygen in the root chamber and in the water because of the immense waterfall effect you wouldn't even think harmful micros could breed, but you should assume the aerobic beneficials want to breed like crazy.

The roots still don't like extremes, but you'd think with the dissipation going on, that unless the chambers air is very hot, that there would be that evaporation cooling effect, it occurs to me that this is called aero, not hydro, so perhaps cooling the air in the chamber would be a more effective strategy as it's the primary medium in this.

Another thing to note is parcipitation occurs more readily at higher temperatures in solution, so for that reason you should maintain reservoir temps below 80 as my recommendation which is just the regurgitated knowledge of men that pioneered it.