MY True HP Aero Plug&Play Pods

fatman7574 said:

If you could keep it in place until it grew enough roots to hold it up right it should work. Your talking something like a 1/2" diameter hole with the clone stem stuck through the hole down to a cross bar. If your talking a bigger hole on top you will need to secure it in place at the top also. Net baskets are just simple and cheap. With clone cuttings they are sufficient without hydroton or rock wool etc. by using a neoprene or plastic slit lid on top of the net pot to hold them vertical and they can only slip down in the pot as far as a branch at most.

Click to expand...

here is what im trying to do...

I want to clone in a fogger setup... so just the collar around the cutting, and the roots will explode in the fog as proven many times.

Then i want to transfer the plants to an NFT BOX, this box is custom made, and is 4 x 5 ft, and has a tilt to it, so its like a VERY WIDE GUTTER.

The top plane of the box is where the collars will be, and then im undecided if i want to use the net pots, or if i want to build a simple, 1/8th inch metal wire support system, of 2 beams that cross perpendicular, and as i set the plant in , i make the roots stradle the beams.

Eventually, i plan on adding sprayers like you guys use, in the box, and putting them on timers IN ADDITION to the NFT.

I would think that having the roots exposed and not limited by the pots would be a good thing.

The net pots sold at my near by store, have small holes, and im thinking it might restrict nice healthy thick root growth.

heres a link to an article in urban gardener about the atomix. some pics and explanations about what takes place in the root zones.
http://www.urbangardenmagazine.com/index.php?id=74&searched=atomix&highlight=ajaxSearch_highlight+ajaxSearch_highlight1

Hi TF
The GH rainforest uses a vortex sprayer, the disc spins at 3000rpm and delivers a radial spray rather than a mist. This disc is designed for ultra low volume agricultural spraying. The only way to tell its putting out mist is to put something in the way, a brick wall changes to a slightly darker color if you run the edge of the mist pattern up and down, other than that there`s no noticeable wetting.
I have a selection of nozzles which plug into the disc housing, the brickwall test used a 60ml/minute delivery nozzle. I`ve modified another nozzle to deliver around 15ml/minute..should be interesting at 13000rpm, the disc perimeter will be moving at 132mph

atomizer
sounds interesting but also a little dangerous. if that thing broke loose it would be like a bullet flying. i think id want to stand behind a wall like an xray tech does. i guess something like that would work for a real large chamber if you could mount the motor outside and have some kind of shaft running in to drive it.

Hi TF
There`s no weight to it and not that much torque really. If it flew off it wouldn`t do much damage unless it caught you square in the eye
To make the best use of it, a tall chamber would be good or possibly something like Epcot, where the plants move into the misting station on a conveyor. A weak fan would be more than enough to direct the mist horizontally into a long chamber.
I don`t see it being as flexible as nozzles and a pump but its worth having a play if only for the entertainment value

Quote from Stephen for the delvan atomizers finally:
Quote Valid for Thirty Days
Qty 2
Part No. 30610-10
SNA Stainless Steel Nozzle
Price $145.22 each

Quote Valid for Thirty Days
Qty 2
Part No. 29713
SNA Stainless Steel
Price $90.01 each

The second listing is the adapter needed to use the atomizer. It is the actual body where as the other is the guts to the assembly. They really know how to charge dearly for their stuff. $235.23 per atomizer assembly. Of course he read the number wrong and gave me quotes for the wrong nozzles. There is not even a nozzle number on their charts that match the number he sent. The largest listed in their SN charts is a 6010-09 at about 10 liters per hour.

In response to your recent inquiry, we are pleased to quote as follows:

Delavan SN Nozzle Qty. 1-11 $42.41 each
Part No. 30609-X
Material: brass

Delavan SN Adaptor Qty. 1-11 $39.95 each
Part No. 17147-1
Material: brass

That is a huge difference.

Why, again,

is stainless superior to brass?

-I got a chiller in the post today as well!

Treeth said:

That is a huge difference.

Why, again,

is stainless better than brass?

Click to expand...

Stainless is more inert as to resistance to dissolving/corrosion/leaching. Brass means copper. Copper is not a healthy thing to ingest yet alone smoke. While with an atomizer using air it is hoped that the metal areas will only be wetted when in use it is doubtfully the case as it is quite likely there will be nutrients in the nozzle and nozzle body between air blasts, as likely the air lines between the solenid and the nozzle will clear before the lines with nutrient fluid have finished draining into the nozzles.
I am not sure what you mean by a big difference as I only got a quote on the stainless models. If you mean thedifference betwwen hs original estimate of brass and stianless, yes it is quite a difference. Both valves would still need the body/adapter though. I think the barss would work just as well, but they health aspect is something to consider especially as the nutrients are acidic. Then there is the fact that copper is only used in very small trace amounts ( about 0.004 %) and is toxicto the plants at high levels. Copper toxicity is often more of aproblem than a shotrage. However, atomix used brass valves that were merely chrome plated on the outside, They used the valves in siphon systems though so the valves likely held little nutrients between sprays. The price difference is very large. How much leaching could actually occur in one minute or two minutes. Hum!

$82.16 per set versus $235.23.

pdf on copper leaching under acidic conditions:
http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0oGklL12_lK7XYA5AxXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTEzaWY3Z2I3BHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDMgRjb2xvA3NrMQR2dGlkA0g0NDZfMTM3/SIG=12boau4m1/EXP=1257975157/**http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2005/Projects/J0522.pdf

So if atomizer or tree farmer are using , I believe, four misters at a time that are capable of about 5 liters each per hour then two atomizers capable of about 10 liters per hour should be pretty much OK. Opinions? My chamber would be larger, but not excessively. At over $200 a pop I do not want to have to use more than one or two atomizers per chamber.

fatman7574 said:

So if atomizer or tree farmer are using , I believe, four misters at a time that are capable of about 5 liters each per hour then two atomizers capable of about 10 liters per hour should be pretty much OK. Opinions? My chamber would be larger, but not excessively. At over $200 a pop I do not want to have to use more than one or two atomizers per chamber.

Click to expand...

well that was a good link to the copper leaching article. I was wondering about that because my solenoid crapped out on me so i had to have one right away so i found a brass one and put it in until the SS one i ordered gets here. the thing cost as much as the stainless steel one i ordered but it was either that or cycle my pump every five minutes and i wasnt going to do that so i put the brass one in. After reading that article it doesnt seem like .3ppm with solution setting overnight is that much. and that was with copper. they said brass was even less. i know i would want to use SS but i dont think brass is all that bad after reading that. im going to keep my brass solenoid as a backup now after the SS one goes in. I know i recommended the sprinkler selonoid previously in this thread from drip irrigation but ive had nothing but problems with them in this app. never had a problem before in the 40-60psi range but i dont think there good enough for this 80-100psi app. the one i have now works great. nice clean snap to it opening and closing. its a dayton.

I also found out that i needed to have some bleed lines on my pressure switches cause when i changed the res out and the system pressure dropped to zero air was getting trapped in the lines and causing my pressure switches to cycle and drift off of set points. since the bleed lines are installed they work as they should.

Well my nozzels put out .08 ounces per sec. I have them set on 2 sec every 2 minutes and they seem to be doing fine. i tried 4 sec every 2 minutes and thought things look like overwatering. the mist hangs in the chamber visibly for at least a minute that i can see. maybe longer just not visable. i know that doesnt sound like alot but i assure you things stay very moist in there. so you can use those numbers to figure out what it would take to fill a certain size chamber. mine are 22x22x14. of coarse air atomizing might be a little different but its a starting point.

if anything i would be worried about to much flow and not being able to slow the nozzels down enough. i have 4 nozzels in each chamber but i think 2 would have worked just fine.

Ive had some bumps with this but thats with any new system. i think that when i have all the safty features built in it will be a very reliable high performing system. so far im impressed but sure would like to try an air atomizer also.

I have been lucky in collecting hayward and plastomatic solenoids on ebay so I am stup up for at least 6 nozzles. I have some really nice stainless steel low voltage solenoids if you can use them. They were cheap so I just could not avoid buying them. They have stainless steel Swagelok fittings on them rather than normal pipe taps though. I do not use low voltage though. They are only 1/4" though. I have been pretty lucky getting good solenoid valves off eBay. I just got a three way Asco 110 volt 1/4 stainless steel for $5.57 and only $9 for shipping.

Small stainless steel 120 volt solenoids for $12.95.
http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_kw=stainless&_kw=solenoid&_kw=valves&_ckw=steel#item439b4ca803

0.08 ounces per second: (0.08 * 3600 second/hour) = 288 ounces per hour. 288 ounces is 2.25 gallons per hour which is 8.5 liters per hour. The quoted atomizers should be about 10 liters per hour. If I just make the compartments two foot high and three foot square that means 18 cubic feet. Your using Four 2.25 gallon nozzles for 3.92 cubic feet, so (9 / 3.92) = 2.29 ratio where as mine with two atomizers would be a (20/1 = 1.1 ratio. So as you say you are using 2 seconds every 2 minutes, I might have to go to 2 seconds once per minute or 4 seconds every two minutes. Or somewhere in betwwen, who can really tell at this point, but that range would not be bad. I think that is in the range of the large atomix chamber write up at UK420.

The cheapest solenoids are the ones use in washing machines. very reliable and have a plastic body. You have to be a bit careful with the mains voltage though.
Copper leaches pretty fast especially with low ph. The small amount of water delivered could mean a higher concentration of copper too. It would be easy to test, just get an aquarium test kit for copper and compare readings of straight nutes (trace copper) against an equal amount from the nozzles.
If you use drain to waste instead of recirculating, the nutes will only go through once so theres no chance of excess copper building up in the res.

I have both Hach colorimeters and a spectrophotometer I could use for testing, but the issue has never come up for me before as it has always been easy enough to get plnty ofplastic, piping. valves etc. I have marine reef tanks so Lall by plumbing fro the entrance to my RODI system on is pretty mucla ll palstic. I do use brass flow swithches on my water cooled light water lines. Other than that it is pretty much plastic or titanium. Even most of my probes are glass and/or plastic with stainless steel. platinum or titanium. My profession means I have to do a lot of water testing to include domestic water for copper. Domestic water is kept at a pretty high pH though to cut down on leaching of lead from solder joints and to prevent heavy pitting of steel main water lines so copper is usually quite low. As I have always needed to stay away from copper with my reef tanks avoiding it with the grow rooms has just been standard. Triple the price for stainless atomizers though is quite a difference.

so whats it take to get started into this?

If i get the stainless 120 v selenoid... how many of those do i need? 1 for each atomizer, or 1 total?

How many atomizers can go on a hose?

I get one of these tank pump things... they are a couple hundred it seems...

and what else do i need?

Thanks

sherriberry said:

so whats it take to get started into this?

If i get the stainless 120 v selenoid... how many of those do i need? 1 for each atomizer, or 1 total?

How many atomizers can go on a hose?

I get one of these tank pump things... they are a couple hundred it seems...

and what else do i need?

Thanks

Click to expand...

Depends on which sytem you want to set up. There is the high pressure aero systen which uses a small high pressure diaphragm pump and captive air accumalator tank to hold water at a high pressure. A timer and solenoids control the flow to the plastic misters. There are also also pressure regulators and a presssure switch and filter.

Then there is the air atomizer system that uses an air compressor and atomizer nozzles. Instead of high pressure fluid it is a siphon or gravity feed nutrient system to the nozzles and compressed air forces the spray of the nutrient solution through the nozzles.

I think the air atomizer system is easier to expand to a larger sytem than the high pressure system but the initial capital investment is larger than with with the high pressure nutrient system.

Neither is cheap, but the rewards are quite obvious. The hair roots and the extremely short internodal spacing, shortened heights and fast, fast growth I think would be very hard to match with any other systems. The plant photos I have seen show what looks like 6 foot tall plant bonzaied down to three feet or shorter, but with the same number of internodes that would be expected with the 6 foot plant. To see plants so thick with limbs that it is impossible to see through the plant was pretty neat when considering the growth took only a few weeks.

At least $1000 for the high pressure system and maybe double that for the air atomization system that is readily expandable.

The expansion of a pumped system would just mean adding another accumulator and the nozzles. The pump usually has plenty of spare capacity. The expansion limit is the point where the pump runs constantly to keep up with the drawdown.
With a 1 sec/1 minute cycle and pressure range 90-60psi, a 10 gallon accumulator with a 1gpm pump could service well over 2500 (5lph) nozzles

Atomizer said:

The expansion of a pumped system would just mean adding another accumulator and the nozzles. The pump usually has plenty of spare capacity. The expansion limit is the point where the pump runs constantly to keep up with the drawdown.
With a 1 sec/1 minute cycle and pressure range 90-60psi, a 10 gallon accumulator with a 1gpm pump could service well over 2500 (5lph) nozzles

Click to expand...

O, except that pumping rate would be for a pump likely pump freely with no psi/restriction. I doubt that the small diaphragm pumps would pump anywhere near that volume at 60 to 90 psi. I looked into what it would take to power about 72 heads and it would have taken three pumps if trying to keep the duty cycle reasonable. I acn not imagine the pumps would last all that long running nearly a 100% duty cycle between 60 and 90 psi. At the time I was looking at using tubes rather than chambers. I can see now that I will e using two atomizers instead of 24 misters and I could use 12ister s instead with high pressure, but after looking at the air atomization I believe I cam monitraily come out ahead with the air and atomizers as piping low pressure air in a distributer without having to worry about the cost of all palstic and staimlees valves and just siphoning or gravity feeding the nutrients would be easier and cheaper at a large scale. It however is definitely not cost advantageous at a small scale. But cosnsidering I can set up a many, many chambers with just one compressor and one large feed line or even use a regenerative blower instead of a compressor. It is a fact of Physics that it is much easier and therefore cheaper to compress air than it is to compress a fluid. Without that iar bag the high pressure system would definitely be unarguably more expensive to operate. The capital investment in the small scale definitely leans towards the pumped system. Especially when air atomizers cost 80 to 200 times as much as the plastic misters.

i wish i would have looked at ebay for selonoid valves before i bought my SS one. those 1/4 inch ones are nice for the price. I had thought about using four 1/4 inch solinoid valves feeding off my 1/2 inch line instead of just using one 1/2 inch solenoid to fire the misters. i would like to have the ability to fire each pod differently to test misting times and because i think it would be easier on the system if just a 1/4 inch line fired at a time instead of the 1/2 inch line does now. the lines really jump when the 1/2 inch soleinoid fires. of coarse then i would need 4 cycle timers to fire them individually. but i still might do it later. im going to keep an eye out on ebay.

On a related note you are right fatman on the internode spacing with HP aero. also stalks get huge(especially side ones) and are filled with water. it acutually just gushes out if a leaf is cut off. Hp aero makes shit look like Roman soldiers.

Atomizer
on the washing machine solenoids do you know if they can handle 100psi and do they usually have pipe threads or barbed ends . i use to see them in old washing machines when i scavaged junk yards but they always had some sort of barbed end with a wire clamp on them. after seeing the $12 SS ones on ebay im going to start picking some of these deals up for future use(atomizer project)

Ah shoot and I was hoping to dump my low voltage (24 Volt) stainless steel solem noid. I think I paid about $25 for 5 with shipping. The only problem is they take VCO fo ittings to coonct them to anything. That means to fittings per valve at about about $7 each. http://cgi.ebay.com/Swagelok-SS-4-VCO-6-400-1-4-VCO-Fitting-x-1-4-OD-Tube_W0QQitemZ150240878941QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item22fb0de15d

They are nice valves though. Two probably retail for several hundred each and the other three at about $100 each. The two expensive ones weigh over 2 pounds each easily. The smaller three weigh a half pound each. Oh well.