RDWC SOG design advice needed

Hello all,

I hope my image is comprehensible.
Above is the v.1 design of my proposed RDWC SoG + Mother setup.

Dimensions:
SoG cubes are 55cm3 32 gallon storm water basins
Mother buckets are 17 liters
Reservoir is still undecided (need advice on volume but options are limited where I live)
58 gallon “rain barrel” water storage tank with a float valve feeding reservoir

The reason I’m considering the rain barrel is my reservoir needs to be below the drain lines which will limit my capacity.

I plan to automate Ph with a controller as I’ll be using hard tap water and aeration.

I will also be building a water chiller with a cheap refrigerator and stainless condenser coil used for wine making.

I have a dedicated room with an AC system I’ll be ducting half the flow to my flowering tent.

Flowering setup will be identical minus the mother buckets.

I’ll be cloning in a DIY propagation bin.

Do you see any glaring problems or holes in this setup? Any advice on the reservoir size? Or maybe commonly repurposed items I could consider?
One big problem here is availability, for instance, the only large storage totes available are either clear or have no lid.
Thank you all and sorry for the long and likely confusing post

The setup looks great to me, and the drawings are very readable.

Have you ever done this type of setup before? any experience with hydro/DWC?

This is just my opinion, I prefer simpler setups with less potential points of failure. I will always recommend less complexity and simplicity as the difference in results usually are not worth the extra effort and maintenance. That said, for this type of setup, have you considered just DWC and eliminating the re-circulation?

THT said:

The setup looks great to me, and the drawings are very readable.

Have you ever done this type of setup before? any experience with hydro/DWC?

This is just my opinion, I prefer simpler setups with less potential points of failure. I will always recommend less complexity and simplicity as the difference in results usually are not worth the extra effort and maintenance. That said, for this type of setup, have you considered just DWC and eliminating the re-circulation?

Click to expand...

Thank you!

This will be my first full hydro setup. I’ve only done Soil to this point.

Can I ask which part of this you consider complex?

TBH I am prone to overthinking/engineering things and I’m not always aware of it

My thoughts on the setup are:
All of my eggs are in one basket, if something fails I lose the whole family.

As far as ditching the R and going DWC I really want to chill my water. Is there a good way to chill a non-recirc system?

TbilisiHydro said:

Thank you!

This will be my first full hydro setup. I’ve only done Soil to this point.

Can I ask which part of this you consider complex?

TBH I am prone to overthinking/engineering things and I’m not always aware of it

My thoughts on the setup are:
All of my eggs are in one basket, if something fails I lose the whole family.

As far as ditching the R and going DWC I really want to chill my water. Is there a good way to chill a non-recirc system?

Click to expand...

Not that the design is overly complex but, you nailed it with the all eggs in one basket comment.
What are you using for lights?
What temps do you expect in your tents?
I have been doing DWC very successfully without cooling/chilling for many years in both small sized (3 and 5 gallon buckets) and large size (30+ gallon reservoirs). Plants may benefit from the cooling especially if you run a hot environment which is a separate issue, but I don't see it as worth the effort/maintenance or additional failure points. Additionally, you may end up wanting to use that space for more plants instead of a giant reservoir of water in the future. All in all just my opinion of course .

Here's a shot of one of my current DWC grows in a 5 gallon bucket. A reservoir without a hole in it has a much lower chance of leaking. I sometimes stuff 4 plants into a single 5 gallon, but 2 plants can easily finish with no issues, air stones sit inside the bucket, no water tubes to worry about, with hydro, PH should be your #1 priority and I will admit its easier to maintain a stable PH within a larger reservoir.

Nice! Good stacking and node spacing!

I have more space than I need. My room I’m growing in could fit 2 8x8’s with room for a desk, fridge, and all reservoirs.

I’ll be running 2 4x8’s though, reservoirs outside the tent, both reservoirs will have a recirc system that goes through the coils inside the fridge with temp controllers on the pumps (on until 68* then off until 72-74*)

For lights I have 2x 240w lm301h bar fixtures in veg, 2x t5’s for the clones, and 4x 240w lm301h bar fixtures for flower.

As far as temps go, I can pretty well maintain them where I want them.

I really want my environment dialed in so I have digital control humidifiers and digital fan controllers on 8” fan/filter combos. 6x clip fans and 1x tower fan in each tent. And I’ll be ducting half my AC output into my flower tent and the other half cooling the room itself.

In the winter time it will be easy to keep temps down but in the summer time the room has floor to ceiling windows.

I expect PH drift as I have pretty hard water and don’t want to do RO. But I also have a dual relay Ph controller so I’m pretty confident I can keep Ph in check.

I will also have in res real time EC, temp, Ph, and ORP monitoring with App control and notifications.

I would be interested in reading a typical run for you in DWC as it might be worth keeping the moms independent if it’s feasible. Do you have a good thread to point me to?

Thank you for your responses man. I really appreciate it

Also worth mentioning, I pretty much had to order everything from China and wait a month. But I also have to try and keep my imports per day down to avoid VAT

With the hard water you’re gonna want to filter. It sucks and it’s super time consuming if you go cheap RO route I have a 3 site 12 gallon total setup and filling up for res change is literally an all day process with the RObuddy from Amazon. I’ve heard RV water filters are pretty good at lowering tds though so something to look into.

Yea, I am definitely considering RO if it becomes a MUST. The water here is hard but good if that makes sense. They don’t add fluoride and keep chlorine levels low. If you’re unfamiliar, look up Georgian (Sakhartvelo) water, they take great pride in it here.