RDWC With Res Below Site Buckets

I need to put my site pots on top of my res. Do you think something like this would work? Trying to think of a way to keep the site pots at the proper water level and keep the water pump from sucking air. I'm not much for dem fancy physics and mathematics and what not. My gut feeling is the first site pot would overflow.

it wont overflow unless something clogs your lines.

just use the biggest hose/pipe you can to connect the sites and you wont have any trouble with overflow

have you thought about a bato bucket system?

the euro grower by gh is a good example you could base your home made system on.



just an idea.

Never heard of it, but isn't that basically drip feeding?

I want to setup a micro perpetual stealth grow in this which is 30" x 20" and about 6 feet tall.

Was thinking of running six 2 gallon buckets in either individual DWC or a RDWC setup with ScrOG, but the res would have to go on the bottom. I've also considered ebb and flow, and even soil... but eh.

yup its drip feed and the solution simply drains directly back into the res its very simple. you see with your setup every time you want to get into the res you will be having to disconnect all those buckets etc it will become a major PITA.

Malevolence said:

I need to put my site pots on top of my res. Do you think something like this would work? Trying to think of a way to keep the site pots at the proper water level and keep the water pump from sucking air. I'm not much for dem fancy physics and mathematics and what not. My gut feeling is the first site pot would overflow.

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is your system gonna be on a timer?

No, the water pump and air pump would be always on.

"you see with your setup every time you want to get into the res you will be having to disconnect all those buckets etc it will become a major PITA. "

Good point... so if I were to use longer than needed flexible black tubing to connect the res and 2 buckets, I should be able to slide the res out a little and/or just slide the lid off. Something to think about though... at this point after sleeping on it, I'm leaning towards individual DWC... but not looking forward to monitoring ppm and ph in 2 gallon dwc.

Another option might be to only use the six 2 gallon buckets with no large res, and just have a water pump pulling water through the system. That might be the best option.

Malevolence said:

No, the water pump and air pump would be always on.

"you see with your setup every time you want to get into the res you will be having to disconnect all those buckets etc it will become a major PITA. "

Good point... so if I were to use longer than needed flexible black tubing to connect the res and 2 buckets, I should be able to slide the res out a little and/or just slide the lid off. Something to think about though... at this point after sleeping on it, I'm leaning towards individual DWC... but not looking forward to monitoring ppm and ph in 2 gallon dwc.

Another option might be to only use the six 2 gallon buckets with no large res, and just have a water pump pulling water through the system. That might be the best option.

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i like that last idea. its simple and easy and that is key because if you make it complicated to work with after 3 months you will be very tired of it. trust me i made that mistake lol.

if i was you though in that space i would do a single 5 gal bucket and scrog. honestly you will yield so much and it will be so easy. i started with a 5 gal scrog and then i changed it up and ran multiple buckets all linked via a seperate res and tried coco with lots of pots etc because i wanted to run different strains at once or just do more plants but in the end i came back to a single bucket dwc. its pretty hard to beat.

that said experimenting with different stuff is half the fun so knock yourself out brother cant wait to see what you decide on and i will be sticking around to watch no matter what

Thanks man. The thing with one large tree is I want to be able to do more than 1 strain at a time, and I want short veg... but it is something I will think about.

Alright, so this is my plan now.... use my dresser (30x19x39) as a stealth grow box instead of the storage bin because it will save $100 and no matter where I put the storage bin, it's going to be in the way of something. Line the inside with panda film, passive intakes at the bottom/back of the dresser, and outtake in the back near the top exhausting into my 78* F bedroom near a window. 250w switchable dimmable kit with cooltube, diy carbon filter, and extraction fan... and ona gel.

I'll just do six site RDWC with white 2 gallon buckets lined with home depot reflectix, and a water pump in one of the buckets. All buckets with small disk air stones and two 20 gallon petsmart/walmart air pumps, and 20oz (possibly 2L) bottles of ice as needed for cooling.

Parabolic ScrOG with super cropping, although I'm still learning/experimenting with SC on some bag seed I have in veg at them moment.

I have GH Floranova Grow nutes, but I don't have flower nutes yet, so will probably switch to AN or Technaflora for flower. Need h202 also. I'll need to pick up a ph kit cuz these test strips aren't cutting it. I'll be starting with 3 feminized beans from attitude - ss white russian, g13 sour ak, and a dinafem blue hash freebie.

I think that pretty much covers everything... it's going to take a min to gather everything I need and get this setup, and I'm playing with some bag seed in a 150w HPS DWC multi-site tote in the mean time... but when I get this set up and ready to go I'll make a thread about it.

Today I said fuck it and got some buckets and more air line and shit. I set up my bag seed in here while I germ some white russian, sour ak, and blue hash.

Here was my old pain in the ass 160 pound 20 gallon multi-site DWC setup. 150w HPS.



I took clones of the bigger plant and that's what you see here in my new setup. And yea, I know they look like hell and that's because they've been through it. Those came off a plant that spent a day in 110* dumpster, among other things. The wilty one front left is under watered. I'll keep 1 clone and scrap the others when I transplant the germinated beans. Need to lower light, but just going to move it to dresser tomorrow anyway, and prob use four 23w 6500k spirals 24/0 for a week.

beautiful pictures good luck with your project

Thanks, the sour ak tap root sprouted, so it's planted in the DWC and I ripped out the insides of my dresser and moved everything into it today. Covered the buckets in aluminum foil, matte side out... and then wrapped in a white trash bag as a diy panda film. The foil blocks the light, and the white trash bag on the outside adds reflectivity and disperses the light which should eliminate any hot spots from the foil.

Still waiting on the white russian and blue hash tap roots. I'll take some pics tomorrow of the setup... need to buy a saw and some hangers so I can finish up.

The design I like for this kind of system involves plenty of redundancy.

First, I'll drill each bucket up high where I want the max water level to be. Run relatively large diameter piping from each of those holes to a single return line pipe to the reservoir. That way if one bucket clogs it doesn't overflow the others. Or even itself because...

Next drill smaller lines to connect all the buckets at the bottom. This makes sure they all will have the same water level if the total water volume drops below max or if one bucket's overflow line gets clogged. This means in order for a bucket to overflow that bucket would have to clog up both pipes. Put a drain valve somewhere along that line and you can easily drain the buckets (after shutting off the pump unless you want to completely drain the res too) without moving anything.

Now you can pump the water from the res through the bottom connection, making it an inlet instead of a backup leveling pipe, and it will still work, but if one bucket's overflow clogs you'll overflow the bucket because water can't flow out the bottom into another bucket with an open overflow line.

Instead, I'd pump into the top with a sprayer on each bucket. That provides all the aeration you'll need, and gives you lots of redundancy. A sprayer can fail and the other buckets will still feed the bucket with the clogged sprayer. As long as there are less total clogs than total buckets and no bucket has 2 clogs, the system doesn't overflow.

The only orientation requirement is that the full water level in the reservoir has to be below the max level in the buckets or it will back-flow the overflow pipe and flood your buckets. So it would work perfectly if you wanted to put the buckets above the reservoir. You can also locate the reservoir remotely (outside the cab) if you like and run plumbing through the side, lightproofed of course, and have the ability to monitor pH and such from the reservoir without opening the cabinet. That also makes it easier to keep the res cooled.


Running just linked buckets is definitely easier, but the reduced solution volume will make chasing your pH and such more of a headache unless you use something like AN's pH Perfect nutes.

Right on, I just kept the individual bucket setup... nearing the end of week 1 flower. Thanks for the advice though.