True HP Aero For 2011

Trichy Bastard

Trichy Bastard

Well-Known Member
Ralph Wiley said:
I had issues with scrogging my HP roots. The roots spread out then dropped which would allow the mist to drop below the screen without over misting, (just happened) . And the test pump is a pain, I have everything hooked up 12v, and my pump, pressure switch 110. Have a large enough accumulator to hold enough nuts for 5 days, and can flip a valve and hook up the test pump. Everything's up and running smooth now, thanks trich, and atomizer, this kills the old tag setup
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Hey Ralph- I'm glad to hear things are working out. When I didn't see you for a while I was hoping you were getting stuff sorted. I'm also working on my own new setup- went to the hardware stores yesterday for inspiration and got back home just as unsure of my angle of approach as I left in hahaha... In the end, I keep coming back to a chamber design out of 3-4" foam sheeting, covered in fiberglass. Only issue is I am still unsure if i should incorporate some cooling coils in the walls or not. Maybe I can throw together a small test box without glass, and monitor the temps for a few days and see if the foam with cooled nutes will be enough. Hope your setup works well and interested to hear more as you move ahead.
 
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Ralph Wiley

Member
Hardest part of the build was selecting a chamber, which I'm still not happy with, but works. Was also hard to find all the stainless fittings, like for my accumulator, (Guy on eBay sells s.s. adapters cheap), stainless relief valve, male/male adapters for my regulator, kinda a pain, but no metal other than stainless. Also been trying to get a quote from bete on there stainless impingement nozzles, but no reply. The biocontrols put out the better mist than the reds, or the digs, (tested em, the BIOS mist floats in every direction, the others seem to drop). Unfortunately its taken 30 nozzles to find 8that are acceptable, the others shoot a stream of solution in one direction with partial mist coming from the other side of the stream. Have "tweeked" the pin to fix, but it seems the memory of the plastic pulls its back since its only moving 1/32-1/64". Seems air assisted eliminates this, LOL. Got my Apollo Bambi, now researching nozzles, thanks trich, needed something to build.
 
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indrhrvest

New Member
Ralph Wiley said:
Was also hard to find all the stainless fittings, like for my accumulator, (Guy on eBay sells s.s. adapters cheap), stainless relief valve, male/male adapters for my regulator, kinda a pain, but no metal other than stainless.
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You don't really need stainless.. brass will work just as fine. Save yourself some money.
 
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Ralph Wiley

Member
My pods flowering, so money spent. But ya, I know the brass wont poison ya in small doses, but I'm also building several "pods" for vegetables, so I bought everything so it'd be food grade. And I paid only a touch more than I would for brass, just took a lil eBay effort. Have to say, the hpa is killing it under these induction lights I'm testing, (2 45"x25" pods on a PVC trellis rack with 2 par 420's). Only 3 wks in, but I'm impressed so far. Now I can say those people who say they equal a 1000w, b/s, no way. Equivalent or better than a 600, yup. Completely cool, nope. 1 420 will raise the temp of a 4'x4' room from 68 to 78-80. Way better than a 600, and requires minimal venting to bring the temp down to 72. So they're cool, so far.
 
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indrhrvest

New Member
Ralph Wiley said:
My pods flowering, so money spent. But ya, I know the brass wont poison ya in small doses, but I'm also building several "pods" for vegetables, so I bought everything so it'd be food grade.
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Brass is food grade. Stainless is simply a harder metal and used in applications where metal wear is an issue. For piping you can even use copper as long as you use the non-treated kind. There are a lot of myths about piping materials in Horticulture I have found.
 
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Atomizer

Well-Known Member
It not much of an issue with DTW but its best to minimise the amount of brass/copper wherever possible. Ammonia attacks copper and dilute nitric acid rips into copper/brass with a vengeance so its best to use phos acid for ph down if you have any brass in the system ;)
 
Trichy Bastard

Trichy Bastard

Well-Known Member
Ralph Wiley said:
Hardest part of the build was selecting a chamber, which I'm still not happy with, but works. Was also hard to find all the stainless fittings, like for my accumulator, (Guy on eBay sells s.s. adapters cheap), stainless relief valve, male/male adapters for my regulator, kinda a pain, but no metal other than stainless. Also been trying to get a quote from bete on there stainless impingement nozzles, but no reply. The biocontrols put out the better mist than the reds, or the digs, (tested em, the BIOS mist floats in every direction, the others seem to drop). Unfortunately its taken 30 nozzles to find 8that are acceptable, the others shoot a stream of solution in one direction with partial mist coming from the other side of the stream. Have "tweeked" the pin to fix, but it seems the memory of the plastic pulls its back since its only moving 1/32-1/64". Seems air assisted eliminates this, LOL. Got my Apollo Bambi, now researching nozzles, thanks trich, needed something to build.
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Agree on the bios being best- but also having alot of duds. For what it's worth you can mail the duds back and they tell me they will replace them.
 
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Atomizer

Well-Known Member
Trichy Bastard said:
Agree on the bios being best- but also having alot of duds. For what it's worth you can mail the duds back and they tell me they will replace them.
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Tell them to fire their QC dept, they should be making sure they`re all good before sending them out Having to send them back to be replaced is ridiculous lol
 
Trichy Bastard

Trichy Bastard

Well-Known Member
Atomizer said:
Tell them to fire their QC dept, they should be making sure they`re all good before sending them out Having to send them back to be replaced is ridiculous lol
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Seriously... They work with Nasa, and we all know the extreme tolerances things are subject to being judged before going into space. Guess Richard really is a stoner- lol...
Then again, look at the o-rings on the Challenger, or the spherical abberation on the Hubble. No matter how rigorous, mistakes do happen, but this is rediculous that less than 50% of their nozzles are up to par lately. Maybe I am wrong in and should be okay with some of the less than perfect nozzles?
 
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indrhrvest

New Member
Trichy Bastard said:
Agree on the bios being best- but also having alot of duds. For what it's worth you can mail the duds back and they tell me they will replace them.
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It's because they are using a cheap injection molding process. I bought some early on and was not impressed with the casting quality. There are better nozzles out there IMHO. After much research, we are going with Tefen nozzles for low pressure (60-80 psi). They have some very good tooling and put out a 55 micron mist. Hart Environmental just contacted me and are sending me some siphon nozzles similar to the Aerolife nozzles to test out as well.

http://www.tefenplastic.com/catalogue/group/206




 
Trichy Bastard

Trichy Bastard

Well-Known Member
indrhrvest said:
It's because they are using a cheap injection molding process. I bought some early on and was not impressed with the casting quality. There are better nozzles out there IMHO. After much research, we are going with Tefen nozzles for low pressure (60-80 psi). They have some very good tooling and put out a 55 micron mist. Hart Environmental just contacted me and are sending me some siphon nozzles similar to the Aerolife nozzles to test out as well.

http://www.tefenplastic.com/catalogue/group/206
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Aleady been there before. After seeing others results and trying them for a short amount of time myself I feel the bios are definitely better. What seems to happen with the tefen/cloudtops/dig nozzles is that although the spray looks good initially- it doesn't have as much coverage or throw. What ends up happening is the roots grow all puffed out up top like a mushroom and become strangled for mist in the middle of the bunch. The Bios tend to grow roots that stretch down and bush out uniformly after hitting the floor- to a much better end result. I was thinking about making an inverted chamber where the plant grows out at or near the bottom of the chamber as opposed to out the top and is misted from nozzles in the top of the chamber. In this scenario the tefen type nozzles would probably do fine as it can disperse before falling on the roots. If you've read Cavadge's thread I believe he had the same issue using those nozzles. He was also in 5 gallon bucket rootchambers and that came with it's own problems too.
 
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indrhrvest

New Member
Trichy Bastard said:
Aleady been there before. After seeing others results and trying them for a short amount of time myself I feel the bios are definitely better. What seems to happen with the tefen/cloudtops/dig nozzles is that although the spray looks good initially- it doesn't have as much coverage or throw.
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Placement and number of nozzles will be what is important, or at least that's my thinking. You said yourself they spray just fine. My concern with a nozzle is 1.) quality of the part 2.) Consistent spray pattern and 3.) water consumption.

The bio's need much higher pressure to operate (80-100) wheres the Teffen and similar nozzles only need (60-80). I'm going to be putting 45 nozzles in a 32 cubic foot chamber. Our manifold will run about 3 inches off the bottom with the nozzles pointing up. With an 80 degree nozzle you get 1 circular foot of coverage at roughly 8". So with 45 nozzles we should have 100% coverage.

I'm hoping we can do this with just one Shurflow pump, the GPM works out on paper, but I need to test it first. The great thing about the manifold design is we can use the same setup to try a variety of combinations. I'll be testing a number of nozzles.. and I'll video document all of it for you guys.

I've even got a clear lexan lid for the root chamber so I can video the spray patterns.
 
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Atomizer

Well-Known Member
Could work out quite economical if you add a 100L horizontal accumulator with a pressure regulator and solenoid at the end of each chamber. A dedicated pressure switch on each tank would turn on the pump and open a solenoid to route the flow to the right accumulator. A 1second / 2minute could equate to a full days running from a single tank fill (60psi-120psi tank pressure, allowing 50% overhead for mist run on, losses etc).
A pump capable of 1gpm @ 120psi would take around 11 minutes to fill the tank so you could run a lot of chambers from a single pump and it still wouldnt break a sweat. If you used a simple bank of solenoids as close as possible to the pump inlet and outlet you`d have the option of routing different nutes to individual tanks using a single pump.
 
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indrhrvest

New Member
PetFlora said:
Was following a you tube link to keeping large rezes oxygenated. Then came across this. Wonder whether it changes the game for you guys
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I'm trying to develop a system that doesn't require a reservoir at all and would just drain to waste. Just got my Dosatron in yesterday!
 
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Atomizer

Well-Known Member
indrhrvest said:
I'm trying to develop a system that doesn't require a reservoir at all and would just drain to waste. Just got my Dosatron in yesterday!
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The number of units could soon add up if you grow several crops with different nute requirements ;) For most nutes you`ll need 2 dosatrons as you can`t mix concentrated A/B stock solutions in the same tank.
 
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StealthGrow83

Member
Hi trichy Bastard and company,

i´m following this thread for some time now and i´ve decided to try it too. i have to admit that i didn´t read all of the thread (it´s too much) but i think that i´ve caught the basic idea. I´m from germany and i´m trying to get all the stuff i need to go hp aero, but there are some things i still don´t understand. maybe you guys can help me out?

first, there is a huge market of nozzles here, but most of them are stainless steel nozzles. it wasn´t hard to find some plastic nozzles but i ask myself how long will the plastic nozzles last because the nutrient solution contains salts (EC between 1 and 2). When hp aero is all about control, how do you know that your noozles still work properly? i´ve found some ceramic nozzles too, so i really don´t know which i should take. The cost are high, but the question is: will the expensive stainless steel be more economic in long terms?

second, i have some little problems in translating some specific technical words into german, so i have to describe the type of nozzle i look foreward to buy: you talk about atomizing nozzles, and my nozzles mix air with the nutrient solution right after passing the nozzle. so the nozzle has 2 intakes: first the high pressure air and second the intake for the nutrient solution. take a look at the last one on the right in the picture (Mod. 938):

nozzles.jpg

Today i asked for prices so i think i will get the price by tomorrow. the basic principle of how this nozzle works is shown in the next picture:
prinzip.png

the red tube indicates the air tube. as you can see, you won´t need a pump for the nutrient solution. you only have to pressurize the air.

now, are we talking about the same nozzles?

and last but not least: i´ve tried to design my own root chamber. what do you think? any suggestions? at the top you can see 16 big holes for the plants and the 9 little holes are reserved for the nozzles. there are 2 holes on each side of the chamber to garantee that the mist will reach every angle... the volume of the root chamber is 324 liters (86 gallons).

Draufsicht_neu.jpgSeitenansicht_neu.jpg
 
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Atomizer

Well-Known Member
Hi StealthGrow If they are air-atomising nozzles, 2 on opposing sides would be plenty for a chamber that size. online translator says: Hydraulisch = hydraulic nozzles Druckluft + Flüssigkeit (compressed air + fluid) = air-atomising nozzles
 
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