is ebb and flow competatively effective ?

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
DWC for me was an easy way to grow and very clean. Plants can get fixed quickly ,,,or you can screw them up quickly. Lol
The good thing is you can most the time reverse your mistake and save the plant,,,where in dirt it can die before you get it fixed because of uptake time. Although i never had much trouble in dirt eather. Eather way my favorite is DWC.
 
Zem: you could do that. what you would need to do though is get a large container. Maybe even use a 5gal bucket and make a shelf that would hold it. Have that and little else in the fridge as it works off air circulation. You would then just route 2 hoses to that bucket. One hose would be a return and the other would connect to your circulating pump.

Then you would need to get about 4'-6' copper tube that will fit just inside the hose(I used 1/2" copper tube) so that it can be clamped tightly onto the copper tube. before you connect anything, you would gently make small bends in your tube (which will probably come in a coil already. Don't get copper pipe, that has thicker wall and won't bend easy). You want to form a coil with the copper tube so that it will fit inside your rez and will have both ends facing the same direction (don't get too fast when bending or you will crimp it). this will set in the rez, submerged in solution, with the two hoses connected to it.

This will keep your nute solution and chiller water separate, while the copper tube will allow the heat to transfer to the cold water that you will circulate continuously. This will work and it won't run the fridge to death(a small fridge may not be able to keep up but not sure). I used to have a chiller that worked on the same principal until LEO decided to take it. I used a nice, well insulated cooler for my cold water reservoir, for you the fridge with the 5gal bucket will be your cold water reservoir(you must have the cold water reservoir to prevent the fridge from running constantly and it will cool the Rez solution better. As long as you can stay between 65-72f in your rez then yer golden.
 
That is cool HP! I think that I will have something similar by next summer, thanks
 
Zem: you could do that. what you would need to do though is get a large container. Maybe even use a 5gal bucket and make a shelf that would hold it. Have that and little else in the fridge as it works off air circulation. You would then just route 2 hoses to that bucket. One hose would be a return and the other would connect to your circulating pump.

Then you would need to get about 4'-6' copper tube that will fit just inside the hose(I used 1/2" copper tube) so that it can be clamped tightly onto the copper tube. before you connect anything, you would gently make small bends in your tube (which will probably come in a coil already. Don't get copper pipe, that has thicker wall and won't bend easy). You want to form a coil with the copper tube so that it will fit inside your rez and will have both ends facing the same direction (don't get too fast when bending or you will crimp it). this will set in the rez, submerged in solution, with the two hoses connected to it.

This will keep your nute solution and chiller water separate, while the copper tube will allow the heat to transfer to the cold water that you will circulate continuously. This will work and it won't run the fridge to death(a small fridge may not be able to keep up but not sure). I used to have a chiller that worked on the same principal until LEO decided to take it. I used a nice, well insulated cooler for my cold water reservoir, for you the fridge with the 5gal bucket will be your cold water reservoir(you must have the cold water reservoir to prevent the fridge from running constantly and it will cool the Rez solution better. As long as you can stay between 65-72f in your rez then yer golden.

I used stainless steel instead of copper. Something about copper in solution isn't good but damned if I can remember.
I also found the heat transfer pretty sad, I'd run cold water through the coil and it took a stupid amount of water to cool.
I bet they'd work better in your fridge idea though, gonna try that.
 
Yeah you don't want to use stainless as stainless is a poor conductor of heat energy. I never had any problems with the copper tube as long as I kept my pH ok. You might would get a small amount of copper releasing into the water but it wouldn't be enough to hurt anything unless the pH was really low like around 3.0
 
Yeah you don't want to use stainless as stainless is a poor conductor of heat energy. I never had any problems with the copper tube as long as I kept my pH ok. You might would get a small amount of copper releasing into the water but it wouldn't be enough to hurt anything unless the pH was really low like around 3.0

so I could have used a wort cooler, hahaha, I ordered the ss tube from China
and bent it myself, I was so proud hahaha, horribly ineffecient
but my darn fridge compressor is always going with all those frozen jugs,
water is still cheaper than electricity, I wonder
 
Zem: you could do that. what you would need to do though is get a large container. Maybe even use a 5gal bucket and make a shelf that would hold it. Have that and little else in the fridge as it works off air circulation. You would then just route 2 hoses to that bucket. One hose would be a return and the other would connect to your circulating pump.

Then you would need to get about 4'-6' copper tube that will fit just inside the hose(I used 1/2" copper tube) so that it can be clamped tightly onto the copper tube. before you connect anything, you would gently make small bends in your tube (which will probably come in a coil already. Don't get copper pipe, that has thicker wall and won't bend easy). You want to form a coil with the copper tube so that it will fit inside your rez and will have both ends facing the same direction (don't get too fast when bending or you will crimp it). this will set in the rez, submerged in solution, with the two hoses connected to it.

This will keep your nute solution and chiller water separate, while the copper tube will allow the heat to transfer to the cold water that you will circulate continuously. This will work and it won't run the fridge to death(a small fridge may not be able to keep up but not sure). I used to have a chiller that worked on the same principal until LEO decided to take it. I used a nice, well insulated cooler for my cold water reservoir, for you the fridge with the 5gal bucket will be your cold water reservoir(you must have the cold water reservoir to prevent the fridge from running constantly and it will cool the Rez solution better. As long as you can stay between 65-72f in your rez then yer golden.

Why not just circulate your rez water through that bucket in the fridge?
 
Zem, let me know if you need any ideas on it. :)

thanks, i like the design, my question for now is where to drill in the fridge to damage it the least, and if i should put it in the freezer or in the fridge... I am still a long way from doing this, 8 months at least, right before next summer
 
It may be easiest to go in through the back if there isn't a large heat sink back there. I would not put it in the freezer. If you maintain about 50f water going through the coil, it will lower your water to about 68f in your rez. I know this because that is what I kept the chiller on that is in the pic and that was my water temp in my 30gal rez.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top