- Now Stephan, you
were on here before talking about hydroponics
and hydroponic systems. So why do hydroponics anyway? - Let's just say you
actually don't have the space to have a garden. Hydroponics is a great thing
that you can actually have in your home, set
up your own climate, and start growing, even
during the winter time. Winter months, during
the fall, year round you can actually grow
with hydroponics. - Sounds good to me. I think we could do that. Now what about building
the hydroponic system? - It's fairly simple. A few parts, inexpensive, and something you
can actually assemble within an hour or two. - All right, Scott, how
do we got about setting up a hydroponic system? Do you want to talk about some
of the parts we have here? - Yeah, absolutely. The first step is to make
sure we have all the parts and everything is in order. First thing we're gonna need
is some kind of a storage tote. Preferably something a
little bit more durable like this black and yellow tote, just so as you move around
the hydroponic system, it doesn't go breaking over time and doesn't get worn down
from the lights outside or what have you. And also some of the
smaller pieces, like some of the neck cups and neoprene, things that actually
house the plant. Then of course, the PVC parts. We have 10 feet of pipe that
will roughly make a tote, usually a little bit more
than 10 feet is needed. A few elbows and some Ts. And that's just to
make the actual frame of the spray system
inside of the tote. - All right, so you
want to get started on building the system for us? - Yeah, absolutely,
let's get it going, man. - Let's get it going. - Would you hand me the
tape measure, Stephan? All right, the first step
is to open up the tote and get some measurements
of the inside. That way we can go ahead
and start measuring and cutting our PVC. - I'll take that. - Thank you. A good way to start is gonna be to get the width measurement. And how you want to do
this, you just want to go, what the PVC frame will
do is actually sit down, recessed about two inches. We're gonna come down
about two inches. Looks like we're
gonna be right at about 16 and a half on width. We'll go ahead and get the
length measurement as well. Why don't you come
to right there? About 26 and three
quarter inches. That'll be the good base. What makes up the
tote is the PVC. How that frame works is we
have elbows on each side, or each corner, then we
will have Ts on the bottoms and then in the middle
we have the downspout for our water pump. Then that'll pretty much
look just like that. Then these few pieces
will be for the pump and screw into the pump. That's the basic layout
of how this will work. The first step is going
to be to cut the pieces of PVC that will fit
in between these Ts. What we're gonna
do, it looks like for 16 and a half
inches, we'll need about four and a quarter inch PVC pipe to fit in between
each one of these. And we will get cutting. You want to do some
cutting, Chris? - I can try. - Excellent. What we'll do, go ahead
and grab this piece of PVC, we'll start measuring. We'll do four and
looks like a quarter. If you want to make a mark
right about there, Chris. - (Chris)
Absolutely. - We'll make six of these. And that is the
start of the tote. What we want to do
before we make all six is we'll make one
side of the tote. We'll go ahead and check
it with the inside diameter just to make sure
that we're on track. Since we're not gonna
be using any PVC glue, we're gonna go ahead and just smash these together real quick. That way everything
is nice and snug. You want to check that,
make sure it fits, Stephan? You do want a little
bit of a snug fit just because things
aren't glued together. That way it doesn't pop off. I'll just go ahead and
do that one more time. Those are our ends done. Next thing we're gonna
do is measure the inside. We're gonna do these
12 inch pieces, and we're gonna
do four of these. One big reason we're using
these cutters like we are instead of a saw or what
have you is when you go to cut PVC like that, it'll turn into a fine dust. That's the bane of
any hydroponic system. And it's really just
a few simple pieces and the tote starts coming
together on its own. Now we're gonna cut
two 25 inch sections for the outside. Go ahead and put these on. Then what we're gonna do now is we're gonna build the
down stem for the pump. That consists of a T, and this
is gonna sit in the middle like this, and it's just
gonna serve as a down stem. And then we will
cut a few pieces to hook all of this together. We're gonna make one and
three quarter inch pieces. We're gonna do two of those
to fit on the inside of this. So just snugly fit in there. There's a bevel on the inside
of each of the fittings and it's three
quarters of an inch. - So that way your pipe
slides in and stops. - Put that in there. - Let's face it up. - Now let's check it. Looking like it's just
a little bit long. Like I said, each
tote is gonna be just a tiny bit different. Let's start with a half inch, just so we don't
take too much off. Look at that. That is what we want. You want it to fit in
there a little snug, just so it doesn't move
around or anything. That is the basis
of the spray frame. Our next step is gonna
be to mark our holes and then tap-and-die them. - For our sprayers. - We're gonna have three
sprayers on each one of the ends and then this long end
is gonna have three. Then we'll have two
on each one of these. We have two different
kinds of sprayers that go into these totes. We have 180 degrees, and
you can see that they have a 180 degree plane of spray. That way you're not hitting
the back of the tote and causing any backsplash that
would encourage it to leak. - (Stephan)
These will be placed on the outer... These will go on the
outer end, spraying in. - (Scott)
We have a 330 degree. It has two directions of
spray instead of just the one from the 180. That way you can get both sides. Those will go on
each one of these. What we found in
these that we can have such prolific root growth that
the roots will get so dense, they'll create dry
pockets on the inside. So you have to have
plenty of these, just to get around all
those nooks and curves. It doesn't have to be perfect. All you really want to do
is just try and center them as much as possible. We'll put one there, one there. We'll go ahead and just
repeat this for all of them. You can try to get them
as straight as you can, but it's not too big of a deal. These are going to be our
tools for making the sprayers. This is just a
regular drill bit. It's gonna be 10/24
tap and a die. What we're gonna do is
we're gonna take this and we're gonna drill out
each one of these holes. Once those are done, we'll
gonna clear them all out and we're gonna go
back with the die and that's how we're going
to achieve the spray. One thing I would like
to caution people about is when you are
drilling the holes, make sure you get it as
straight up and down as possible because if you don't,
sometimes the sprayers will have a tendency to leak. - Right, now that we
have all the holes, we can to putting the threads. - When you do this, you
want to put the drill on the lowest setting,
just so you don't grind up the thread. Turn it down a little bit. Again, straight up
and down as possible. Just slow about it. That is essentially
how this works. This drill bit, it'll
be a tight fit at first but at the very tip of it,
it will start to cut away at the hole, just to help
increase that diameter a little bit, then
the threads will start to take over after that. When you do bring it back up, you just want to let
the drill carry itself, because if you pull too much,
you'll mess up your threads. You don't have to go too much. Just maybe a quarter
of an inch in the PVC. Just enough to get the threads. Again, when you do
come out, just slow. Make sure you try and clear
away all this little debris, because if you do
get that in there, they tend to clog
up these sprayers and then you'll have fun. - (Chris)
All right, that's the last hole? - Last hole. Now all we have to do
is get it cleaned out and we can throw
those sprayers in it, then we can get to
cutting up the tote. - Be forceful with it. - Yeah. Make sure we lay everything out
so we don't get it mixed up. You can see the
debris on the inside. All we want to do is take
the bamboo and knock that off so it doesn't inhibit
the system later on. - (Stephan)
A little bit came out of there. - Good to go. Yeah, cool. - Now back to assemble it. - Indeed. - Let's install the sprinklers. - We're gonna put these
180 degrees on the outside, just so we don't
get any backsplash when we put them in the tote. Most of these parts
are fairly cheap at your local hydroponics store. The sprayers are 30 cents. The neck cups and
neoprenes, they're 25 to 30 cents each as well. Now what we're gonna do is
measure for the downspout that connects the pump
to the sprayer manifold. How we're gonna do that is
we're just sit this in here how it would naturally lay. About two inches down in there. Then we will get the pump. Stick that bad boy right there. Want to come help us out, Chris? - Yeah. - Cool. You want to measure it for me? Measure from the bottom of this to the top of the pump. - Just right there, okay. - Seven and a quarter inches. We got seven and
a quarter inches, and we have to account
for that three quarters of an inch difference on
each one of these sides. What we're gonna do to
account for those differences, we're gonna take two and
a quarter off of this. What we're gonna do with this, let me see those one more time, we're just gonna cut
them in two pieces, one a bit larger than the other. What the smaller piece
will serve as is the part that actually stays
connected to the pump, which is why we have this
half inch coupling right here. Then we screw our half
inch adapter to this, and this will actually be
what connects to the pump. That fits on there. - That way, it's seamless when
we have this sitting on top. - And it makes
disconnecting rather easy. - That way you can take it out. - We can set that inside
and see where it stands. - Indeed. You can see it bulges
up just a little bit so what we're gonna do is
we're gonna take a half inch off of this down stem,
just so we can go ahead and give a nice
little even plane, because this is what the
sprayer manifold doubles as is also support
cups when you get big, mature plants and fruit. And that is the completed
sprayer manifold. We have two different
sized hole saws for the drain and
the power plug hole. The power plug hole
gets the one inch. Try and get it as close to
the top of it as you can. You can even come in here
and tilt it up a little bit. Get it started. Then level it out. What we're gonna do is we're
gonna put a hole right here, as close to the
bottom as we can. We don't want to get
too close to this lip, otherwise we won't
have a good seal. What we'll do is we'll
come about halfway. Then we want to make sure
we clear up all these little frazzles. - Yeah, little
frazzles and stuff. - And then sometimes these
can be a little bit tricky to get in. This is a half inch
grommet, and what this does is it creates a watertight
seal between the elbow and the actual body of the tote. That way we don't
get any leakage. All right, that is
gonna be your drain. We're gonna hook our 10
inch drain up the elbow and then we're going to put
the elbow into the grommet. All right. Bring it down a little bit. And you bring it in
until you get it set up against the barrier right there. And that is your drain finished. What we do with the drain
is you turn it like this and just let it drain naturally. So our next step is going
to be to cut the holes in the top of the tote
for housing our neck cups. If you would, would you
hand me our cheat sheet? - I will definitely do that. I like cheat sheets. - I do too. As you can see, this specific
tote has 12 neck cups, or 12 sites for each
one of the neck cups. Come in here and cut each one. We only use those for guides. Then we can start
drilling our holes. - It's a good idea to
have someone hold it. - All right, now that
we've drilled our holes, the next thing we want to
do is clear all the debris from the holes and
then we'll be ready to put some water in it and make sure everything
is watertight. Now that we have everything
done for the tote, we have the top of the tote cut, we have the PVC manifold built, and we've connected
some PVC to the pump. Now it's time to throw
everything together. Our first step right
now is gonna be to fill the basin
with some water. Stephan, if you want to
grab that other bucket. - We do have water. - How much do we
need to fill it? - You need about 10
gallons of water to get proper head pressure
out of the sprayers. All right. You want to grab the pump,
and let's load it in. I'll let you. Stick the cord out of the
cord hole in the back. Feed it on around. Connect up the PVC manifold,
should be good to go. - Slide that in. - (Chris)
So now we have power. Look at that. - Looks like we need to
turn it up a little bit. With the diaphragm. - (Chris)
Nice. - The tote is watertight. As you can see, there's nothing
coming out of the cord hole. So everything is good to go. All we do now is
throw the top on and we can put some neck
cups and some plants in it. That is a tote. And our next step is gonna be
to put the neck cups in there. They each take 12. - (Chris)
What do these do? - These actually
support the plant. This is what we're gonna
plant in, essentially. These are gonna be
our neoprene collars. This is actually
what holds the plant, instead of the alternative,
like expanding clay media or vermiculite or
perlite or whatever. Now that we have
everything set up, our next step is gonna be
to put some plants in it. - Let's get the plants in it. - I actually
brought some plants. - Can you tell us
what you brought? - Absolutely. Here on this end, we have
some San Marzano tomatoes. Right here we're gonna
have cinnamon basil and then Thai basil. And another San Marzano tomato. Some Genovese basil. Sugar baby watermelon, a
purple beauty bell pepper, and a cucumber. The only thing we're
gonna do to plant these is just set it down in there. I might just take this off. We'll set it down
in the neck cup. - (Chris)
Before you do this, can you tell us
what you have here? - Okay, yeah. - At the bottom of your tomato plant. - This is gonna be a rock wool. It's a hydroponic
planting material. It's just molten rock
spun like fiberglass. It's nothing crazy,
it's gonna be inert. It won't have tendencies
to raise or lower pH. It's just a good material. As you can see, our clones
have some roots coming out of the bottom already. These are already mature plants and they're ready
to be transplanted. Set the neoprene
around the plant. Neoprenes are a soft material, so they're not gonna
harm the plant at all or pinch the stem. And there you have it. It is important to note that
limitations with this system plant-wise are gonna
be root vegetables like potatoes and onions
and things like that. Anything that will grow above
the surface like tomatoes, cucumbers, pickles,
bell peppers, anything like that will
grow quite prolifically. - How about that? - That is the tote. That's all it is, real
simple, not a whole lot there. - Definitely looks good. Fellas, appreciate
the demonstration. - No problem, thanks
for having us. - Thanks for being here.
That is not meant for growing cannabis. You would, in the real world, only have one plant in that bucket. --Maybe-- 2.
That is meant for seedlings, clones, stuff that you are vegging out before placing them into their actual growing spot.
I use something very similar. You can grow 1 plant effectively. I have done 2 with success, but it is hard. Also depends on the size of the tank. Mine is just under 4 gallons. Check my post history for photos.
That system is designed for cloning, not growing. However, in the realm of technicalities, pretty much anything is possible. I'm planning a Sea of green rdwc, but its definitely going to wait until I get more experienced in hydro.
If this is your first time growing in hydro, I would recommend sticking to one or two plants in total. A system like this would definitely suit your needs if you plan on doing perpetual grows though.
I;ve searched all over and read all kinds of great guides on how to hydroponically grow cannabis, but I still am not getting a straight answer when it comes to density of plants. In the linked video, they're setting up for 12 at a time, but I'm concerned that would overcrowd my cannabis.
Were I building the exact setup in the video, how many plants at a time could I grow in that one tote? Alternatively, what are you guidelines in terms of how close you can plant your seeds in one place, particularly in an indoor tent situation?
Depends on your grow area, light, size of container.
Taking in to consideration that you're asking on here... I would say to hold off on attempting it until you have a few grows under your belt.