Anyone care to post

[Guest Field_of_Light]

Ok I had a look through the older forums and could only find scarce reference to dwc setups....this idea was floated to me recently and I am keen to know more....

 

anyone care to elaborate?

[white_cluster]

A DWC bucket is basically just a bucket filled with water that is aerated by an airstone connected to an airpump. Basicaly its the same as growing in a freshwater aquarium with no fish...

 

To make a DWC bucket you need to start with a container of some sort, most people (me included) use those strong buckets with lids, handy pails or whatever. But you can really use whatever container you want, large 60ltr crates would be good for growing bigger plants and flatter wider crates would be good for areas with little headroom, but the best containers I feel are 25ltr buckets. Mine are square ones that used to hold some kind of slow release fertilizer but before that I used buckets from bakers delight that they had fondant in, buckets are free, if you want to buy them they are about $8 at bunnings I think.

 

Then you buy a net-pot for the bucket, the best size I feel is the 250mm net pots as they give the most plant support. Then cut a whole in the centre of the lid of the bucket the size of the netpot you purchased so the netpot fits snugly inside the lid. Then next to the big netpot hole drill a small 5mm hole where the airline will go in.

 

Onto the airpump..... For one 25ltr bucket you should aim for a minimum of 1500cc or so of air. I run 1 9500cc air-pump for every 2 buckets but have had good results with half that. Basically get an airpump, some 4mm polytube as airline, and 1 airstone per bucket, any kind of airstone will do pretty much the same, no need to waste money on big ceramic air-stones.

 

Poke the 4mm tube through the 5mm hole in the bucket lid and put the airstone on the inside end of the tube. Attach the other end to the airpump and sit the airpump somewhere higher than the bucket.

 

Then fill up the net-pot with clay balls all the way to the top, add water into the bucket to about 1cm up the netpot and put a rooted clone in the clay.

 

With this system the nutes should always be run at 1/3 strength.

 

If you wanna run more than one bucket (which I know you would FoL) than you will need to set up a control bucket. A control bucket is a bucket that keeps the water level the same in all the buckets all the time.

 

To make a control bucket your gonna need another bucket, some 19mm poly-tubing, some 19mm grommits, some 19mm T and L connections, a float valve to keep the water level at height. and a resevoir to top up the control bucket.

 

Basically set-up the float valve in the control bucket to keep the water at the desired height ( about 1cm from touching the bottom of the net-pot.). Then make a platform higher than the water level and stick a resevoir up there, I'll make a diagram to show you later. Then once the resevoir is setup on a platform, drill a hole in it and connect it to the float valve with some tubing. (I run a inline filter on the way down).

 

 

Drill 1 20mm hole in the side at the bottom of the control bucket for each row of buckets you plan to run then stick in a grommit and stick in sum 19mm tube in each grommit. then run the lines down the middle of each row and put 3-way t's in the hose adjacent to each plant bucket. Then drill holes in the bottom at the side of each plant bucket. and connect them up to the t's with tubing. for the final bucket of each row, connect it to the last bucket with an L-fitting.

 

Then to keep the water level right all the time all you have to do is top up the raised resevoir. Easy as piss.

 

Changing the water is easy too, at first fill her up with 1/6 strength nutes for recently roooted clones, then drain 3/4 of water (or as deep as pump can drain) and add 1/3 strength nutes after 1 week. Top up the resevoir with plain water, except every 4th or 5th time you can give them more nutes, especially if they look like they need it. Drain 3/4 of the water and replace with new 1/3 strength nutrients every fortnight or so.

 

Hope that explains it all, will make some shitty diagrams to add, and both pipeman and mr putard can both probably add some pictures.

 

take care

[white_cluster]

here is a diagram of the actual bucket.

[white_cluster]

Here is a shitty diagram of a control resevoir::

[pipeman]

nice diagram and explanations WC.

 

everyone probably knows this anyway, but I don't think you mentioned the buckets & lids need to be lightproof.

 

I just got one bucket going that I top up manually. Even messing up the nutes and doing irregular topups I got excellent growth. Sometimes I've let it run almost bone dry with just an inch of water left in the bucket before topping up with no major problems.

 

even with my half assed effort this pic shows the result of 3 weeks veg time.

[pipeman]

some pics of making the bucket...

[Buster]

Pipeman,

Is that above average growth or am I just to used to soil? That bubbler plant is the same size at 3 weeks as my soil plant was in 2 months!! Amazing!

 

WC,

Are you any closer to getting hold of a digi cam? I'd like to see some pics of your set up one day.

 

 

Buster.

[pipeman]

hey buster, I don't know whether thats above average or not. I think it would have been faster if I didn't inflict some major nute burn on the plant at one stage. All I know is its about a hundred times faster than my first attempt in soil.

[Gruntus]

white_cluster: GREAT diagrams .. I have way worse ones in books I've purchased. Keep up the good work. You make this site a more valuable resource every time you contribute something like this.

 

pipeman: you too .. GREAT clear pics. Where did you find those plastic net pots ? How large can a plant get in one of those boxes and how many watts do you need to sun it ? Only growing in soil currently but you could convert me ..

[pipeman]

hey Gruntus, I don't really know because I haven't completed a bubbler grow yet. I've just got one plant in a bucket as an experiment, and will put into flower this weekend hopefully.

 

And although my mothers in soil are growing much slower, they got nich rich dark green leaves. The bubbler leaves are kinda light green. I like dark green leaves.

 

damn its an effort replying to posts while on this hash.

 

anyway here is a pic of my mums