A question about capillary tubing

[Luke Skywalker]

Hi everyone, hope that your all having a great x-mas season and will party hard on the new year.

 

I'm about to embark on a new system, (when do I not? ) and this time it's a pair of rockwool slabs in libra trays, with 3 plants each under the ol' 400w. I may well be upgrading to 600w when I get an opportunity, but the heat is hard enough to control with a 400 in a small cupboard, let alone a 600. Maybe when I get myself a decent shade....

 

Anyway, I'm rambling here. You can see a basic description of the system at Highlife.com.au, for convenience sake I'll provide both the main page, here... and the growing schedule, describing the system here...

 

The problem is that the capillary drippers seem to be prone to blockage, not from particles, (I have a couple of inline filters in the system and good filtration material inside the pump) but from air. The air is forming a "bubble" it would appear, inside the micro lines, and so when the pump goes on, maybe 2 out of 6 will start? And that's not good. The feed times are fairly short too, so I'm a bit concerned.

 

The setup for the feedlines is a small 600lph pump, which goes out direct into 13mm vinyl, a 90 degree joint and it's onto the same 13mm vinyl, running between the pair of slabs. The end is capped with a connector from 13 to 19mm, and a short length of 19mm vinyl and a 19mm end cap. The micro irrigation lines, which are 2mm internal diameter, are quite long, about a meter or so. They have to be curled around the cubes to really get them out of the way. These are attached to the 19mm vinyl by making tiny holes in the tubing along its length, and then inserting the mico lines about 2cm deep. They're completely water tight. The drippers themselves are the actual "toprock rockwool drippers" and are supposed to be 1lph. I'll include a couple of shots of the growing space in this post to help anyway.

 

So basically, is there a solution to this problem? I have a 1200lph pump, would just stronger pressure push out any air? Or is the simpler solution to just reduce the length of the capillary lines? I was going to do this if it wasn't detrimental to the lines or the rates, and just to get the length out of the way, but I was concerned about any side effects it may have. Would the drippers work the same way if I shortened it, substantially?

 

Anyway, if anyone out there has any experience with these particular drippers then I'd be really appreciative. I may just chuck em in and get different ones, as I've often used adjustable drippers before, with great success. I only used, or should say planned to use these ones because they're supposed to go with the libra tray rockwool system apparently, although I'm not so sure now.

The Force needs you all, so please assist your fellow Jedi.

 

Heres some pics of the system; from the left, from the right, of the dripper and of the main 13mm line which the drippers feed from.

[Luke Skywalker]

Here's the last two of those pics.