what's up fam i thought we'd do a quick little video on how i'm setting up an automated watering
system for the 4x4 as you guys know i switched over to fluoroflex and coco and the watering has
been extreme i had to water these things all the time to the point where i need something to take
care of it if i'm gone for a few days or maybe even for a week and with the floraflex it makes
it really easy because all i have to do is mix it into the water so really it's just pumping water
and as long as everything's watered everything's gonna be going great so for this setup i just
went with the really budget kind of build here guys i got the growtek uh drip irrigation rings
from growtechusa.com check them out the rings are only six dollars a piece for the six inch
but i went with these because i thought they'd give really uniform coverage over the soil when
it's actually watering um so it gets the whole pot all around really even rather than just like
having a hose pipe in there and dump some water and it's really gonna water evenly around the pot
but for this setup i have a basic uh water pump that i found on amazon for a really good price it
has adjustable flow and it has the right fitting on top for what i need and so linked to that we
have some half inch pvc pipe and then from there i have a reducer from a half inch to a fourth inch
pvc pipe that i'm going to run into the tent and then from there goes off on the t
splitter into the drip rings and then there is some valves on there so you can control uh either
back pressure or shut off a drip ring if needed so i think that's a really nice feature and something
you should have definitely if you're setting this up for a tent you're going to want the ability to
be able to stop watering a plant if for some reason you have an issue and have to pull it
or it doesn't make it you know whatever whatever reason you might need you want the ability to
shut a drip ring off if you need to so it's not just spewing water for no reason if for
whatever reason you don't have a plant there definitely have the shut off valves on there and
yeah guys one thing i found when piecing this all together is the inner diameter of pipes and
the advertised listing diameters on amazon can be a bit tricky because they could say fourth inch
but definitely not fit in there properly so i'll link everything in the description below that i
have here and it definitely all fits together and works well but with this system basically i have
some 12 gallon reservoirs one for bloom one for veg which is great for the autos and the perpetual
i can have the veg ones going with a veg feed for as many weeks as i need and then you know
switch over to the bloom tank when they transition over so it's really going to be an easy system
and i'm pretty excited to see how it goes but mainly setting this up for cannafest
when we're going to be gone and we're gonna have to be away from the garden for three plus days
um with the cocoa like you can't miss that many waterings especially in late flower they're just
chugging it down so really this whole setup is very easy like this is the whole absolutely like
water requirement for this setup in terms of what we need to get water into the plant beds
and then the only other thing like i said is the trash cans for the reservoir which were just cheap
i found at the hardware store and then there's a app controlled timer and that's pretty critical
because it it does take a little bit of measuring like you definitely want to make sure the distance
between the hoses on your where it goes from the tee from the pump to the the drip rings you want
to make sure it's even on both sides or you'll get a result where you could have more water being
outputted off the side with like the shorter hose first the longer hose side because it's going to
pump at a different rate so it's really important to keep all the hosing the same length when you
start to branch off to multiple drip rings but you can compensate that like if you have the shut off
valves you can reduce the flow rate to one of the other rings by closing down on the valve so that
will kind of balance it out and you can actually balance it so what i'll have to do is hook this
whole system up figure out how long it takes to run the pump to get the amount of water that i
want out of it to dispense and then just set the timer on the app controlled power strip to run
the pump for that amount of time so i'll basically get this all set up run it through a couple time
trials and then see basically how many minutes it takes to run the pump to get say a half gallon of
water to be dispensed out of both drip rings um so that's that's basically all the setup there is
to it and that's pretty easy it's just setting a timer running it measuring the water output
um and then just setting your timer for that equal amount of time so like again everything will be in
the description below guys and uh if you want to set up one of these automated watering systems for
yourself i think it'll definitely help with your grows and just make everything easier especially
if you run like a cocoa mix with synthetic newts it just makes it a little easier because you don't
have to be there as much to water every day especially if you're hand watering with cocoa
it just goes really quickly and you'll find yourself watering non-stop and if you're not
there to water then it can be can be detrimental so this is definitely gonna help but we'll go
go through and just kind of cover the rest of the setup and how it's all in the tent guys
and hopefully give you a better idea on how to do this i got the half inch hose took the pump
and then to the 1 4 inch adapter i put some zip ties on there just to make sure everything stays
safe and pro tip if you guys are looking how to cut off zip ties flush flush to the thing
some clippers do great but that'll just make sure the hose doesn't pop off especially if you plan
on running this like you know when you're not around um which is probably why you're
probably setting it up like me uh you just want to make sure those hoses don't pop off
and sometimes this flexible pvc hosing can get a little looser so this will just make sure there's
no leaks and these won't pop off at all so going from the pump to a half inch hose only enough to
get out of the reservoir and then it goes into a one-fourth inch tube to the tent already got the
air stone in the bottom there everything's ready i just gotta throw the pump in and do some test
pumps and figure out the timing on this and then basically i have this timer set to go every day
this app controlled power strip will turn in on and off these outlets
on a schedule so i just have to set it for how many minutes it has to run to pump the water
i need for the day through the plant and it will just pull it from these reservoirs
and it should be a pretty easy setup to uh keep everything going so let's finish setting this up
so as you guys can see i did cut a little hole and lids to these trash cans to run on the water feed
hose out uh that has the airline going in for the uh aerator stone and the power coming out
for the thing it actually makes it pretty easy you can just dump water in and this will just
flow down and fill up the reservoir so it's just gonna pump out the water from here feed into the
tent uh but it's pretty basic so now that i have the main feed hose out come from the pump
we'll hook this up to the um 1 4 inch line and then run that into the tent with the drip rings
we're just running the pumps on uh time and then i'm just measuring out how much water
is coming out of each bucket um and then we're gonna see how long we have to run the pump for
to get the equal amount of water um or how much basically we want to water so i'm basically
going for a half gallon um so i'm just letting these run definitely helps if they're level
as far as like getting the drips uh to come out all the way around the ring
but it does have some mounting holes down here that you can see um to level it out in your pot
but basically i'm thinking about four minutes for two rings we'll get about a half gallon each
and that should be good for the veg phase here um but yeah it's pretty easy just set
it up but once i figure out how much water i want to give them it's just a matter of plugging it in
uh to the timer and then just having it pump out of the uh the reservoirs over here
and then we'll just set that timer up for the with the same schedule and then yeah the automated
timer is pretty dope it's super cheap um and you can get ones that run more outlets but this one
for three kind of work perfect for the two pumps and then um i have the aerator stones kick on
just a little bit before feed time just to agitate the water in there and stuff like that so it's a
pretty dope setup i think guys it's definitely gonna help with the watering um but yeah the
drip tank the drip rings from grow tech were great these things are these things are awesome
so as you guys can see after about four minutes of runtime that equals uh pretty much exactly a
half gallon each drip ring so that works perfectly for me i'll be able to uh dial that in and then
just you know increase the time or decrease the time to more or less water so it's all set up for
basically what i need it for for the veg side it's just going to give each plant about a half a
gallon a day and then we can increase or decrease as we notice dryness or over saturation but yeah
super excited for this um all we gotta do is install the drip rings on the veg plants and
then we're all set we're off to the the automation race one thing i realized i needed pretty quickly
was a way to quickly disconnect the water line from the drip rings either to remove plants from
the tent so i could defoliate or work on them or work on training or just moving the plants around
the tent i needed a way to disconnect so i added a quick disconnect in between the ring and the
water line so i could just shut the water off and disconnect the hose to either slide the plant out
because some of the plants with fluoroflex were getting so thick you cannot remove the drip ring
once the plant has grown inside of it until the end when you cut the plant down and you can remove
it but i needed a way to do that so the quick disconnects were added they're definitely worth it
you're definitely going to want to add those into your system just so it's easier to manage work on
your plants in your garden and get around your tent another great thing about the disconnects
is they do have a mounting hole in there so i took an extra gardening stake and i bent it to make a
holder that will hold the drip rings level keeping the drip rings level is important because it helps
the water disperse evenly throughout the ring so these little holders just make it easy to have a
single point to hold and hang the ring above the plant base i hope you guys enjoyed this video
been running with this auto watering setup for a couple months now and it's been working
amazing especially if you run floor flex where all you have to do is mix up water i can easily
mix up a week two weeks worth of water and just let the plants go with the feed and all i have to
do is check on them do some minor leaf tucking or training and let the plants grow it's been
a very easy this would also work amazing with organic growers who are running dry amendments
if you're just looking for something to water your plants automatically every day every couple days
and however much water you normally would water at you can definitely set that up with this system
and have something automated that's going to take care of your plants uh when you can't because life
takes over and you can't always be in the garden or home to water your plants so this is just kind
of my solution to help with that hope you guys enjoyed it again links to everything down in
the description below definitely smash that like button if you enjoyed this video and hit subscribe
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you