Consensus on fogponics from what I read says it works for cloning and veg, but not for flowering. The particle size is too small for optimum nutrient absorption.
I just scrolled through the thread so I’m not going to get into the power setup thing unless the OP has a specific question. Regarding the water temp, the most surefire way to regret going DWC is to let your water get hot.
It is possible to run up into the high 70s low 80s but it’s way way way more expensive and involved, we only did it once successfully and that was in an ISO 5 clean room with anterooms.
The issue is twofold: one, the plants will suffocate as the water gets warmer and the solubility of O2 decreases. This will also impact their immune response. It will also cause any beneficial bacteria (which is generally aerobic) to not grow as well.
Simultaneously, the nasty black shit that everyone’s been posting pictures of which is anaerobic will grow exponentially faster. At 80f water with a system that’s anything other than operating room clean, you’ll kill your plants in 2 days, and even 1-2 hours can totally fuck your world. Ask me how I know. Mind you, this is info from a 10ksqft/room scale with hardcore water treatment and sterile controls, not a living room grow.
Now, there are a multitude of ways to keep the buckets cool. Chillers are the way we do it (we have a 200hp chiller but again, different scale).
You can run a “water waster” which uses cold tap water; you may think your water is free but this will use thousands of gallons per month easily. Your landlord will probably not be okay with raising the water bill 10x, but you’ve assured us it won’t be a problem. This does make a good “emergency” cooling method though in case your primary system fails on a hot day (again, hours until you’re fucked).
What we do to keep the buckets cold when we have to schedule a shutdown (for instance to clean the main irrigation system/heat exchangers) is to just bring the room temp down to 70F; again, this is not ideal and ultimately costs much more than running a chiller because you are wrecking your VPD usually and it takes a lot more refrigeration to make the room and buckets cold than just the buckets.
You could also look at passive cooling methods such as shallow geothermal (although you’d need a good amount of pump rate in your cooling loop and a big coil because the temp difference is low) or a cooling tower type setup that uses evaporative cooling. I don’t buy the massive water sink saving you much trouble though, IME once active cooling is lost you’ve got 1-2 hours before the bucket is room temp at least. For us with the huge pump it’s like 15 minutes. Remember that air pumps, water pumps, and radiance from the lights all heat your buckets up.
Or you can grow in dirt. It’s more expensive at scale for sure but honestly, the checklist of what you need to do to not fuck it is way shorter.
10 Likes
it will also heat the hell out of the water…I’m just saying I have one.
So don’t grow in a bucket. Use a container that holds more water. He could fit a 100 gallon livestock trough in that space.
Not that I am any good at math, but the btus needed to move a quantity of water in temperature can all be calculated.
The heat exchanger to ambient calculation is much more difficult though. And unless you’re substantially changing the water:surface area ratio, it’s not going to matter. Again, at best you’d need 6 times the ratio to make it 12 hours and then you have the issue the other way; your nighttime temp needs to be at least as far below your target temp as your room temp. So a 78f degree room to hold 70f water would still need to get down to 62f while cooling all that water down (which is now a big heater). I know Canada is cold but honestly, it doesn’t seem practical. You’d be better off building a cooling tower on the porch
2 Likes
What about using 1 of the radiators that they use to liquid cool computers? Need a pump to transfer the water, but you could hang the radiator right outside the window to keep it cool. At least that’s what I used to do when I was overclocking computer chips in the winter…
1 Like
Probably need a little more cooling than that, depends a lot on room temp. Depends even more on outside temp though and if it gets over 70 outside it’s starting to work against you
1 Like
I would be a little more worried about the water freezing in the lines. I was at least able to use anti-freeze, so I didn’t have to worry about anything freezing over. If he’s up north anyway
That was my initial thought, about using a heat exchanger.
2 Likes
Not really an issue unless the pump stops running. Also, no reason you can’t run antifreeze in it
You can totally run a heat exchanger to the ambient air but if you have a day that it gets up to 80f it’s gonna kill your crop unless you have a plan B
1 Like
well, today’s been kind of a shit day, and it’s pretty clear I shouldn’t even be thinking about growing anything outside of a chia pet.
So no worries everyone. I’ll drop some seeds in dirt, or just buy it. whatever.
2 Likes
It is a weed after all, it will grow. You just may not want to smoke it.
1 Like
Happy to give you any insight I can if/when you decide to grow. I’m here to help, not to poo poo anyone. Just hate to see people make mistakes I’ve already made without saying something
8 Likes
This is where I’m coming from too. I’ve made these mistakes and they were costly and painful.
10 Likes
I could tell so many stories about scrambling to hack together kludgey fixes to try to keep shit from dying lol. Like being in a JLG 65 feet in the air on a 10 degree day trying desperately to glue together a piece of 2" PVC filled with water running down to our cooling tower. Never been so cold in my freaking life.
5 Likes
You absolutely can do it brotha.
I know it seems like we are all pissing in your cheerios, but me personally, and I can assume the rest of the fellas feel the same way, I would definitely like to see you succeed and get a killer harvest, that’s why I gave you all the advice I can.
You should keep on looking into man, we’ll all give you the advice you need
8 Likes
Yea bro I started out the same way in a townhouse I had no idea what I was doing I cut out the carpet in the rooms I used and the owner held my generator hostage until i paid like 300 bucks to fix the carpet as we moved out haha. Man fun times as a kid. But you gotta start somewhere and have as many outlets you can for making money I totally get it!
Use what you got and build it up from there.
A totally different route for that space that would get you quite alot of return on an inital investment with not much upkeep is some mycology 
3 Likes
Hi I am here to chime in and say that growing dwc without a chiller is not smart
Sorry if you’ve moved on from this 
but root rot will take out a room in a week.
Edit cuz I didn’t read shit
6 Likes
His space is only about 2x4, that’s a lot of light for that space haha.
2 Likes