If you’re looking for an easy way to automate your watering this is the setup I use. It’s pretty cheap and effective. I grow in coco coir so if you are needing a way to irrigate multiple times a day this setup can handle it for you. If you have to leave your grow unattended for a few days this will keep your plants alive and healthy.
Here is the full layout of all the parts:
The hydro halo distribution thing and pot are up to you.
Piece by piece:
The reservoir:
The reservoir is just a cheap plastic bin. I got this one at Lowes. They had a better selection than Home Depot. I think a 10gal is good for one plant, lasts a few days. If you’ve got more plants maybe go bigger and stick one pump per plant.
The timer:
The most important part is that whatever timer you get, it needs to be able to be programmed down to the second. The pumps move a lot of water. This one lets you program the time and the frequency. There are plenty to choose from on Amazon.
Model TC201 from Techbee on amazon. $17-ish. You can buy something different. This is just what I currently have.
The Pump:
The pump I used is from EcoPlus. Amazon or HomeDepot. The ribbed barbed post on the top screws in. There are a couple sizes in the box. I used the 1/2" fitting since I was using 1/2" tubing on everything. It’s big enough it won’t clog if your nutes are crusty.
Drainage Tray: EZ-PZ tray
I saw these in one of @Dab ‘s setups and got one. Works great. I highly recommend that you purchase their tubing. It’s 3/4" and I could not find it locally. Worth buying with the tray so you don’t have to hassle with it. I got a big roll of it but I ended up using 2 feet of it. It was stiff and hard to work with plus I didn’t want to cut a big hole in my tent and I had a ton of 1/2" pond tubing already. Saved the new stuff for rearranging later.
Link to tray:
You can run tubing for drainage, or just put a basin under the outflow from the tray. I grabbed this brass reducer thing from the plumbing section. 3/4" to 1/2" so I could run the smaller hose as the drain line from my tent. I cut a small hole to pass it through the tent wall.
Drainage:
The drain tube. These elbow pieces screw together and you might end up with a funny angle once it’s tight. Heat seal the tubing to block the one end. It’s open on both sides so you can link mulitple trays but they dont’ send you any plugs. I think they offer plugs now and it would be worth getting a couple. Heat sealing the 3/4” tubing was tough. Needed a lot of heat and then pinching it shut with a clamp. Still took a couple tries.
In the res:
I drilled two holes in the lid of the reservoir. The big one is for the power plug on the pump and the small one is for the 1/2" tubing coming off the pump. I tried to keep them as small as possible but if the cord and tube can slide smooth, its easy to lift the lid on one end or the other to refill without yanking the pump out of place.
Put the pump inside the reservoir and pass the power plug through the large hole. Plug that into the timer. Run the 1/2” tubing through the other hole and attach it to your pot & whatever irrigation device you have.
TL: DR - The whole shebang. Pump in the res. Plug it into the timer, run 1/2" tubing from the res to the halo thing, jam that into your coco coir, let the drainage tray do it’s thing, easy! No more hand watering. Full simple automation. Just takes some time to get the seconds dialed in to get enough runoff. There is a channel in the tray that keeps a small amount of runoff so you can stick a PPM meter into it to check if you are getting enough volume and not salt build up. Also you can drain into a basin of some sort if you want to measure your runoff. I have a drain in the basement floor that I direct the waste water into. I just checked the runoff ppm and if it climbed I put more seconds on the timer. Filled it like once a week and left it on autopilot.
Once you get a pump and timer, hook everything up before you get a plant in there. Then fill the res with plain water and run the pump for like 20 seconds. Catch all the water it pumps out so you can see how many seconds you need to move 1 liter of water. It definitely varies depending on how long all the tubing and stuff is. Knowing this you can plan for leaving your plants for extended periods of time and adjust reservoir size if needed.
Dab had mentioned using an HVAC condensation pump to remove the runoff. So depending on your setup you may have to figure out how to deal with the drainage.
This is a thread I made on the xenforo site before the migration. Recreated here. There were some good suggestions for trays, pumps, etc. So anyone with suggestions please feel free to post them and critique things you think can work better! Thanks and happy growing!