Hydroponics

[jvs]

For the past 8 years or so we have been growing some of our veggies in a hydroponic

system.It works well but every year around this time we are more or less forced to shut it down

because the veggies do not grow much any more.

Too hot!

I have been thinking about cooling just the water so that the plants do not get over heated.

Are there proven systems to do this?

I was thinking about using an old fridge to cool the water inside of it so the whole system would run

cooler.

Any ideas out there?

[djayz]

I am by no means an expert on this, but from the many tutorials I have watched, it appears that sun shade/netting to protect the plants, water tanks, grow beds, pipes, etc. from the sun seems to work pretty well. 

[jvs]

48 minutes ago, djayz said:

I am by no means an expert on this, but from the many tutorials I have watched, it appears that sun shade/netting to protect the plants, water tanks, grow beds, pipes, etc. from the sun seems to work pretty well. 

We have been doing all of that but the water takes on the ambient temperature and that

is just too hot.

 

[kickstart]

This may sound daft ,I take it you work on a drip system of irrigation ,a good system that does use a lot of water .

I do not know how big your system is ,but how about run your water pipe though an insulated box ,polystyrene one would do ,and use large blocks of ice in the box, one block in would be 30-40 baht?.

If the box is well insulated, 1-2  blocks should last awhile ,the water pipe being 1/2 inch it should work .anything like 1-2  inch pipes would be too big. it only has to drop the water temperature  by 2-3 degrees to work. 

We used to rear dairy heifers ,this time of year a few use to suffer from heat stress ,I used to put blocks of ice in their water troughs ,in the evening when it was a bit cooler, the cattle seemed a bit more  content . 

it will have its problems ,main one do you have a locale suppler of ice ?you may need more than one polystyrene box,in line. 

[CLW]

You could look for a water cooler, usually used for ornamental marine fish tanks. 

Not cheap to buy and I guess also uses a lot of electricity to run.

Industrial chillers are even more expensive.

If you are a handyman, you could experiment with a second hand air con unit and let the water pipes run through the indoor unit cool air flow

[rice555]

Accent in BKK has their revisor below ground, a friend of

mine also had his half baried under his NYF system.

rice555 

 

[CLW]

On 7/9/2022 at 2:40 AM, rice555 said:

Accent in BKK has their revisor below ground, a friend of

mine also had his half baried under his NYF system.

rice555 

 

I'll rewrite the post (don't know what happened with rice while writing it)

 

Accent Hydroponics in BKK has their reservoir below ground, a friend of

mine also had his half buried under his NFT system.

[rice555]

On 7/9/2022 at 2:40 AM, rice555 said:

Accent in BKK has their revisor below ground, a friend of

mine also had his half baried under his NYF system.

rice555