Saturday, February 19, 2011

Total Frustration!!!

I've been outside enjoying the sunshine and working on the system.  I washed another bag of
Hydroton and filled the beds up to the level I wanted.  I didn't have enough to do it last weekend.
Silly me for wanting to test everything out one more time.....ugh!
The siphons are continuously draining to the point of the stand pipe, no suction is taking place.  I guess I now
have a continuous flow system.  (insert sarcastic "HA!")  
One grow bed by itself seems to work just fine, but altogether, none of them seem to work.  I just don't understand.  I really thought I had it.  I came back in and jumped on YouTube to watch more video to help troubleshoot this "simple" system.  I think, after watching a couple of great videos, when I added more Hydroton  the water level needed to come up further.  My stand pipes are too short.  The actual process of draining seems fine.  So....I went out to cut some longer pipe and try it.  Now the beds will drain, but they are flooding.!  When trying to pull the stand pipes out again to cut them a little bit shorter, I bumped the media guards and two of them and now have a  hydroton mess going on!  I'm going to have to dump the beds into....I don't know....something....and put the siphon back together with the guard around it...then refill the beds with the hydroton.

My 20yr old son just walked by and asked me how it was going.  I just explained to him what happened and he said, "Mom, did you ever think that maybe the water isn't filling your beds fast enough?  That maybe the water level gets to the height of the stand pipe and drains from there faster than it can fill?"  Hmmmmmm  smart kid, he may have a point?  I don't know how to correct that, though.  I'm going to have to do more research.  

It seems like this is taking forever.  Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying myself and I think I am learning a lot in the process...I am just highly frustrated at the moment.  I would love to take a few days off to do this, instead of just the weekends.   I think it is time to grab a beer, sit and stare at the whole thing for about 30mins, and then get back to it.


1 comment:

  1. Ya know a beer or a few glasses of wine my do the trick and help you to think outside the box to find just the right answers. :-) Great job blogging your progress. We all can learn from your "fun times".

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