IWS cleaning

[tidyboy1981]

After a week of flood and drain what does everyone do regarding cleaning the pipes/brain/res? 

   

[Baron von greenback]

Just now, tidyboy1981 said:

After a week of flood and drain what does everyone do regarding cleaning the pipes/brain/res? 

   

I drain my water butt and give it a srub as its draining then just refill it then when i cut plants down i drain everything use a wet and dry hover to suck anything left in pipes give everything a scrub with a mild bleach solution refill water butt with just water flush the whole system a couple of times then give everything a clean with fresh water suck what remains with hover then your ready to go again hope this helps mate i am useing a iws system

[tidyboy1981]

Are you saying you do this every week? 

[Baron von greenback]

Just now, tidyboy1981 said:

Are you saying you do this every week? 

No mate i just empty and scrub water butt every 10 to 12 days i do it all when i have cropped before i start again also i give my fans and walls etc a once over as well i dont grow in tents 

[trichomehi]

I used to use hydrogen peroxide, after you've cropped remove as much of the root material as possible from each bucket, then make up a 50% solution of peroxide and flood the system making sure the flood bucket is raised to get the solution flooding as high as possible,  the let it sit for at least 24hrs, drain and flush with clean water, any bits of roots remaining usually stay on top of the pebbles so remove as much as possible. The res does need a scrubbing so whilst your preparing peroxide solution pour some neat down side of tank and scrub with a hard bristle brush, wear gloves nasty stuff. I used the silver bullet brand its a stronger solution.

[Goodbloke]

Hiya, I'm not totally clear on what you're asking, people's weekly maintenance schedule for an F&D system? 

Obvs there is a wide array of designs & performance for systems under the F&D umbrella so YMMV. 

I only clean my system between grows, sometimes not even then if I immediately require the flowering space. 

A typical weekly schedule consists of doing nothing apart from daily system top up/feed levels/PH. I fully drain & run PH'd water only for 24 hrs on switching from grow/bloom, but nothing is cleaned/scrubbed.

I drain again & refill before/after a week 5 (ish) PK13/14 addition (if I use it), but again nothing is cleaned/scrubbed. 

I'd previously drained/refilled monthly, and still think this is a good idea to prevent macro percentage changes caused by uneven uptake etc, but after not noticing any difference in performance then laziness wins out.

 

For an after run clean I use 12% H202 @ 15ml/l.

 

If I've totally misconstrued what you're after then apologies. 

[tidyboy1981]

5 hours ago, Goodbloke said:

Hiya, I'm not totally clear on what you're asking, people's weekly maintenance schedule for an F&D system? 

Obvs there is a wide array of designs & performance for systems under the F&D umbrella so YMMV. 

I only clean my system between grows, sometimes not even then if I immediately require the flowering space. 

A typical weekly schedule consists of doing nothing apart from daily system top up/feed levels/PH. I fully drain & run PH'd water only for 24 hrs on switching from grow/bloom, but nothing is cleaned/scrubbed.

I drain again & refill before/after a week 5 (ish) PK13/14 addition (if I use it), but again nothing is cleaned/scrubbed. 

I'd previously drained/refilled monthly, and still think this is a good idea to prevent macro percentage changes caused by uneven uptake etc, but after not noticing any difference in performance then laziness wins out.

 

For an after run clean I use 12% H202 @ 15ml/l.

 

If I've totally misconstrued what you're after then apologies. 

thanks for the response. No that was the answer I was looking for. My local shop says I should scrub IWS res every week which seems a pain in the arse.  Each week I’ll completely empty the tank and do a flush with phd water first then add my nutes to the res. 

[badbillybob]

my mate hasnt cleaned his since he bought it, about 4 years ago

i wouldnt recommend this id be bleaching it out at the end of each grow, and cleaning the hydroton. 

[Baron von greenback]

On 10/04/2022 at 1:54 PM, tidyboy1981 said:

thanks for the response. No that was the answer I was looking for. My local shop says I should scrub IWS res every week which seems a pain in the arse.  Each week I’ll completely empty the tank and do a flush with phd water first then add my nutes to the res. 

I wouldnt empty every week do it every 12 to 14 days unless theres a problem also your going to cause problems flushing with phd water every week theres no need to flush only at end of bloom what i do is when i doing a water change i just give my water butt a scrub with a scouring pad as it drains mate

[Baron von greenback]

On 10/04/2022 at 7:51 AM, Goodbloke said:

Hiya, I'm not totally clear on what you're asking, people's weekly maintenance schedule for an F&D system? 

Obvs there is a wide array of designs & performance for systems under the F&D umbrella so YMMV. 

I only clean my system between grows, sometimes not even then if I immediately require the flowering space. 

A typical weekly schedule consists of doing nothing apart from daily system top up/feed levels/PH. I fully drain & run PH'd water only for 24 hrs on switching from grow/bloom, but nothing is cleaned/scrubbed.

I drain again & refill before/after a week 5 (ish) PK13/14 addition (if I use it), but again nothing is cleaned/scrubbed. 

I'd previously drained/refilled monthly, and still think this is a good idea to prevent macro percentage changes caused by uneven uptake etc, but after not noticing any difference in performance then laziness wins out.

 

For an after run clean I use 12% H202 @ 15ml/l.

 

If I've totally misconstrued what you're after then apologies. 

Ok @Goodbloke so you only change your water butt 3 times through the whole grow with no problems so you just keep topping up water and nutes do you add nutes to a certain ec level  what size water butt do you use cheers

[Goodbloke]

Yeah, that would be my only planned full tank drain downs & refills. 

I add PH adjusted water with silicone once/twice daily to top up & then adjust nutes followed by final PH check/adjustment. 

My system isn't IWS though and as it has the res under the buckets it's size is limited to keep the height down. It's only 45/50l and the flood will use approx 40l of this, so requires daily attention. I do have an additional 100l storage that I can use for remote top up if I'm away from home. 

What's the manufacturers recommend drain schedule? If a system was new to me I'd carry on your search for recommendations from users to see what they do.