Double or Nothing: A Grower’s Life
air stone will now become the spare, ready for the next reservoir change.You will always have an air stone in the reservoir
and a clean, dry air stone waiting in the wings. This process will
keep your solution bubbling steadily for years.
Circulation fans
Wall-mounted fans, oscillating fans, desk fans—we all have them
in our grow rooms. Unless your grow room is very, very small,
you should have more than one fan to gently ruffle the leaves.
With multiple fans, a single failure is no
big deal—just get a replacement fan
within a day or so and your garden
won’t skip a beat.
If you are just using a single fan
to circulate the air around your
garden, though, you should consider having a spare. If your only
fan breaks you run the risk of hot
spots and powdery mildew, as well
as reduced growth.
Inline fans
Spare gear is great, but blowers and
inline fans are too expensive to have
spares sitting around. But if you are
cooling your lights or garden space with a
blower, what happens when it goes kaput? Do
temperatures rise to the point of wilting your
prized flowers? This is another time to reach for
the shop lights—turn off your hot HID lights and
run shop lights in this emergency scenario. The
heat will be drastically reduced while you run (don’t walk) to the
grow store for a new lamp or ballast.
pH meters
Small pH pens can give you a digital readout on the acidity
or alkalinity of your hydroponic solutions, but they usually only have a one-year warranty. If your pH meter stops
working you might not be able to replace it right away—and
most likely you’ll be standing over a fresh batch of
nutrient solution when it goes out.
A great spare pH meter is the
‘drop test kit.’ These kits include
a small beaker and
a bottle of
dye.You
scoop up
a sample
of solution, add a
62
Maximum Yield USA | March 2012
“
If you
are cooling your
lights or garden
space with a
blower, what
happens when it
goes kaput?
”
few drops of the dye and shake it up. The solution will change
color and indicate the pH. The downside to these low-cost
kits (usually less than $10) is that they aren’t very specific—
they can only give you a ballpark reading. Also, if you use
organics, your solution could be too dark for the dye to take
effect. In that case, digital is your only option, so get a new
meter soon as you can!
Hygrometers and
thermometers
Digital and analog thermometers and humidity gauges are
available at garden stores and other retail shops. I recommend
having at least two of these units operating
in your grow room—ideally, you should get
two different models from two different
manufacturers.
After a few months of use, you might
notice that one meter reads drastically differently from the other. This is an indication that one meter is failing—get a new
meter and compare readings with the
first two, then dispose of the faulty unit.
Remember—an ounce of prevention is
worth a pound of cure.
I hope my failures can lead to your
successes. If you know what’s likely to
go wrong, you can be prepared with
a quick fix. And when its time to
upgrade your garden, keep the
old lights, pumps and so on
for backups.
Be diligent, hope for
the best and plan for
the worst. If something goes wrong,
don’t freak out—just
fix it. MY