How does everyone heat their nutrient reservoirs?

Growing
1

i have some 165 gallon nutrient reservoirs that need heating. we started out using hydrostore “aquarium” type drop in heaters. ended up having to splice both the element and the thermostat with longer cord to reach the bottom of the tank and sealing up the splices inside 3/4" tubing with silicone. it worked. but as with all hydrostore products they seem to die every 4 months.

does anyone have experience with a hot water heater element?

any other ideas?

i’d rather not build a room around my exposed reservoirs. they are inside the building but not in a heated area.

thanks in advance for your input.

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Have you ever considered a tankless hot water heater? Do any other @growopowners or @mastergrowershave any experience with this?

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The 350w titanium rez heaters from the hydro store are good, but he controllers are junk. We end up running them on digital seedlings heat mat controllers, set at 65 degrees F. If the wire covering on the sensor probe cracks you’ll get zapped though, as this is not an approved use.

Another trick is if you’re aerating your reservoir, he bigger pumps have a barbed intake port. Connect a hose to it that terminates near your ceiling so it adds warmer air to the rez.

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@Growernick i’ve not considered that. we mix up by hand once or twice a week so color me ignorant if there is a way to do that with those kind of heater. i’m all ears

@Lazyman mind linking me the heater and controllers you use? i can’t find any heaters with long enough cords. the top of my rez is about 5.5-6’ from the floor. how long have you used your current ones?

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5

Best option is to just insulate the reservoirs. Set them on 2 inch styrene and then either use spray on insulation or wrap them with conventional.
You can also put a pump in the reservoir and plumb it out to a small water heater and plumb the outlet of the water heater back into the top of the reservoir. The problem with this is that short water heaters cost the same as full size and they don’t have a low enough setting on the thermostats so you then have to add an additional thermostat to cycle the water heater. DO NOT run a regular water heater without a separate thermostat!

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good advice ron.

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7

You might try using a horse water tank heater.

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8

Great advice!

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yep, stock tank heaters were my next stop. i do want to insulate them individually as well. started looking at radiant barriers from home depot. water proof would be ideal. obv cheaper is better. never a dull day.

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Hi There, check out http://rolliesystems.com. We make a lot of different types of tank heaters and
could easily adapt to a grow room reservoir, check out our control systems while your there!

Thanks,

Bill

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11

Look at Grainger for a stock tank heater. They also sell little giant subersable pumps.

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THIS! dang beat me to it.
Water tank heaters for cattle work great and if you guy a rheostat controller for the input power, you can dial the heat to whatever you need.

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They sell a therostate plug for NEMA 1 enviorments. Comes with a one meter thermal prob.

Big problem is a stock tank heater is thermal convection in water is slow. If you add a small submersible pump you solve the problem.

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14

One more important thing about heaters use 220 volts. Makes it easier on the wallet not to worry about did I balance the electrical panel last month.

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Totally agree. Also you get weird hot spots and it can encourage weird biofilms to grow on the actual heater with those.

One nice way I’ve seen these used is the make a pvc ‘radiator’ grid with a small H2o tank, pump, and water heater so hot water is just recirculated in an closed loop of pvc lines that can be dunked into mixing tanks to heat them without any contact between the heating element and the solution.

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