Pretreating Rockwool

Quetzal

Quetzal

✌🏻+🌿
Does anybody have tips for pretreating large amounts of hugo blocks.

Im thinking have a 4x8 tray to be DTW with maybe 4 inches of wool covering the tray, as a sheet. I would then stack 2-4 layers high of 6" hugo blocks to form a solid rectangle covering the existing slab.

The slab would be to wick the moisture from the blocks.

Thinking this way I could treat 100-200 at a time.

I would just run 1-200 gals through to flush/prep the wool.

Any better ideas, say I have 500 blocks to treat. Problem I see without adequate wicking action is over saturated blocks.
 
Gotta be a better way than having to shake the water out of a bunch of blocks right?
 
Quetzal said:
Gotta be a better way than having to shake the water out of a bunch of blocks right?
Click to expand...


how long do you soak your blocks? i don't have any experience with the hugo blocks, but i give the smaller cubes a quick dip at 5.5 pH and use as is. doesn't take long for the excess to dry up. :dunno:
 
Last edited:
I have used Hugo's and big Mama's .You should totally saturate with PH corrected water and drain . They will hold nutrient for a fairly long time depending on your grow temps and plant size . You will need to make or buy covers for the blocks or else your going to have algae problems. RW will hold salts so watch your EC and flush when need be . I been using RW commercially for over fifteen years . If I can help shoot me a PM
 
I had thought about trying those but didn't know how I would soak them so I never followed through. I would maybe use a baby pool to get the height.

E.C., I like to soak my RW for at least 12 hrs.
 
That's a good idea Skitty . There cheap to buy at Wally World and would work really well . I used a couple of stock tanks that I had laying around.
 
All i use is hugo blocks. I only have 9 plants (9 blocks) so i just put fill up a reservoir with 5.5 ph water and let them soak for a few hours. then i pull them out and let them drain in the bath tub for a few hours. once drained, i put them in the 3x3 ebb n flow tray and flood with 1-1-1 GH nutes nutrient water and transplant my plantlets onto the cube.

Of course if you are doing 500 blocks then this might not work for you. But rockwool could soak for many hours and the cubes wont lose their integrity.

As far as the algae on top of the cubes, i have never had that, but other people who do the same system as me do get the algae. Have fun man.

-
 
You could always get a large Brute Trashcan and simply install a ball valve on the bottom.

Elevate the trashcan by placing it on cinder blocks or whatever else you've got laying around so you can easily collect runoff later!

Then fill up trashcan with PH'd nutes....soak RW....then open the valve and drain trashcan into smaller buckets to collect runoff to feed plants around the house :)

Just a thought.........
 
Im DTW so I dont soak at all. I just put mine in my system and hand water them well with run off to soak them/rinse them. And then put my plant in there and feed tube and let them water as usual. Being DTW its easy for me.
 
I never used to soak, just watered in dry RW and had great results, but about two years ago I had some bad ph issues from maybe a bad batch ? Since then I've been too chickenshit to go back to the old way.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top