Vivosun DWC System Set Up Guide | Herbal House

Hey everyone, Matt here from Herbal House and in this video we're taking a closer look at the Vivosun 19 litre DWC system. So these are a complete modular system, stand alone, they have everything you need to get up and running but why would you want DWC or hydroponics in general? Now the idea is with a hydroponics system it is going to be so much more efficient, you no longer have a growing medium such as soil with all the variables that come along with it, it's self contained and very easy to control. So with a particular system like this, as you can tell they are based off a vessel such as a bucket with this convenient carry handle, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to quickly break down how all these parts work in conjunction and then I'm going to show you guys how to put them together. But before I get right into that, they do come in a single pot system that you see here and they do come in a four pot system which I have here. Now the four pot system is exactly the same, just four of these with an air pump to run all the lines for the entire system. So let's get into it and show you guys how to set one up. Okay so now that we've unpackaged everything here I'll just run through what we've got here on the table. So of course we've got the variable speed air pump, we have the air line, we have two check valves just here for the air hoses, we have four rubber grommets, air stone, we have this tiny little elbow here and we have this little packet. Now I have pulled everything out of its packets but I won't do this just yet because there's a tiny little red bead in there for the water level indicator and I don't want to lose that. We have the irrigation ring and the feed hose for the irrigation ring, the water level indicator tube, clay balls and of course the lid which has got the basket integrated into it. So let's get right into installing it, I'm going to start with the water level indicator sorry but first of all you want to install these four rubber grommets. So if I just rotate the bucket over here you're going to see we've got a hole down the bottom and we have three holes along the top here. So what we're going to do is we're just going to really quickly pop these rubber grommets in, quite simple really, you're just going to generally twist and push until they find their way in. So that's all four grommets, now what I'm going to do is I'm going to move onto the water level indicator equipment down here. So what we're going to do is we're just going to take this elbow here, now you'll see it's actually got a piece here which is going to go through the rubber grommet at the bottom and we have what we call a push lock fitting on top. So I'm just going to take the blue hose, either end either way, can't go wrong, I'm just going to push that in there. You'll feel a nice clicking sensation and that is indicating it is in there tight and it is not going to come out at all. So just with that in mind we're going to take it over here to the bottom o-ring, or grommet sorry, and I'm just going to push that in there. If you do struggle with these lines or anything like that pushing through the o-rings a bit, just show or anything along those lines will help it go in there nice and easy. So I've just put that in there and what you'll see is this blue hose now actually lines up with the top grommet right here. This is when it comes over to this bag here which we don't want to lose anything. So I'm going to take the little red bead and I'm just going to drop it straight into the top of the blue hose real carefully. Excellent so that is not going to go anywhere, it's just going to sit in the bottom of that elbow until we add water. I'm going to take the Lego hand looking piece that came out of the same bag, I'm going to just pop that in the o-ring and then clip on the blue hose like so, easy as that. So that is our water level indicator installed and ready to go. OK so once you've got that set up, we're going to move on to installing the irrigation ring. So in the top of your basket here, I'll just flip this over so you can see, we've actually got this little hole here, now on your one there will be a piece of plastic in there, just carefully snip that out, it's just a little blanking cap and what you're going to do is just take your irrigation tube, this one here like so, now this end is going to be in the bottom of the bucket, so we're just going to poke this up and through the base of the bucket, so it's coming up through the top here and we're going to take the irrigation ring, same story, it is a push lock fitting and we're just going to push it on, nice click and it is ready to go. Now if this hose isn't perfect, it's really easy to just rotate this hose to suit your needs, but effectively that's just going to sit slightly recessed in this basket like so and ready for us to add the clay balls but with that in mind I'll just show you down here, we've got a smaller fitting on the side of this push lock fitting down here and an open end so don't stress about the open end, that's actually where it's going to draw water up and this is where our airline is going to connect to. Alright so moving onto the airline, what you'll see is they've provided a nice roll of it, we actually need two lines because if I flip this around here, the air pump has two feeds and we are going to be feeding this air stone down here and into the side of the irrigator ring at the top of the system. So what I'm going to show you is what we have done is we have literally rolled this out and cut it exactly in half, producing these two equal lengths here and then what we've done and what we recommend doing is just taking a small cut right off the end, about yay long, this can be actually as long as you want but I'll just show you how we've done it. So we've just taken a couple small pieces like so, let me just pull this one off here and the reason we've done that is this is where we install the non return valves. Now the idea with the non return valves or non siphon valves is when these are installed into the air system, should the air pump stop for any reason, it is not going to siphon water back out of your system and down into the pump. So definitely good to have these. Now you can always check which direction these are actually going by simply blowing into them. So what you're going to do is just blow into them and make sure that they cannot return back to the pump. So in this particular case, you can almost see they're almost like an arrow shape, you want the arrow shape facing away from the pump. So in this particular case we're just going to take that small piece of black hose, I'm just going to install it on the air pump like so, same story for the other piece just here. Rather straightforward. And those just slip on nice and tight, now don't get me wrong because we have pre-fitted these just earlier, they have softened up a little bit and fit on just a bit easier. Don't be surprised if you've got to work with them a little bit, no trouble at all. OK so from there we're going to install each end of our line. Like so, like so, and we are ready to feed this into the modular system. So back to our rubber grommets, we have two available spots here and what we're going to do is we're just going to slip these rubber hoses through, silicon hoses, I think they're actually PVC, they're reasonably firm but what I find to be the hardest part is simply getting these hoses through this rubber grommet, they're definitely a high friction item on each other. So once you get them going you can pretty much reach through and in and just pull it straight through like so. Now there's no real specific requirement for how much length you need inside the system, just enough for instance the air stone to sit in the bottom of the bucket and what we'll do, pull that through, take the air stone to the air line, come like so, there we go and I'm just going to make sure there's enough length in the hose for that to sit right at the bottom of the system. Don't know if you can quite see that, it's just resting right in the middle of the system there. Alright and I've got the other air line here which we're going to go back to our irrigation ring, the push lock fitting, just going to take that and push that straight in, nice and firm and secure and we're pretty much good to go. Drop that on there. Alright so once you've got your air line set up, you are pretty much good to go bar the clay balls. So the bag of clay balls here are extremely dusty, we highly recommend giving these a quick rinse before you actually start to use them, otherwise you'll just contaminate the water and it'll go all brown and nasty and whatnot so we're going to show you guys what that actually looks like set up in a grow tent so you guys can have an idea of the four pot system and the single pot system as a standalone. Alright so we've taken the single module system just out to our 60x60 tent here. Now this is probably the smallest tent size we could recommend for a system like this, realistically with the size plant you could actually grow out of one of these, you could go right up to a one by one for a single pot so just for sake of comparison of size and get an idea of what it actually looks like, this is everything. So just the air pump down the bottom there which we have dialled right up to full power and the bucket system itself so when you connect this up to a single power point, that is all you need to have this system operating at full potential of course, pH and add your nutrients to the water solution and ensure the water level is still adequate at all times. Now for a lot of people that is actually a significantly reduced amount of hassle when it comes to watering plants because you're effectively just going to check that water level and make sure it is good to go so let's just quickly take a look at the four pot system. Alright so we've set up our four pot system here in a 90x90 space, again this is probably a bit overkill for a lot of people, it's a lot of pots for a rather small space but for the sake of it we've got it here just to show people what it looks like. Now the key difference here that you'll see is the air delivery system, this air pump here, it's got an 8 way manifold and a much higher pump system in it to supply of course all four pots. Now I will mention with this system it does actually include some valves so you can adjust how much air you want going to each pot, most people probably just have it even and running at full power for all four pots. But as you can see, there's actually a little bit of a gurgling noise, or you might not even be able to hear that, sorry, that gurgling noise is normal, that's just the way the system is pumping water and oxygen up to the irrigation ring so for a lot of people, you're probably going to leave this running full time but it's up to you if you want to be cycling that on and off depending on what you're trying to achieve. So again these are a very easy system to manage and really modular so for a lot of people if they needed to move it around, grab the handle, literally lift the thing and move it around, as long as your air lines are long enough, it's not too hard to get more air line if you did want to change things up later on. All in all a really good system and we're expecting to see some really good results when we start growing some plants here in our showroom very soon. So I hope you guys have enjoyed this video, if you have any questions, get in touch with us here at Herbalist, thanks for watching.