WHAT IS A DWC SYSTEM?
Recirculating Water Culture Systems
Another variation of the typical water culture system is a
recirculating water culture system. The recirculating system
works like a flood and drain system, but it never drains. You
can have as many growing containers (reservoirs) as you
want connected to one central reservoir. Each growing container has its own fill line, as well as a drain/overflow tube
that drains back to the central reservoir.
Some growers use buckets instead of wide, shallow containers. Each bucket has its own plant in it and is filled with
nutrient solution. A lot of systems feature a row of these
buckets and use a fountain/pond pump to pump the nutrient solution up to each of the buckets. As the water fills the
buckets, the excess water spills over into the overflow tube
and flows back to the reservoir, where it’s recirculated back
through the system again.
Most growers who recirculate the nutrient solution like
this in their water culture systems only use an air pump in
the central reservoir, rather than in each individual bucket,
to save money. They also let the water pump run 24/7.
However, if you have air bubbles running in each bucket,
you can vary the ON time for the water pump, and the plants
will benefit from having direct contact with the rising air
bubbles contacting the roots.
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Maximum Yield USA | December 2015
“THE RECIRCULATING
SYSTEM WORKS LIKE A
FLOOD AND DRAIN SYSTEM,
BUT IT NEVER DRAINS.”
Recirculating the water allows you to use falling water
as a source of aeration in the system. You also won’t need
to keep checking the water level in each container to
replace the water the plants drank up—you just check
and replace it in the central reservoir. This is a nice benefit when you are growing large plants, or many plants
in the same system. In fact, just about all of the large,
commercially operated water culture systems recirculate
water through the system.
For more information on building and maintaining a water
culture hydroponic system, visit h