Anyone made the jump from DWC to RDWC?

Running a 4x4 with four 5-gallon buckets right now, DWC, and it's been solid. But managing four separate reservoirs is getting tedious, especially when i'm dialing in nutrients mid-run. Currently sitting around 850 ppm, 5.9 pH, and even small drift between buckets messes with consistency. I keep reading that RDWC centralizes all of that, but I'm skeptical about whether the plumbing headache trades off fairly against the time savings. My main concern is the pump and circulation adding heat to the res. Denver ambient temps are pretty manageable, but my current res temps are barely holding at 68F with a chiller assist. Adding a pump loop sounds like it could push that higher and I'd need to upsize the chiller, which is another cost. Anyone here actually converted mid-grow setup or done a side-by-side comparison? Did your yields or plant uniformity improve enough to justify the build? Curious what EC targets people are running in RDWC vs. standalone DWC too, since i've heard you can push slightly higher with better oxygenation.

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Experienced6h ago

The temp thing is real and i feel like people gloss over it too much. I added a pump loop to my setup two seasons ago and it definitely added heat, not catastrophic, more like 2-3 degrees which doesn't sound like much until you're already riding 68F on a chiller. Had to bump the chiller capacity and honestly the cost offset ate probably 4 months of the "time savings" people rave about. That said, where RDWC genuinely earned its keep for me was chasing phenos. When i'm running 6 plants from a new batch trying to find the keeper by smell and structure, having everything dialed from one res means the only variable between plants is genetics. That actually matters a lot for what i do. In standalone DWC there's always some micro-drift that makes you second guess whether that one funky pheno is genetics or just a slightly different feed situation. On EC targets, i haven't found a dramatic difference. Maybe i push 50-100 ppm higher with confidence but nothing groundbreaking. The uniformity gain is real though. If your main goal is just cleaner runs with less fuss, i'd probably say convert between grows not mid-run. Plumbing a recirculating loop while plants are in flower is asking for a bad week.