by britta
How To: WF Version 1.0 Reservoir System Window Farm
10:56 am in Featured Post, Getting Started, How-Tos by britta
This system can churn-out a salad per week, but it is definitely not the place to start if you are a beginner. This was our community’s first design and is a little more of a challenge. The window farm described in this How-To is a reservoir system. A water pump on a timer periodically pumps water and liquid nutrients from the bottom reservoir to the top reservoir. There are small holes drilled into the underside of the top reservoir. Small drip emitters with valves let out a constant drip of water and nutrients into a column of plants. Each plant sits in a grow medium in a net cup (a perforated plastic cup commonly used in hydroponics), within an inverted plastic water bottle. The cap of each water bottle has a hole in it so that the water and nutrients can drip from one bottle to the next, from the top to the bottom of the column of plants. The bottom-most bottles are connected to tubing that takes the water and nutrients into the bottom reservoir, where it sits until the pump turns on again.
Water pump systems are a little more finicky and are susceptible to clogging. Most of the community has moved toward the airlift design so unless you are very comfortable with tools and handy, we suggest trying the airlift how-to.
IMPORTANT ELECTRICAL SAFETY UPDATE!!! Please remember to include a drip loop on electrical components of this system. Make sure the cord hangs down below the outlet and then goes back up to plug in. Make sure you do not have an outlet directly under your reservoirs.
Download the PDF of the How To instruction guide here. Please note that we ask anyone who downloads the how-to to register on the site and to come back and post as you build, not just when you’re finished. You give back to the project by participating on the site. Bring questions, ideas, results of your testing various processes. This is a mass collaboration on the R&D of these systems.
Wanted to say i’m sorry for the bit of attitude from frustration….i really do appreciate your work and all i’m learning in the process. Didn’t feel as bad that others were also having water movement problems in the drip version. Will post again when i get it to work, the seedlings are screaming for a home
thank you
I managed to get by without using the pump timer, just by moving the water in the bottom reservior to the top one thru the elbow pvc on the end every evening. Seems to be working wonderfully, getting the same effect, i suggest trying it if you don’t want to bother with engineering electronics (like me
).
Why isn’t this working for me?!
Thanks for sharing the information. This is a great stuff of reading,I will pass it on to our audience.Thanking you. Build a hydroponics system
I could only find 8 inch (from top to bottom) bottles, is that going to make a big difference?
Using an aquarium with fish in it instead of a reservoir can remove the need for artificial fertilisation. The vertical farm would also replace the need for biological filtration of the aquarium if setup correctly. If you already own a fish tank, the pumps may be powerful enough to push the water to the top reservoir; eliminating the need to purchase new pumps. Keep in mind that what you feed your fish will ultimately be what you are feeding yourself, you will need to look into the type and quality of food that you feed your fish.
Funny, but when I tried to make a new account, I thought I’d read the ‘Terms and Conditions” you have to agree to…. and the page was not found!
What gives? Can I at least *read* that which I have no choice in accepting to be a new member?
Desde Chile, les doy infinitas gracias.
Hello, I would like first to thank you making this process public for sharing.
I will try to make one, but I will try another system.
I would like to include another idea to see how it could work.
It is to add, in fact, an acuarium just in the bottom.
Because It would be better, I think, for some context and applications in communitys to avoid the use of fertiliser… and the need of buying extra materials like the little balls you put in each bottle.
The system idea is based in another system call aquaponics. So, my goal is to make a mini-aquaponic system , hybrid, using vertical disposition (window, bottles) , water (not little balls to put the plants), little goopys or srhimps (fish) in each bottle, then a biger acuarium on the bottom. The mini-ecosystem will make the fresh watter rich in organic components, do not need fertiliser…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaponics
http://www.photosbysc.com/Aquaponics/Saras_Aquaponic_Blog/Entries/2008/4/13_What_is_Aquaponics.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2bS78GlC0E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27AiJXpfpJM
I will try… then I share with you the experience.
In fact, I am in Colombia, so it is tropical , no seasons, it means some part of the system has to be prouved: ¿do we need here a little window in each bottle for the plants? I undestand that it servs to make the water pass by , irrigating without spreding out every where, but ¿ Is the little window a mini greenhouse? ¿Is it necessary in the tropics? ¿Isn`t too hot for the plants?
YOu tell me!
I was wondering if anybody has checked into the power draw the various pumps might have. I’d rather have an idea about how much extra power the farms might use before I set one up. Thanks
Good job for creating this document. A little suggestion to improve it, add the metric mesures (because as you can see here http://mathewke.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/metric_system.png?w=437&h=191, you are not so many using a non-metric system).
I will do the convertion for my pdf, so mail me if you want the values.
Hi, may I ask why there’s a need to install lights? The system is installed in the windows & will it be better to minimise any resource used? Thx!
When do the home tours begin?
This would be a great excuse for a community pot luck!
Best wishes to all.
Has anyone tried using glass bottles to minimize exposure to the plastics? (I understand it will be harder to cut the glass and obtain the old-fashioned rubber corks and tubing.)
I have downloaded you How To booklet. We live rurally and have a small family vegetable garden in 3′X3′ boxes with bottoms in Albion California. We are growing an increasing amount of our own vegetables in this, our second year. We currently have about 140 sq feet of planting space. However, I am always looking for ways to increase our production so we can give away more food to neighbors as we over-produce for ourselves. I plan to show your system around my community for folks to consider. Thank you for putting this cooperative effort together. As I have insights and experiences with your system, I will keep you informed.
This how to instruction guide makes it a point to say its not for begginners…can anyone point me to something that may be easier to follow. I am as beginner as they come and would like to start something basic.
6″ -> 15 cm
47″ -> 119cm
49″ -> 124cm
52″ -> 132cm
58″ -> 147cm
72″ -> 183cm
90″ -> 229cm
14″ -> 36cm
24″ -> 61cm
36″ -> 91cm
48″ -> 122cm
60″ -> 152cm
72″ -> 183cm
84″ -> 213cm
1sq ft = 0.09290304 m² = 929.0304 cm²
Am I missing something or it’s ok ?
Has anyone tried a solar powered setup?
It may be possible to wire up a solar panel to run the pump to refill the reservoir.
Finally found time to get to the hardware store and I am pumped to build. I teach third grade in the Bronx and my students can’t wait to see our classroom window farm. As I look of the materials, is it necessary to buy an air pump and a water pump? I had planned on just buying the EcoPlus 264 Submersible Water Pump. Thanks for the help!
Just joined the community but can’t download “How To: WF Version 1.0 Reservoir System Window Farm”. I keep getting the message “wrong way” and tells me to join to download. I’ve already tried 3 times, its not working. Gotta get to work, no time to work with this.
Hey guys, been looking into this for a good while now and have finally put together the 1st 2 bottles for my 1st window farm! I, like plenty of other people, I’m sure, have made a small but I think significant modification to the system.
Now, none of you could have typed the words “hydroponics” or even “grow” in to Google without coming up with sites dedicated to people growing a certain widely known and smoked herb that shall remain nameless. Any-hoo, I came across one of these sites and decided that as these people are making a lot of money out of their particular choice of crop, they are likely to have spent a good amount of effort on research to enhance their yield and therefore come up with the best techniques. It seems that hydroponics is considered a little old hat in some of these circles, as many of you will well know, nutrified water is only half of what a plants roots need, the other half is a healthy supply of air. Our less legitimate friends are therefore using sprayers to moisten roots suspended in the air in so-called “aeroponics” systems and the newest thing being experimented with seems to be using ultrasonic devices to produce a nutrient rich fog to allow the smallest possible nutrified water particles and the greatest possible blend of moisture and air.
Now, brilliant as these things may be, they do obviously require dedicated spaces and resources that are out of reach and away from the ethos of the average window farmer, but there is a system I have found in my research that I believe will add to the already brilliant one employed by you entrepreneurial window farmers and with a minimal extra expenditure of resources, all of which you will already know where to buy, beg, borrow or steal.
Flood and Drain:
The flood and drain system consists of two cycles; the flood cycle and… yes, the drain cycle. we start with a solid container, rather than a net cup, full of clay balls and a plant growing in it, the container is dry and so are the roots. On the flood cycle, the entire container, up to a few mm (sorry Americans) from the surface of the balls is completely flooded with our nutrient solution and then comes the drain cycle. at this point the water is pulled out of the system, sucking nice oxygen rich air back round the roots and then we start another flood cycle, pushing out the stale air and bring back the tasty nutrients. the advantage of this system over the traditional dripper style of window garden is that: a. all the growing medium gets an equal and high amount of both air and nutrients where as with drippers you inevitably end up with a very wet part in the middle and towards the bottom and a dry area towards the outsides and at the top and b. there is no need to have the wide space surrounding the grow medium containers to allow for air to the roots as it is sucked in by the expulsion of the water meaning we can use smaller bottles therefore getting more plants into our windows and saving on some materials.
My modification involves getting rid of ya net cup, putting the balls straight into the bottom of the bottle and then having a tube running from the bottom of the bottle, up to just below the top of the pebbles and then looping back through the bottom of the bottle into the next one which has a separate tube doing the same thing into the next bottle which has a separate tube doing the same thing etc… The idea is that when the water level reaches the top of the loop in the tube a siphon will start draining the liquid contents of that bottle into the one below and as that one fills the liquid reaches that bottle’s loop’s peak starting the siphon into the next one and etc to the bottom where the water is pumped back to the top. I have already tested the modification between 2 bottles and it works like a charm,when the siphon has finished the top bottle is completely drained down to about 2mm left in the bottom of the cap. I have yet to receive my pump and valves to start on the water up end of the cycle and see if the flow rate is enough to initiate siphoning but when I do I will yet ya’ll know. If all is well this mod should make for a more effective air and nutrient delivery with even amounts to all areas of the root system and allow plants to be hung around 75% closer together vertically due to not needing big airy bottles for the plants to hang in. It will also mean that you won’t have to mess around with suspending the net cups in the bottles or even buy any and increase the volume of the rooting medium available to the plants.
There are a couple of other considerations which I have come up with solutions to already but I think I’ve gone on enough for now. If people are interested, let me know and I’ll get pictures of my progress, If you all think that this idea is stupid and I’ve missed some huge detail, let me know so I can stop wasting my time and get with the program. Either way, I look forward to your comments.
Ed.