by britta
How To: Reservoir System Window Farm
July 30, 2009 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. 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.
Greta idea, i liked it alot and going to made one for my own bed room window
Thanks
What a great thing, I have a good window for this 6ft long. no direct sun but lots of light.
Wish I was closer to get some help.
Don’t give up!
Hi – I am knew but I love what you are doing here! In a months time I will be moving into an apartment with a huge NE facing window. It is screaming out for a window farm of some form of leaf or herb! I will let you know how I get on!
Will spread the word as much as I can.
Jessie London UK
You may find that you’ll need to either need to cycle-out your soil, or develop a way to deal with nutrient migration from the upper plant basins to the lower. Some of the more water-solvent substances will be captured (and concentrated) in the water system, but I think you’ll find that others will migrate more slowly downward.
It would be an interesting experiment to run a wall like this for several cycles, and to have the soil sampled at regular intervals.
@Ken- We will do some testing of our hydro medium to see the effects of nutrient buildup over time. Good advice. generally, since we have nutrient solution cycling through the system all the time and the top containers become quickly saturated, we do not think the top containers are getting any different mix than the bottom ones. As soon as they are saturated, (a few minutes) the liquid saturates all of the rest of the containers. Just to clarify for everyone though, remember that this is a hydroponic system, which means there is no soil (dirt). we are using a hydroponic medium (one of a variety of substances like clay pellets, wool, coco coir, rockwool) to suspend the plants’ roots. You do not want to put dirt in this system AT ALL. In fact, we only really recommend clay pellets for the current windowfarm designs. soil and other particulate media will clog up your liquid circuit. Soil also contains its own nutrients so if you were to use soil plus hydroponic nutrients, you would burn your plants’ roots. To be on the safe side, you can always change out your clay pellets after each crop. We recommend actually putting them in boiling water and using what’s called a flushing solution you can buy at a hydroponics supplier.
I am currently putting together a window farm and hooking it up to my fish tank making it an aquaponics system. I am going to post pictures soon (if my computer lets me). I am wondering if you are using supplemental lighting at all? I am trying to figure that part out still. Thanks!
Some people don’t use lights because they have sunny southfacing windows. I have always had to use lights because I just don’t have the natural light. We use CLFs 100 watt or 150 wat equivalents in the daylight spectrum.
I’m thinking about using a Raincup Rain Chainsuspended from a chin-up bar. I’d put the perforated plastic cup inside each rain chain cup. Its a bit more costly than the water bottles but I think it will look really pretty….any thoughts on how well the plants might fare??
Eden
Outdoor Patio Shop
I think it would look really nice. I’ve always wanted to do something with copper and one of these systems. A couple of factors I’d watch out for: 1) nutrient solution might react with the copper, 2) Is there going to be enough room for the roots to expand outside of the cups?, 3) High evaporation rate and need to refill water more frequently. If you want to do a windowfarm using the same kinds of techniques we are using here but use some different components like this, I would encourage you to make one of the 3-plant airlift systems first and just try it out so you get a feel for how the parts work together and with the plant (e.g. the way the plants roots grow, the makeup of the hydroponic nutrient, etc.) Then spend $$ on improving the design for your big system. Go for it! Next time, will you please register and make a post? Just go up to the top gray navigation bar. Once you are registered and logged in you can go to my blogs>your account>new post. Then it’s easy to insert pictures and write more and your post will show up on the front page of the site. Thanks!!
When you are ready will you please make a new post. This site is really still under construction and all of this will be much more obvious soon hopefully. The best way to do it is to register using the gray bar at the top. Once you are registered and logged in you can go to my blogs>your account>new post. Then it’s easy to insert pictures and write more and your post will show up on the front page of the site. Thanks!!
Farm Fountain has a similar design with aquaponics and lights integrated into their system .
http://www.farmfountain.com/
this is cool – i am trying to conceptualize how this works though. In a sunny window, do you want the opening int he bottles and wear the plants grow facing the outward, against the window panes?
I’m thinking about doing this in my apartment, I have a very large enclosed deck facing the sun for most of the day, very large windows (we use the room to dry our clothes).
I’m in China so finding the water pump and a lot of those special little items will have to be scavenged for or improvised. Do you think I can use I’ve tubing with the drip controller instead of a pump, with some sort of reservoir at the top that I can poor water into say twice a day, controlling the drip, taking the water out of the lower basin and then repeating the process?
I love how you took the time to make this guide. Plus you’ve made it super simple to find the vendors of the actual products in your pdf.. something that could take a long time to do especially when trying to decide what pump to use.
@Eden I actually made a raincup rain chain entirely out of recycled plastic cups and wiring. If anyone would be interested in seeing it I’d be happy to photograph and post it on here. I used clear and green cups to give the chain some color…if you wanted to try something like that instead of the copper cups it could work nicely!
All I can say is “wow!” What a great idea! I’m about to move to a new house and think this would work really well in my new study. Thanks for posting.
Really Interesting. Thanks for the Info. I love your site.
Yes. The plants holes that the plants grow out of face the window. In the system we built at Eyebeam that had lights in it, we also tried having the holes face sideways so the plant grew toward the lights against the glass. This way they get both the natural light from the window and from the CFLs.
Yeah. We are big fans of Ken Rinaldo. Haven’t had the cajones to try out an aquaponic system yet. I have an aquarium and it is hard enough for me to keep its ecosystem in balance without adding the windowfarm ecosystem to it as well! My hat’s off to those guys.
Thanks for your hydroponics garden news blog. I enjoy it very much. We’re a USA and worldwide provider and we loved your article, so we’ll put it on our blogs associated with out site http://www.hydroponicswholesale.com.
gardening
Man, I was really excited to get this going in our home, but WOW….what a hassle of a project so far. Anyone have any ideas why the pump would not push the water up the system. I can’t seem to get the water higher than just over a foot above it’s intake. I’ve already invested 10x the amount of time driving around returning the 3w pump, the 4w pump…trying other different materials that would allow me to see the whole process….it’s just not moving the water. Any thoughts?? My wife is going to leave me if she hears any more of this EZ “readymade” project. HELP
I’m going to have to complain about the illustration it is a nice pretty picture but there is a key error I want to point out in case someone sees in and runs off trying to replicate it without going further into the research.
As a safety precaution the placement of the power socket in the illustration is a huge mistake. First of all it in no way should be under the pump, pump line and an end of the reservoirs.
The outlet should not be below it but off to the side is okay. Also, when the power cord is being plugged in you should always make sure the cord curves down below the outlet then plugs upwards. The reason of course being if a leak does occur and follows the power cord it will run off at the bottom of the cord loop and not go against gravity to start an electrical fire.
Thank you for the read, and happy gardening.
Yes! Great catch Sayjo. We really should have drawn in a drip loop. That will go in the queue for fixes to the next version of the how-tos! Thanks so much. Very important.