by burtonator
A window farm without external power?
12:43 am in Uncategorized by burtonator
I’m curious if anyone has any experience in this area.
I want to create an unpowered window farm.
Using a pump defeats one major point for me (noise, maintenance, and impact on the environment).
I was thinking that one could use the heat of the sun to power the water in the well of the window farm to the top of the window farm.
There would then be a circular air channel to lift hot air (heated by a black strip under the well) with evaporated water to the top where it is cooler and can condense.
This would be a system powered by the sun. I would just have to remember to refill it periodically.
What I’m more interested in is a wall of flowers since I look out onto an ugly billboard in SF.
The flowers will also smell amazing which is another perk!
This is a good idea, however you may need to consider a couple things.. mainly how will it work on cooler or cloudy days and how hot will the water be pumping through the system. I believe the main thing would be cloudy days and night time.
In a hydroponic system plant root hairs can dry out very quickly, depending on what media you use and the temperature it could be as little as 2-5 minutes – your system would be nice however because the hotter it was the more water would be getting pumped to the plants when they need it more, however on an overcast day that it very warm the plants may be transpiring faster than the water is moving to them, thus drying out. Plants will also transpire slightly during the night ( depnding again on temperature and RH)
So, basically, what im saying is that if you can get this system to pump up a significant amount of water you will probably want to use a hydroponic substrate which will hold moisture for a bit of time (ie. Coco-coir) which still would be tricky – when you move to denser substrates (ie. soiless mix) you won;t get the percolation effect you’re looking for to feed the plants under the top ones. The less dense substrate (ie. clayballs) may cause the roots to dry out
To make a proto type I would us only a 2 stacked system to start and see how it works..
good luck
sean
Well, I would like to know about other power source also, because I intend to teach window farm sistem to poor people here in Brazil. The air pump is expensive for them… Is there someone that can help me and Butonator?
Thank`s!
Relying on the sun will only give you power for so many hours of the day. You might wanna look at using solar cells connected to a battery that powers a thermostat during the darker and colder hours of the day.
There’s just one flaw in your design:
Since what evaporates is distilled water, it contains no nutrients. Those would remain
in the reservoir and be of no use. You could get the nutrients to the plants by supplying
fertilizer to each one separately, but then it wouldn’t be hydroponics, just drip irrigation.
Cheers
Great idea! I think that if you don’t pay attention to electricity use and the nutrients you use, hydroponics may end up being worse than commercial agriculture. So thumbs up for the non electric circulation.
How about a thermosiphon? I would guess that the capacity would be bigger than by evaporation alone. You would have to make a completely filled loop from top to bottom though.
http://www.appropedia.org/Thermosiphon
Or a series of wicks maybe? I’m not sure how high capillary action can lift water though.
Very curious to see what you can get working with this method.
My brother is helping me rig up a 70watt solar panel with inverter to run some CFLs and my air pump.
You could try a water culture hydroponic system. They don’t use pumps because the plants are floating on top of the nutrient solution. They usually require an air stone for the nutrient solution though so your kind of in the same boat.
I think ideally you’d probably want to look into a DIY Solar Power or DIY Wind Power site and combine it with your hydroponics project.
You’d have to invest some initial capital but I think its the only way you’d be able to keep this off the grid.
Your idea sounds great and I am looking forward to hearing about some results. If you follow through with this, could you take lots of pictures and document the process to share with our community? There’s not nearly enough visual documentation here yet. That would be great!
You can try something like this: http://www.instructables.com/id/Solar_Thermally_Pumped_Hydroponic_System/
So awesome. I can’t wait to see it!!
it`s always about the mix – take two reservoirs: one for the water and one for the nutrients (compost tea). The power of the sun will surely suffice to evaporate the little water that managed to run through the system.
Particularly if you do it aeroponic the fine water-vapor will be much better than water drops from an air pump canal.
The task is setting it up so that the condensation will occur automatically and only on the roots. This might be achieved by having the moist air enter each plant-container individually from the bottom container to the top one.
If you use a growth medium for the roots a solution for letting the airflow reach the roots, would be layering. A mix of growth medium and air layers.
good luck – I`ll do it like that myself