by britta
NEW! How To: V3.0 MAMA w/participatory instructions (beta)
10:04 am in energy consumption, environmental impact, Featured Post, How-Tos, kits, Materials and Resources, Version 3.0 Modular Airlift Columns, Windowfarms Project News by britta
We are pleased to announce the V3.0 release of the windowfarms community’s latest windowfarm design, the V3.0, the Modular Airlift Multicolumn Array, or MAMA!
- quieter
- easier to set up
- more elegant, but still do-able with all recycled water bottles
- more plants for less electrical input (up to 32 plants on one air pump if you do Rama’s double plant mod)
- modular, meaning you can supply proper nutrients to vegetative, fruiting, and flowering plants all in one system.
No more airlift issues with the new tubes. And we have finally achieved some serious height!! Achieving height means you can grow more plants with the same pump so it is way more efficient in terms of the amount of nutritional calories per fossil fuel calorie used in powering the pump. This design described in the free how to is basically the same as the new Classic kit.
If you are a total beginner and not the handiest person in town, we suggest you start with the Version 2.0 airlift system, or consider buying Windowfarm from our store.
We decided to release this as a participatory web guide that captures ideas, questions, sketches, discussion, & issues for R&D-I-Y while you build. This new functionality is still in it’s “beta” testing phase & we are working on integrating it with this site still.
Thank you to all contributors to the our.windowfarms.org site & BIG PROPS to @ramajames, @Hardwarejunkie, @samenrahmen, and other users who have contributed so much to the art of windowfarming.
Note: Starting in 2012, after a highly successful Kickstarter campaign, Windowfarms began selling One, Two, and Four-Column Windowfarms. The new Windowfarms are sustainably manufactured in the US, made of recyclable components, and are easy to setup — so you can quickly get setup and begin learning about growing food. If you would prefer to buy a Windowfarm, please visit The Windowfarms Store.
@britta on Dec 29:
I’m glad to see you are planning to move to a different platform.
The blog+comments system is unable to keep the content in a form whre one can find the important information, BUT:
I’ve seen forum based approaches on similar smaller projects, that were better than this site, but not a real improvement either. Topics get posted with unusable titles and once the forum exists longer than say 2 years the chaos factor is still an issue because you never know the correct search term to find a specific information. It is almost impossible to keep things updated and linke old and new information together.
I still believe that the best fit for an R&DIY approach is a Wiki with a appropriate set of extensions/Plugins for specific tasks (like protecting “official” pages or adding a review phase before newly edited pages are published. Wikipedia(de) is were I come from and they aren’t that bad in organizing and updating their information, while, off course there are other problems to be solved.
The Content+comments system used here is similar to wikis where there is always one content page and in parallel one Discussion page associated to it, where one can post comments or proposals.
That said, I would really like to volunteer in getting a wiki going on the content side, but besides living in Germany, I am not qualified to do setup and technical maintenance.
My personal wikis (german language) are hosted for free (with ads) on @wikia.com.where there is also a paid service without ads (’bout 20$ at up to 20000 page views/month) There’s a whole bunch of other wikifarms out there, but I have nothing to complain about Wikia so this is my suggestion.
greetings, Markus
I am just getting ready to build my system I am really excited. My 5 year old grandson lives with me and we are going to put the window farm in his window. So we will see.
What other water bottles can you use? I’m in the Uk and can’t find any of the ones listed? x
@Markus
I found your comment about using wikis very interesting. I wonder if you’ve looked at MOODLE? Its a free open source learning software that a lot of universities and schools use. The college I work at uses it for our students. It is very customisable and can make use of wikis, forums on line quizzes etc but also has many plug ins.
Check it out at www.
Christianmoodle.org
oops that was meant to be http://www.moodle.org
Christian
What bottles do non-US people use? Is there anything similar to Nestles eco-shape bottle in Europe?
Uros
I’ve been working on a wiki recently over at wikispaces. I’ll drop the link: http://windowfarming.wikispaces.com/
I was experimenting with a few ideas with another user burt777 who’s made some contribution. I experimented a little and I think it works for me
– Should encourage some users to post their work onto whatever wiki sites we’re using; at least then it’ll be easier to aggregate/consolidate, review and improve on various topics.
– I’m particularly keen to see some involvement with more users submitting and maintaining their own pages according to their own specialties.
I strongly agree with people above suggesting to move contents to a wiki.
I also feel the need of a forum. The structure of this website is basically a blog with comments, which is not good for discussion.
The instructions are cut off at the top of every page. Is there a pdf format available?
I agree allison, the instructions are cut off at the top of the page. I would also prefer a pdf format if one is available. Also, where are actual videos from window farms showing us how to make these windowfarms? Are there any on youtube?
I would like to add my voice to those of @cullendoylea and @suzylove in expressing a preference for pdf instructions. For me, too, the ones on the site appear to be cut off at the top; I don’t know if it’s a general problem or just a weird behaviour some of us experience for some reason.
I also agree with @pooh about feeling the need for a proper forum. Maybe it’s just me being new to the community though.
Guys,
Feedback acknowledged. We hear this a lot. We are trying to do something about it and we can use your help if you have web or graphics skills.
1) the forum and wiki are coming. We raised the money on Kickstarter to help pay for some of that work. I never wanted this site to be a wordpress multiuser blog. We should have done it in Drupal from the get go, but I lost that battle because we did not have the programming help we need at the time. It is not going to happen immediately. We had no idea the TED talk was going to go up. It drive us all this traffic before we were really ready. Trust me, I can’t wait to get off of this platform.
2) I do not want to go back to doing PDFs again. They are a mess because we can’t update them and they get archived out on the web on other people’s site. Then people find and follow those old instructions them and come back here and are totally confused and often angry because they bought the wrong supplies. We have no idea which set of instructions they are talking about if they are looking at a PDF. . . you can image what a headache that was. Plus, files disappear. The V2 instructions are crappy because the orginals were on a harddrive that died. We made the new instructions website so that it could be updated easily. It is also not the most elegant solution but until I can hire consistent programming help, it is going to continue to be cobbled together by programmers volunteering their time and it will not be perfect. Welcome to opensource. This is one of the downsides. If any of you want to help, please let us know your skills and we’ll get you working on things.
3) If you are having trouble with the way something is displaying on the site, I want to fix it immediately, but I need to know exactly what the problem is and which browser you are using. If you are using Internet Explorer, we can’t fix it. IE is old and it is awful and by using it, you create problems for every website you go to.
I have read and read the instructions and printed out the cut outs but…I am still not clear on the drip holes. I guess the supply list has more than I will actually need?? I live in Colombia so buyimg the kit is out of the question. I will probably attempt to build a 4 column windowfarm. Anybody, help, please!!
Hi,
I am planning to build the version 3 windows farm but whas wondering if three layers of white paint is enough to stop sunlight getting to the roots? I would expect you would need to use dark color paint for that?
Regards, Rutger
Maybe pdf not being easily editable is a good thing. (Mind you, pdf is now an open format so it might be a lot easier to edit that it was a year or 2 ago). I have chaos with files because I forget to do simple things. Why not date your pdf”s? AND have a little note on every pdf beside the date. “for the latest pdf go to windowfarms.org” That way people can quickly tell that if their info is a year old or 2 days old and you get people coming back. Every year, I go over my books and go almost insane figuring out my payments, hours done etc because I forget to date things. Then I have to get out the bank records and tripple check. Much easier if it is all dated in the first place. You could probably find something or a program that automatically does it (Like my camera does on pictures). Brian P.S. The ugg stuff is really annoying, would you like to give someone in Europe or Asia admin duties, to kill it off when you guys go to bed?
When I went over to the link to the new instructions, all I saw was some text and a few lines. After selecting the text and lines including the text on the green part including the menu, I copied it into a word doc. Now the whole page including pictures appeared in my document. Repeated this step for each page in the menu and got me a complete guide this way. Just to share my experience since there is no PDF.
The official instructions say to cut the rigid tubing into two 28″ pieces and a 3″ piece. The 28 inch pieces are put together to make one 56″ piece. I got 6′ long rigid tubing so I can make one 56 inch length which is easier and is one less place to leak.
I want to buy kits and build with my class but I need to know when the first shippment is actaully being sent out. “spring 2012″ isn’t enough information and I received a grant to build one but now it looks like I may not even be able to buy kits before school is out…please help out.
I had trouble finding the right bottles in the U.S, and have been using 1.25 liter coca-cola bottles. They fit the net cut pretty perfectly.
Hi Britta,
I just joined from Tanzania and then tried to access the latest instructions for building a windowfarm. The PDF files are great but the first lines of each group of instructions are hidden behind the green panel at the top of the page. I would buy a kit but you don’t supply to Africa and with the first 3 or 4 steps in each instruction being hidden I am wondering how I will be able to manage. Looking through the comments I note that I am not the first person to point this out, but I nhope that perhaps my voice will be heard. Couldn’t you just put the whole DIY instructions into a PDF file? Please!!!!!!!!!
@Bernie Hewett:
http://imgur.com/a/aogfw#0
I took screen shots of the tops of all the pages for you, hope that helps.
For people posting about Bottles in the UK it seems the Buxton 1.5L water bottles are a very close fit at least going by diameter of the bottle compared to the template and they have the same narrowing of the bottom towards the base. Im still in the early stages of my build so will post again with how i get on.
A couple of questions:
1. What is the advantage of using the net cups as opposed to simply putting the clay pellets directly into the bottles?
2. I am not clear on how the air needles are inserted into the tubing. Some versions seem to have the needle puncturing the side of the tube with the tubing completely unobstructed but version 3 seems to indicate the needle is inserted into the end of the tubing. Wouldn’t this obstruct the liquid flow too much? Does anyone have a closeup picture of a successful needle setup in version 3?
Just built the version 2 in Switzerland. Had a bit of trouble with the bottles (hard bottle, almost impossible to cut) but it’s working just fine. Starting with a bok choy, lettuce and hot pepper seeds. Find it surpringly loud but if you like the sound of coffee brewing then you’ll love this going 24/7. Want to turn into something: less noisy, more attractive with more space. Looking to see what others have done for more horizontal designs. Good luck!
Just getting geared up to start this in Boston, MA. Planning on doing a two column installation to start (doing the v3 because of quieter/scalability) and doing kitchen herbs (Pet peeve: I had blister packs of herbs for $3+ for amounts that I end up not using all of – plastic packaging, transport costs, waste. Bah!) and catnip/spearmint/etc.
Also looking into how to do hydroponic citrus tree installations – I have fifteen citrus trees of various types (limes, key limes, kaffir limes, blood oranges, calomondin oranges, meyer lemons, pink variegated lemons, cocktail grapefruit, etc) that aren’t thriving inside
They did well on the roofdeck of my previous place, but the new condo doesn’t have roof/outside space. Having issues with soil drainage and leaf drop/yellowing/root rot. (oddly, the solution is more water/hydroponics rather than less/using soil it seems)
Thoughts on the above/feedback most appreciated! researching nutrient systems for citrus at the moment.
I can’t seem to access the last two sections of these beta instructions.
When I click on ‘Full Assembly’ & ‘Maintaining’ I get:
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/windowfarmer/our.windowfarms.org/instructions_dev/index.php on line 140
Re: the problem with the first step of instructions being hidden behind the green panel … I had the same problem, so I tried copying & pasting the information to a word document to see if I could view the first part of the instructions that way – it worked perfectly!