Inflating Needles are Corroding
6:46 pm in questions, Seeking Advice by Allison Casey
Hi all -
My Windowfarm has been up and running for about 8 months now, and was originally constructed with one of the original kits. What I’m starting to notice is that the inflating needles that allow the air from the pump into the bottom reservoir bottles have begun to corrode — in two of the four columns they’re now unusable.
Now this is of course unsurprising, given that these needles weren’t designed for such an environment, but I’m starting to question whether it’s the best idea to have little specks of non-food-grade metal flowing through the system…
Has anyone else encountered this issue, and if so, did you do anything more than just replace the needles? Does anyone use a method in their farm that bypasses the needles entirely?
Many thanks for any input!
That’s pretty weird. I am pretty sure mine are stainless steel and don’t corrode..
Allison-
Another case of this did pop up in Greenpoint Brooklyn. This lady’s needles were starting to corrode within a few days. We did a bunch of troubleshooting and we think that the pipes in her building may have been adding metals to the water that reacted badly with the combination of her air needle and the organic nutrients. We replaced her air needle with a similar length of very thin tubing I found in the shop. We stretched it over the bulk head. I will ask the team to send you some new air needles too. -Britta
Allison,
Could you email us at info@windowfarms.org to arrange the replacement? Thanks.
Nice of you guys. Also might be good to look into distilled water or something…
I had this problem a couple of months back, at some point, usually after a couple of months of use all of my systems which use air needles needed a replacement. More than anything the needle broke off, and it didn’t deliver the air properly. They were stainless needles, and had little visible surface corrosion, it was just at the junction between the screw and the needle that corroded and subsequently broke when I was jostling it around a bit. For the time being I just replaced the needles, and currently my lift systems have been on hiatus as I have been gardening outside, so I haven’t worked on an alternative all that much, but the pulser pump is an alternative to the needle lift system if you are up for constructing one, and figuring out how to integrate it into your system: http://our.windowfarms.org/2011/01/26/low-water-level-pulser-pump/ . I have a plastic free version I am working on, but haven’t gotten around to implementing quite yet.