by Kellbot
Plant update and better reservoirs
5:52 pm in Completed Window Farms, made from scratch (without a kit), posts with pitcures! by Kellbot
My plants are doing reasonably well, considering I haven’t really had any time to mainain them. Until this weekend, refilling the reservoirs is about the extent of the care my little windowfarm was getting. I’m up to three columns now – two done using plastic cups and greek yogurt containers, and one using Deer Park bottles and net cups. So far, I’m finding my version to be a little easier to maintain and slightly more attractive. Very slightly. There are a few more photos of individual plants over on my blog.
My upside-down Deer Park bottles were leaking a bit, and looked a bit worse for the wear, so I put together new reservoirs using soda bottles (which are thicker plastic), and added a nice coupling on the top for me to attach the water return lines. Previously I’d just shoved the water return lines through a hole I stabbed in the bottom of the inverted water bottle.
A few other people were having trouble preventing the air from bubbling back into the reservoir, so I made a diagram of my set-up and included a few numbers for reference. The full write-up can be seen on my primary blog, but the cliffs notes version is that I’ve got a 1 liter bottle, suspended about 6″ above the t-joint, connected by a 5 foot long piece of clear 1/4″ tubing which is coiled at the bottom of the container it all sits in.
I do still get air bubbling back when the pump first turns on, but it corrects itself in about a minute.
I love your idea of using a coil of tubing for some resistance. It also gives some time to see what’s going through the line and to deal with any flow changes. Great idea that I’m happy to say I use on all my systems now.
I’m using ~1 gal reservoirs that sit on a windowsill 1 ft off the ground, and I’ve found I need a little over 10 ft of 1/4 in coil for each inlet feeding to the air line to get ~6 ft of vertical lift without any back-flow once I get near the end of the tank. I also put a bleed valve on another t-joint just after the air/water mix point so I can clear the lift line and start forward flow to the bleed if there’s some “stickiness” in the lift.
This t-joint lift seems to definitely be the best. No rusting needles or clogged tiny holes, plus it’s cheap and easy to put together. This reservoir and lift design is great. I love your tube-in-tube joints too! Quick, easy, reliable!
Props!
Great design! I am planning on using this for my next column of plants. My question is what do you use to prop the reservoirs up in the container so the air lift tube does not get kinked?
Thanks,
Shaun
Hello there, im wondering what you use to stabilize the reservoir (that is upside down)? I found that this method worked out great when i was holding the rservoir in my hand, so i hope you have good tips