So, as a rebel wannabe and annoying being that I am, I came up with a model for my future windowfarm.

The main objective of this model is to avoid the use a pump as I don’t want to use the money I’ll save from buying veggies to pay more in the electric bill

I got my inspiration from Lousie (http://our.windowfarms.org/2011/03/06/testing-a-waterclock-dripper-system-based-on-brians-plans/) a great idea to keep the tank pressure constant (hence the dropping frequency constant) is to use a float valve, but as I said, I don’t want to waste a cent, so I came up with a float valve of my own, using a bottlenose with a ping-pong ball inside, it should keep the water from falling into the secondary tank (this part may be tricky but I wont buy that float valve)

The other part of my idea is that I don’t like things hanging, it makes me feel everything is going to fall apart and I want my plant to be safe, so I decided to make shelves for the bottles, but they’re hard to make, so I thought that, If I cut off the bottom of the bottles and fold the plastic outwards, and then cut a piece of the folding so a twisted wire can go around the bottle, then the bottle itself will be its own shelf. And taking things further, If I make the same (maybe adding something instead of folding the plastic) with the net pots then I can take off every bottle with their plants without having to dismount everything YAY!! modularity FTW!!

But I’m not sure things will work out, I’m new with this, the last time I ever planted something was a carrot in primary school and I think it died, so I leave here some schematic I made with my crazy mspaint skills, so you can visualize things as I do and maybe give me some feedback on this.

PS: I don’t mind moving the water up when the tanks are empty, it’s nice to have some activity around the plants other than killing them

PS2: The whole idea is based on reducing costs, materials and work (I just can’t understand how the airlift thingy works)

PS3: I’m sorry if I’ve butchered English :O

PS4: THANK YOU!!

Guys and Gals-

We just launched a Kickstarter campaign to make new non-waterbottle windowfarms.

This is the first evolution of the R&D-I-Y design that has evolved through our mass collaboration into a manufacturable version that we can make available to the rest of the world!

They will use a version of the T-valve approach with components from the pharmaceutical industry. We are replacing the water bottles with new cups that mimic the water bottles but are cheaper to produce with safe, recycled plastics. The reservoir is going to be bigger and easier to fill, clean, and adjust. It will mimic the water bottle reservoir in its ability to funnel organic nutrient sediment to the intake for recirculation. They will hang or stand, making positioning easier for folks who are allergic to drills!

I want to let you know that this is in no way a move away from the recycled material windowfarms. The DIY versions are my personal favorite, but they just are not a good fit for everyone.

This will help fund badly needed work for the community. We need to migrate to a new website because this one is broken, not easily searchable, always getting spammed, and it generally drives me crazy. We also need to make updates to all the instructions that fold in all the awesome improvements you guys have made, which is also a lot of work.

I would really appreciate your help promoting the new windowfarms to the newcomers who have been waiting to join our ranks. Please help me welcome them!

I hope you are all going to have a great Thanksgiving (you too International Windowfarmers!) and you are all a large part of what I have to give thanks for.

-Britta

I made another video and basically I ran out of pipe and ladder and because of that I couldn’t pump any higher but I am curious. How high can you go? I went 13 ft but there was no problem whatsoever pumping that high! So, maybe, if you have a 2 story house or an available high place you could find out how high it is possible to go? So the contest rules are in the picture below and in a video
(You might get some extra hints and ideas if you watch the video)
Basically you use your aquarium air pump, and a T joint set at 2 ft below your liquid reservoir height.

Contest rules for unbelievably high airlift powered by puny aquarium air pump

So the rest of the post is from a couple of days ago and has a little different version of the video. (I am too Lazy to write a new post)

I made a new video about the pulser pump and Eileen suggested that a “pulser pump nano” (a smaller version) might be useful. The pulser pump is my little “invention” from over 20 years ago. Anyway, I no longer live near a river so I cannot do a nano. But because of my involvement in windowfarms, I can at least test how high a tiny pulser pump can pump. Today I used the T-joint method and an extendable ladder to go pretty high. With an aquarium air pump and 22 inches of submergence, I pumped to 13 ft high today! I bet it can go a lot higher but thats it for me.
Here is the video (which may be of some use to windowfarmers)

Almost no plastic is used for this and in the end, hopefully none at all.

I’m planning to put 4 columns in my window and I have 2 already in place, but only one is operating right now. The glass surface of my window measures 30in. wide by 60in. high. I’m quite proud of the result, actually. Here are some photos.

I found pots covered with a glaze inside and out, so they won’t absorb humidity or nutrients and they will be easy to clean. I bought them at Home Depot and it cost me 90$ CA for ten 5,5in. pots and eight 4in. pots. I had to make do with what they had left, so I mixed different colors and 2 different sizes which will be quite nice looking, actually.

I also bought electric wiring (grade 12-1) to suspend the pots because I wanted something very strong and quite rigid in order to stabilize the whole structure, which worked out very well. In order to prevent the pots to tip over on their axe, I used another electric wire (left over from my husband’s workshop in the basement), much smaller (I don’t know the grade but will have to buy some more in order to finish the project, so I should be able to tell you.

I recycled 2 swivel curtain rods reinforced in the middle with a 9in. long swivel bracket for hanging plants. The bracket alone can hold 50 pounds and cost me 4,99$ CA.

Lettuce is already in place in the bottom pot, which is irrigated with a slow drip system working quite nicely up to now. In a subsequent post, I’ll document the construction in detail.

I finished an article on why window farms rock! Please check it out at http://melissawindowfarm.blogspot.com/2011/02/why-window-farming.html

Thanks!!!

Melissa

The dripper tracker is a simple waterclock that I made to turn a solar cooker reflector.

It has 2 parts. A little float valve to control water height in a container and a pinhole or valve on a tube to control water speed out of the float container.

Basically if water height in the container is the same all day the drip maintains the same speed all day.  In my version I used a hydroponics emitter  on a float to block off the water flow.  Someone else might use something completely different to achieve the same effect.  My original top container was a 5 gallon paint bucket and the waterlevel valve was in a becel margerine container.

The drip valve was an air control valve for an aquarium air stone.

The range of speeds available is large.  I used to calculate speed by adjusting the drip valve and measuring the flow  into a cup.  You get it close to what you want. Then you raise or lower the drip valve  to “fine tune” the speed.

If people are interested, I can draw more complicated versions too.

(For instance, you could have a waterclock independent of your hydroponics and that way the drip will be more reliable.

Windowfarm dripper for constant drip speed

The moment I started really hating on those water pumps.

In the windowfarms community, no design is final. Rather, we are constantly evolving the designs to better performance standards. They evolve because WE LOVE FAILURE.

You can think you have a brilliant design but, like the Titanic, most designs are subject to failure at some point and it’s only when you see how your design performs throughout several seasons and under unfavorable conditions that you learn its true merits and shortcomings. We are fascinated with merits and shortcomings. Distinguishing between them is the core of what we do.

In our community, value comes- not from having the idea that works- but from BEING A GOOD TESTER.

@ajinil is one of my favorite pioneering testers, who is trying growing strawberries year-round in a snow-laden environment with no supplemental lighting by simply supplying flowering nutrients. So far, he has kept the plants flowering for 9 months!

Innovation can be painful. Death brings moments of revelation for windowfarmers doing R&D-I-Y. Ok. So I was only fake crying in the image above, but I was super bummed about losing my okra plants. After letting off a little steam, we were really able to take inventory of issues from this die-off. Ultimately, this was the last version 1 system we built after determining that nutrients just plain like to clog both water pumps and drip emitters as particulate matter builds up over time and clogs pathways. Failure also motivates progress. This is when the airlift technique started to seem a lot more attractive and worth pursuing. Ian, Ania, and I got to work on tweeking the airlift to work for windowfarms just a few days after this came down.

The MOST interesting moments are the ones right before your plants die (=FAIL= YAY!). What was that edge condition you managed to rock for a while? What can we learn from it?

Dry roots the result of clogged reservoir drippers in a V1 system

A mature plant’s root conditions are the best way to assess the workability of your windowfarm design.

I have a dissection table set up next to my windowfarms and as soon as I kill a plant (and trust me, I kill a LOT of plants with all of the frankenstein systems we have in the core team’s shop, where we test out the community’s ideas), I take it out, look at the root situation in the net cup and see what killed it. Were the roots massive and healthy right before they died? Did they dry out? Did I have spider mites? Are there any signs of rot? Were the factors that killed it particular to this plant or to the system? Would other people have this problem as well?

So maybe you want your windowfarm to thrive– totally valid. That’s why we give you two columns in the kits. One you can have be a control column, where you give your plants ideal conditions and allow them to thrive. Consider dedicating your other column to research. Take on an experimental conditions, fail, and report back!

-Britta

http://cgrantmccool.com

Using the following website with a quick, easy DIY solderless LED fixture as a guide, I set-up and made my own lights!  http://www.dabblings.net/subpage2.html

I’m no expert with electricity, but I understand enough and had enough research skills to pull off a modified version of the DIY set-up given in the site.  My LEDs were TopBright LEDs

I have since reworked this set-up to add a Red bulb to each fixture.  This was a bit tricky because the Red LEDs I was using required a separate circuit from the White/Blues which had the same electrical draws.  While each fixture’s Blue and White circuits are all self-contained in their own project enclosure, the red bulbs are also in series with each other from enclosure to enclosure.

I’ve invited a bunch of awesome scientists and academic researchers dealing with climate change to post some suggestions for us in the comments below. If you are going to take on one of their challenges, reference their suggestion, make a new post about it, and post the link to your post in the comments below.

Plants roots are suspended in clay pellets so that we can run a liquid nutrient solution over the roots without leaving them in a bunch of soggy rotting muck.

Roots bathed in liquid nutrients grow into compact hairy root networks, rather than long big roots you find in soil where plants are out searching for water below ground. The hairs  grab hold of droplets of the liquid nutrients and grow into the porous cavities of the clay pellets to find tasty little juice pockets waiting for them even when the pump is turned off.

Dandelion green roots growing around and into clay pellets

The clay pellets are a great match for drip irrigation because they hold just the right amount of this stuff around the plants’ roots. No killer sog because, like rocks or pebbles, they shed water. But way better than rocks because they hold just a little bit of moisture close by for the hairs to reeeeeach out and ahhhhha get a little sip when they need it.

Clay pellets provide no nutritional value for the plant; it all comes from the nutrient solution. However, they are not made of lava rock, which would react and change the chemical composition of the nutrient solution. They are “inert,” meaning they don’t react.

Clay pellets shed water like pebbles, but their porous interior pockets hold little droplets of liquid nutrients for plants' root hairs to find

I like them because they can be reused, so I don’t have to add to the landfill with every crop. You can clean them and dip them in boiling water between crops to sterilize them.

Nothing is ever sacred and in the spirit of R&D-I-Y, it would be great to find ways of replacing clay pellets with something that was not shipped all over the world from Germany.

However, if you are new to windowfarming, I don’t recommend that these be one of the first things you start experimenting with substituting out.  Wait until you get the hang of dealing with nutrient solution first– there are plenty of other variables to change out as you get to know the microclimate of your window.

This is why we include them in the kits for new windowfarmers.

-Britta