Hallo,

as the title says this well be exiting. I came across the idea over ted. So I planed to build the V3-Version as it is and optimize it later. But I could not hold on me to give it my one twist. Customiced for my needs, so her is the plan:

The main difference are the bamboo containers. I will install this windowfarm in our kitchen, so i like it to look a little bit more pleasend as the pet bottle version.The second difference is the mixing of water and air. I want to put up an almosted closed system, so i thought I’ll try to mix the air and water with a t-piece and two check valves. This idea is simple, maybe so simple, that it was already thought of and didnt work.

0. Contents

1. Part list

2. Installation and Mounting

3. Plumbing System

4. Problems to solve

1. Part List:

Installation:
1 x 3.5m bamboo trunk 2 x 4m of 3mm steel rope 8 x eye nut m3 (maybe 10x) 8 x female screw 8 x washer – small inner, big outer diameter 8 x luster terminal (inner metal part) 2 x hook for the wall 4 x hydroponic planting cups
Plumbing:
1 x APS 50 airpump 1 x check valve (need one more) 1 x 4m transparent tube – inner diameter 8mm 1 x 4m semi transparent green tube – inner diamter 4mm

2. Installation & Mounting

1. Cut the bamboo trunk into pieces, just right above the in wall. Put some “after work” on the cuttings (sandpaper).
2. Drill two 1cm holes, each hole facing the other hole one the opposite site of the trunk. Positioned about 2 cm below the upper rim of each bamboo container.
3. Also drill a 6 to 10 mm hole in the bottom of each bamboo container (exept the water reservoir). Be carefull and drill gently, so the wood doesent break.
4. Put an eye nut in each hole and fix it with a washer and an appropriate female screw. Maybe you need to cut the screw little bit to safe space inside the trunk.
5. Take a piece of bamboo, which you don’t plan to use. Peal of some bamboo fibers. At least 3 x 10cm for each bamboo container.
6. Tie 3 fibers together. If they are too curved, you can straighten them by heating the bamboo up. I think the temperature should be around 170 ° Celcius. So take a heat gun or one of these kitchen things to make creme brulee. WATCH OUT! Dont burn yourself.
7. Put them into the bottom hole of the container.
8. Now take the luster terminal and get ride of the plastic. Work your way as far as possible with a princers and then try to rip the rest of with a comb pliers.
9. Put it together.

PS: I will add some images.

3. Plumbing system

ToDo

4. Problems to solve

1. As i told, i would like to mix the air with a t-piece and two check valves (see sketch above). Solved!

2. The water tube will be inserted to the bottom water container either by:

1. vertical: V3 System at the bottom with a bicycle valve or
2. horizontal: at the side like this (just at the bottom of the container):

It fits pretty tight. I will see if it leaks.

I posted earlier about designing a prettier window farm. I’m now building a clean and simple single column farm, and I figured it might be about time to post something about my progress. The pots, suspension and drip pipes are mostly in place. The reservoir and the airlift are still in the works. I haven’t made up my mind yet about what kind of reservoir to use.

Part list:

• 4 Plastic orchid pots. These are made of Polypropylene, which is (afaik) safe to use with food. The pots also have an inward dent in the bottom, so they will never drain completely. I don’t know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. Be careful when drilling plastic. I managed to break one pot by using too much pressure. (2 euros/pot at Bauhaus)
• 2 meters of aluminum pipe, 6 mm diameter. One meter for drip pipes and another for the air lift. (4 euros/meter at Bauhaus)
• Two meters of aluminum strip. Mine is about 12mm wide and 2mm thick. I wouldn’t go any thinner than 2mm, since the rigidity of the column would likely suffer. (4 euros/meter at Bauhaus)
• 4 gaskets for sealing the drip pipes. The ones I got seem to do the job pretty well: 17mm outer diameter, 5mm inner diameter, 4mm thick. (around 2 euros for a 4-pack)
• M3 Nuts, washers and screws (or bolts) for attaching the pots to the aluminum strip. (Less than 1e total)

Parts not installed yet:

• Sera Air 275R Plus air pump with adjustable air flow and two outlets. Came with two non-return valves. (28 euros at a local aquarium store)
• 6mm “colorless” air hose. It’s possible to stretch this over the aluminum pipe using pliers and some soap as lubricant. (2 euros / meter at a local aquarium store)

Still missing the reservoir and the airlift needle(s).

This is not the final assembly and you might notice that some of the drip pipes and pots are not straight. I’ll fix that before doing the actual planting. Originally I’d thought I’d have to glue the drip pipes to the pots, but with the gaskets in place and the hole being tight enough, I’m not sure if glue is necessary. It won’t matter anyway if the drip pipes are wet on the outside.

I was wondering though, should the downward water flow be somehow restrained so that the water drips down slowly? Now when I pour water in the top pot, most of the water has come down in less than a minute. How does it work in WF 3.0?

The wife said it looks alright. I might even get a permission to build a second column Stay tuned. The next step is building the airlift.

Has anyone tried using RGB LED Light strips as a grow light for their plants? I’m wondering if this would provide the right spectrums of light? With the right controller, you can have incredibly precise control over the color of the light, plus they are available with a waterproof feature.

I’d like some input from people that have greater understanding than I on the subject before I drop the $300 or so this particular system will cost me to build, please!

Here is the strip: http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-bin/store/index.cgi?action=DispPage&category=BARS&Page2Disp=%2Fspecs%2FFLS-RGB.htm

The controller: http://www.superbrightleds.com/pdfs/LDK-RGB3.pdf

Update:

I was just reading on a website that plants get the best use of light in the violet/ blue and then red range, with the interceding green/orange/yellow range pretty much not doing much of anything. If I just set these to produce strong violet/blue colors, that’s pretty much the same thing, right?

I’m about to build my first WF. While I generally love the idea of growing food at home, the free design of WF 3.0 is a bit of an eyesore as such. I wanted to come up with something that’ll still be a full grown window farm, but is still approved by the wife.

Update: Second Draft

Thanks for the input everyone. I came up with a simpler less work intensive solution: flower pots. I went to a hardware store to look at PVC pipes, and stumbled upon some plastic orchid flower pots. They seemed right size and only cost 1,99 a piece, so I got two for testing. The pots have a dent in the bottom, kinda like wine bottles. See the drawing. This type of construction prevents the container from draining out completely. Not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

I also decided to try string instead of metal wire, since I couldn’t find proper parts for attaching the wire to the pots. Here’s a picture with initial string based suspension:

Drawing:

First Draft

Here’s my first draft on an improved design. I didn’t bother drawing the irrigation system in detail since it’s not really important in this context. The main idea is that we’ll encase the water bottle, suspension system and the irrigation system in painted PVC pipe. Any other pipe should do as well. My first draft doesn’t depict how exactly the pipe and bottle are attached to the suspension system. I haven’t really made up my mind on how I should implement it. Anyway, the PVC pipe should be sort of fixed into the suspension wire system, while the bottle and the plant are easy to remove. It’s not really feasible to remove the pipe, since the wires and the irrigation hose run through the pipe.

Comments and improvement ideas welcome

See the next post for construction details and pics.

Hi guys,

I’m a new window farmer and have some questions and thoughts I’d like to present to you all, regarding how we can extend the window farm project to individuals and communities that do not have the resources engage in this movement like the rest of us. I’m very excited by the potential the WF project has to alleviate some of the larger social and environmental issues we are faced with. Yet as I was building my own WF I saw how the currently available designs require many more resources than I imagined.  The tools, time, and money I had to put into building a WF made me realize how individuals without these resources cannot participate in this movement. Drills, air pumps, nails, paint and so forth, come out to be pretty pricey when added up and I feel as though this issue radically diminished the WF’s potential for large-scale change. This is especially true when considering the fact that the earth is rapidly urbanizing and soon most of our growing global population will live in urban settings.
I recently read Planted of the Slums (a paper on future global urban development by the distinguished academic Mike Davis) that shocked me with the expected outcome of current global trends, into thinking how it is critical for projects like the WF to reach out to underprivileged communities. Davis states: “cities have absorbed nearly two-thirds of the global population explosion since the 1950 and are currently growing by a million babies and immigrants each week, [furthermore] the global country side has reached its maximum potential and will begin to shrink after 2020”. The expected outcomes of these global trends will be “ the burgeoning of new megacities with populations of 8 million, and hypercities with more than 20 million inhabitants”. Smaller cities and ‘citized’ towns will also grow, as they will be expected to absorb three quarters of global population growth. This makes me think that there will be an unimaginable amount of people living in tight city spaces, and most of them (as Davis proceeds to point out) will be of lower-income status.  Davis in fact states that we are headed towards ‘a mass production of slums’ as already one third of the global urban population lives in slums. Many of the environmental, social, and public health related issues that will rise from this are freighting to think of.
THIS IS CRAZY, and if we really want projects like the WF to effectively counteract the negative social and environmental consequences of wild urbanization, than we need to do more. I’m curious to hear what you all have to say about this, and what measures you envision we could take to spread WFs and things of the sort. I’d late to make it clear my concern is not only for slums, but for all lower income communities in general. I think its crucial that every one finds ways of self-sustainment and self assertion in our times of incredible dependency on global, capitalistic markets. And the procuring of food should be a first factor in this.
Currently I am myself working on trying to envision cheaper and easier WF set ups, as I am also talking with my school about setting up an organization with funds to reach out to underprivileged immigrant communities in NY state. I’m hoping to be able to aid these politically and economically disenfranchised communities to re-affirm themselves by producing some of their own food.
I’ll post again soon and meanwhile I hope to hear what you guys have to think! Ciao for now

I have a couple of nice windows in my house that are about 10 feet tall and 4 feet wide. I think they’d support a lot of veggies and they face south, so they get a lot of sun the way my house is situated.

The windows are in the living room. I hesitate to mount the system using the wall for support. I’d like to use a ladder, but I’d have to purchase one. I have seen the PVC anchored in a bucket of concrete idea, but my wife vetoed it very quickly.

Any other ideas I should be looking at?

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!!

Okay! So I saw a link to a windowfarms video two days ago, and now I have a working windowfarm in my kitchen! It was really inspiring to make it
Here are som pics Feel free to Leave a comment! Currently I’m only having a tiny problem getting the same ammount of water to all the plants.

Might have to do with the nozzle piece maybe not letting enough water trough…

So Anyways! Pictures follow!

Video comming soon.

I am lucky enough to have 11 ft celiings so I’ve designed a system which is 9 feet tall. I’m having an issue getting the water up to the top and have come across the t-joint method, but am having trouble understanding what t-joints I need, how large the resevoir needs to be and the setup of all the material once put together.

Does anyone have detailed instructions on how to do this and/or know of where I can look? I am a step-by-step guy so it’s hard for me to look at pictures and reconstruct it.

Thanks!

My setup

Left my plants unattended for a week.  Plants sure bounced back when finally watered on the 7th day.

Its playable in HD 1080p, so be sure to turn up the quality setting!

Windowfarm Timelapse