I’ve been thru this list (and the suggestions in the instruction guide and similar suggestions), but I can’t get a consistent drip in my V3 windowfarm kit. I’m assuming I should, but maybe I am over-estimating the consistency of the last version of the kits?  Either way, air is consistently bubbling up in my reservoirs and backing out of the airlift tube. With the system initially setup, things seem to work more consistently (I get a flow and drip for the most part). Eventually (or when I turn off the pump and then go to turn the pump back on), ‘pockets’ of water get ‘stabilized’ in the airlift tubes and the pressure seems to be enough that the airflow will only escape back out of the airlift tube.

I’m not sure that this is what is happening, but it seems to be (because I get waterflow if I clean the airlift tubes out and reinsert them, and the water pockets stay ‘stable’ in the airlift tube after I turn off the pump).

Any suggestions? I’ve been at this for hours and am running out of ideas (except I imagine a gigantic resevoir would help?)

Thanks

What do i look for in a pH meter?

I’ve found this on a dutch ebay-like site

http://link.marktplaats.nl/508174677

It doesn’t list a brand, and i bet it’s a cheap piece of junk (can’t expect much for 18,50 Euro =^ $ 24, can i?), but my gut says it’s still a lot better than those pieces of paper. Anyone?

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.

In the WindowKit parts list, i read that the current choice for CFL lights is because they’re cheaper.

For me, the money is definitely an issue, but my main concern here is succes (i’m terrible with plants, and all my money would be wasted along with my enthousiasm if my first batch fails). So i wouldn’t mind spending some more on a couple of LED bulbs, if that helps. My first questoin, obviously: Would it? Would LEDs be better than CFLs? Or only some (type) LEDs?

When they say they’re cheaper, i assume they mean the purchase costs. How would the cost of the electricity compare?

I’m thinking about putting the entire window farm between the window and the curtain (that i’ll move a bit away from the window, into the room), but i obviously wouldn’t want to ignite my curtains until my veggies are ready. ;-> Did anybody try this? Can anybody give me advise on the distances that are both safe and good for the plants?

Do plants care about having exactly 1 day per 24 hours? I think i would prefer to turn on the extra lamps in the middle of the night when i’m asleep (adding an “extra day” to a 24 hour cycle), rather than “prolonging” the day, brightening the room when i’m still in the living room. Would they notice?

Even better would be if the light is cumulative rather than the “hours of light”. What i mean is, would the plants be fine with getting twice as much light during the day, instead of twice as many hours of light?

Hi there,

I was drawn here by the TED talk, and had a look around. I have a few comments and some questions.

I think the format of the website (blog + comments) is confusing and not the best environment for a collaborative effort.
Changes to the instructions and the official documentation cannot be added freely by the community, like they would be in a wiki, but they are cherry-picked by the “Core Team”, who has privileged write-access to the source.
This is not bad per se. Many big open source projects have a selected team of committers, and new members must prove their worth with valid contributions before being granted write access.
However, open source projects also have a clear procedure that contributors can follow in order to “patch” trunk – or in fact, any branch. According to the Open Source Initiative, if such a mechanism is not in place, then it’s arguably not an Open Source project.
Also, Windowfarms is not a code project, it’s a hardware/design/documentation project. Therefore, there is no risk of breaking the build (because there is no build), and Wikipedia shows us that there is a lot to be gained, at the very least in terms of polish and formatting, if write-access is granted to a wider user base.
I think allowing any registered user to edit the documents, plus having a selected group of super-users with special entitlements in order to manage high-traffic, prominent pages, would be a good balance.
Similar suggestions towards a more open, transparent and functional means of documentation and discussion have been repeatedly proposed in some comments of this website, but I have not seen a response from the “Core Team”.
Are there any plans to improve the situation?

I also notice that users are supposed to register in order to read the allegedly open source documentation. This made no sense to me, so I had a look at the small print, where it says “We require that you agree in order to view the free instructions on how to build windowfarms. This is for legal reasons that would endanger the community if we did not require registration and acknowledgement.” Quite how the community would be “endangered” is not explained, but there are two links, one to a fairly big website (http://www.openhardwaresummit.org) and one to Windowfarms’ Terms of Service.
In the main page of the Open Source HardWare website (which is interestingly a wiki), there is a section spelling out the OSHW Statement of Principles. It reads, “Open source hardware is hardware whose design is made publicly available so that anyone can study, modify, distribute, make, and sell the design or hardware based on that design.”
Yet, in Windowfarm’s Terms of Service, we learn that Windowfarm’s instructions are available under (an old version of) the Creative Commons Attribution+Noncommercial+ShareAlike license.
I believe that the Noncommercial module is unnecessary. In fact, some would argue that adopting a permissive license can benefit a project’s popularity and adoption, which is apparently the overall goal here. Linux is a notable example of how this can happen.
Furthermore, the Noncommercial module seems at odds with the above-mentioned ability to “sell the design or hardware based on that design”, mandated by the OSHW, as well as the Free Redistribution clause of the Open Source Definition by the OSI.

Noncommercial module notwithstanding, however, it still makes no sense to me that users are asked to register in order to just read the instructions. How is that a legal necessity? Aren’t Windowfarms instructions already protected by the license and copyright statements, much like e.g. every Wikipedia article is?
In fact, can’t anyone, well within the rights granted by the current license, freely divulge those instructions (under the same license) on a mirror website to anyone on the Internet, without requiring any registration whatsoever?

Finally, given the use of the noncommercial module, I take it that only non-profit organisations can sell hardware based on Windowfarms’ designs. Does that mean that Windowfarms itself, which does sell the hardware, is a registered non-profit organisation? Apologies if I missed the details, but they do not seem to be widely publicized.

Thank you for any insights.

I am in Shanghai and having a difficult time sourcing the materials needed.

If I have a text file I can attempt to use http://www.nciku.com/ or google translate to get the list in Chinese and look for places.

Please let me know.

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.

I think this project is fantastic, although I’m finding the site a little difficult to navigate (that could be due to the spammers trying to sell me coats and headphones though )

Has anybody given any though to the potential contamination from the plastic bottles (BPA, PET etc)?  The water bottles (in the UK) say that they shouldn’t be refilled, this isn’t just a cunning ploy by the water companies to sell more product, it’s also because the chemicals from the plastic leech into the water.  I ‘imagine’ that will the plastic bottles sitting in direct sunlight, some of those chemicals would also leech into the plants.

This is my only concern with this otherwise impressive system.

Is anybody using any alternatives to plastic bottles?

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 thinking about doing the vertical window garden, as I already have a large floor window garden.  Can anyone say if they have to rotate their bottles to help keep the plants growing straight?

I rotate my floor pots or else they all start leaning  towards the window and it also seems like I get a better plant when I do this.

Plants below are all window grown dirt-based.  Thai basil, Italian basil, queen basil, and the bottom pic is of a pineapple i’m growing indoors. ( never thought I could do this)