First, some background. This is my first window farm. I have no prior experience in hydroponics, but have grown many aquatic plants. I started making a DIY window farm following the directions of a single-column, 5-bottle hanging V3 window farm. I found that the bicycle needle airlift method just was not as reliable as I had hoped. It would sometimes work, and other times, I would find it not working at all. I researched the site and found that others had set up a t-valve airlift, and it seemed like the way to go. The other guides did not seem to include all the information I needed to get it set up for myself, so I decided to try it anyway. Below, I’ll tell you what I used. I will also say that if this method seems ridiculously simple and it looks like it’s so short that I might be missing something, it’s because it is ridiculously simple and I’m not missing anything… I think.

Parts needed (in addition to the other parts used for the V3 hanging window farm):

Standard aquarium airline. I went with black silicone, because it looks nice and will stop algae from growing in the airline. I bought 25 feet, because it was cheap and I will probably use more when I add columns later.

T-valve. I purchased a metal t-valve from PetSmart. They have plastic ones for even cheaper.

Silicone glue. You want to make sure you get silicone glue that is 100% silicone. I got mine at a hardware store, but they also often carry this at pet stores/fish stores (for aquarium repair). The 100% silicone will ensure that there are no additives that could leak into your water and plants.

Steps taken to add the t-valve airlift to my V3 hanging window farm:

1. To make the sport cap airline connector, first insert 1″ of airline into the sport cap of the water reservoir.
2. Inside the sport cap, use the silicone glue to glue the airline in place. Make sure to form a complete seal. It must cure for at least 3 hours before you can get it wet. I recommend you let it cure for 24 hours before doing anything else with it.
3. Measure/cut 1.5 feet of airline from the cap, and connect this to one of the two straight ends of the t-valve.
4. Connect your airline from your air pump to the perpendicular end of the t-valve.
5. Using your remaining airline, connect one end to the remaining straight end of the t-valve.
6. Run this airline to the top of your window farm and into the top bottle. Secure using zip ties or what ever you prefer.
7. ???
8. PROFIT

Look at my awesome diagrams:

It has been awhile and I have been busy outside, but I did something interesting with my strawberries.  One of them put out a runner so I planted it.  I actually had runners last summer, but just cut them off at the time.  The original strawberries are getting old and I will replace one of them in the WF with this baby.  The three on the right have all been in the window farm for a year and a half.  The one on the left is the baby and the other three started off just like it and 1.5 years ago.   As you can see the crowns have really grown tall and have divided a number of times.

After deciding to plant it, my jalepenos and strawberries had to get cozy for a couple of weeks.  The runner was only about 18 inches long so they had to be really close.  I have a jalepeno growing in a three plant WF and the top two positions are empty so I planted it in a net pot in the middle position and waited for the roots to take hold.  I held it in place in the net pot with a paper clip.   So a few weeks later, we cut the cord on the new baby.

http://our.windowfarms.org/2011/07/23/jalapeno-spider-mites/

Baby Strawberry

http://our.windowfarms.org/2011/02/13/strawberries-11-monthes-still-flowering/

I don’t windowfarm (I have an outdoor garden and was just too busy this year to set anything up) but I have played with low pressure airlift for many years and I put up a few videos of how t-joints (outside your reservoir) might be a simple option for some people. I am just wondering if the team leaders have tried t-joints yet?
I am also wondering if the leadership of windowfarms would like to enter my airlift “contest”?
Details are at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKtB1YKoMxk Basically this is just an attempt to find the limits of the type of low pressure airlift that is used windowfarms. There is a HUGE misconception around that airlift pumps need to have submergence equal to the height pumped. (This is simply not true for the slug flow process that airlifts water in the windowfarms systems). My experience with slug flow goes back to 1983!
I got to 13 ft high with just 2.5 ft of submergence and someone else got to 16 ft. Problem for both of us was we didn’t have enough height at our homes to test going higher! Maybe 20 ft is attainable, maybe 40 ft. We simply do not know!
I acknowledge that this is almost like “pure” research. There is no immediate benefit to the windowfarms project. However, if after crunching your numbers, it were of use in 3rd world countries to pump water from wells, it could really put your project on the map! In any case, this type of airlift is really poorly understood and really poorly communicated to the public. So maybe doing the experiment would directly benefit your project after all. I suspect that someone with an apartment and fire escape has access to lots more than 16 ft of height and can test the true limits of slug flow airlift pumps. Thanks
Brian

Here are some recommendations that we have listed on the kit assembly guides page (http://www.windowfarms.org/kits-guides) that would be helpful for DIY folks.

1) Seat your tube. The base of the water tube needs to be about 1/2″ above the floor of the reservoir. You do not want the base of the water tube to be completely touching the bottom of the reservoir… doing so would not allow water to enter the tube!

2) Keep the water high – Keep the water level in your bottom reservoir high. As the water level drops in the bottom bottles, the pressure on the water column reduces. This situation increases the likelihood of air bubbles escaping from the base of the water tube instead of traveling up inside of it!

3) Adjust your pump – A proper air flow rate is critical to provide enough force to carry water up the water tubes. If the air flow rate is too low, the air flow will not be strong enough to overcome the weight of the water in the tube. In this case, and no water will travel up the tube and instead the bubbles will escape from the bottom of the water tube. To adjust the output rate of the air bubbles, use the knob on top of your pump. NOTE: There are factors that influence the required power setting of the pump, including the length of the airline tube running between the pump and the bottom bottle. Shorter lines are more efficient and will generally require a lower power setting. Avoid having significantly different lengths of airline running to the same pump.

4) Straighten your water tube – Maintaining a straight, vertical, plumb water tube is critical to efficient water flow up the tube. Use tape and/or the plant tape strips to straighten the tube.

5) Add a Tail of tube – Cut a 3″ length from the airline tube running to the pump. Attach the 3″ piece to the ‘free’ end of the black plastic T-valve at the base of the water tube. This will reduce the diameter of the entrance to the air tube, discouraging air from escaping through the end and bubbling back into the water.

Hello everyone,

I just finished my windowfarm system last night. I started with the 2.0 instructions, but made quite a few adjustments along the way. One thing I really want to showcase is the airlift system. Seeing how many people are frustrated trying to build submerged airlift systems, I really recommend using an external system instead. I skipped using inflation needles, and went straight for the t-joint. But I figured there had to be a better, more reliable way than submerging a t-joint.

I got a 3-gallon water dispenser from Walmart, the kind that has the pouring spout. I took regular 1/4″ tubing, and wrapped a ton of plumber’s tape around it, and stuck it in the spout. (the spout screws apart, so you can actually pull the tube through) The water drains through the tube very well, it gets full water pressure since the spout is at the bottom, and you can even use the lever to stop water flow. I put a check valve on the water tube, so no air could bubble up into the tank, and I connected the tube to the perpendicular part of the t-joint. Then air comes in from one side, and the air/water mixture goes out the other. It’s helpful to keep the water tube perpendicular to the ground, and the air and air/water tubes parallel to the ground.

The system is incredibly reliable, and adjusting things and taking things apart is really easy, because it’s all out in the air and easily accessible. No wet hands!

Here’s a video of my entire setup, you can see the airlift system:

Lincoln’s Windowfarm on YouTube

(I’ll add pictures later)

———————————————-

A few quick questions, since I’m new at this:

• What kind of water should I use? Is tap water alright, or should I use distilled water?
• What kind of nutrient solution would be best for green veggies? (lettuce, swiss chard, peas)
• Would aeration of the nutrient water help? (via airstone)
• I’ve been reading a lot about the benefits of kelp, and I was wondering if that could be used as a nutrient solution alone, or if it was just supplementary.

Hey everyone. My windowfarm is setup and running however if the water line gets more than about two inches below the fill opening of the reservoir bottle there is simply not enough pressure to get the water to the top bottle. I’m using the 4+1 bottle setup with the 4 outlet petco pump advised in the instructions.

Has anyone else had issues similar to mine?

Thanks!

Help.

At first I was building it my own way, which had its own gigantic problems. But then I switched to something that looks basically identical to how the kits and kit instructions work. (The current ones with the long instructions — V 3 modular if I’m not confused.) It managed to get a tiny bit of water going up the system, but mostly it’s just bubbling at the bottom. I checked and there’s no leak that I can find. The water is just coming out the air needle, going down the tube somehow, and bubbling out the little gap at the bottom where the air’s meant to go in. I made sure the whole thing was as straight up and down as I could get it. I originally had a straw around the tube holding it straight (with its own angled bottom to let water in), but the bubbles were pushing water up that instead, which was just insulting.

The “add media” option isn’t cooperating with my computer, so I just stuck these on imageshack. Hopefully that’s not a problem for anyone.

You are looking at:
-1 basketball inflation needle
-2 segments of standard aquarium tube — I have no idea where you get the rigid stuff
-1 joiner/adapter thingy that goes between mini and normal aquarium tubes
-1 useless blob of silicone caulk

Ideas what I’m doing wrong?

http://www.thermopedia.com/toc/chapt_g/GAS-LIQUID_FLOW.html
Shows you some pictures (lower in the page)  and explanations and charts of how the different flow types transport water.  It also has some pretty mean (to me) calculations to help estimate achievable flow rates.  I do not know how well this can transfer to pipes round the 4mm, 5mm, 6 mm size but maybe it does.

Anyway maybe some people could number crunch and see how well it tallies with reality?

Also the how high can it go competition is still in effect.

No prizes but you might be famous on the internet for a day or two. Especially if you get 35 ft high or more pumping in the competition!  Everyone thinks 32 ft is unbeatable  but I am pretty sure they are mixing things up.
Here are the basic rules

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

Anyway it is a fairly cheap experiment if you do it. See my video below
Here is my version pumping to 13 ft high (over 3 meters)l

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)

So, she’s running a beaut now.  I’ve got 3 columns of fish water running, and 1 of retail nutrient solution (I can get the name if you care.

I germinated seeds about 3 weeks ago, and now I’ve got all four columns running 2 very substantial bean plants each (last pics are from 10 days ago.  I’m afraid to look in the silver cube) and a mediocre pea plant.

I still haven’t put in the CO2 doping yet.  TOmorrow?  So.. .

That's aluminized plastic (cheap emergency heat blanket) around the frame. Keeps the light nice and bright inside.

Tired…

I’ll type more about what you’re looking at soon.  Promise!  I’ve just been putting this off so long I have to do something.