Here, I am going to highlight the nitty-gritty parts of the operation.

This is where it all starts.

For the resevoir exit, I drilled a hole in a rubbermaid and secured a small piece of tubing into it with some waterproof caulk. This small piece of tubing is then connected to the rest of the line by that funny white connecter doo-dad. Having a removable connection point makes cleaning very easy.

I find that I don’t necessarily need a check valve since the T-joint is significantly lower than the pump. I used to have one check valve for each line, but I found that the check valve restricted the one line quite a bit, so I removed it. After doing that, I found that the check valve line was much quieter. It seems that without the valve, I experience the gurgling noise. Hmmm

 

T-joint

A very simple setup here.  The resevoir is about a foot above the T-joint. This creates more than enough pressure, even when the water level is quite low. After the T, the flexible tubing continues for about a foot and then connects to the rigid tubing. To make this connection, all I had to do was shove the flexible tubing into the rigid tubing. No leaks! Easy.

Here’s the top of the farm.  I used zip ties to secure the rigid tubing to the chain. To get the coiled up, rigid tubing to straighten out, I boiled some water and syphoned it through the tubing. This allowed me to bend it and straighten it with ease.
I used to have some serious gurgling sounds. I found that by lowering the T-joint, I was able to get rid of them. No need for a silencer. The key is to make sure your tubing has lots of water running up it at one time.
One thing I really like about using these chains is that I can adjust the height of my pots at any time without disturbing the others.

Here is the bottom of one of the pots. You can see the net cups full of clay balls through the holes on the bottom. I thought I would have to plug up some of these holes so that water wouldnt be dripping everywhere, but (luckily) I was wrong!  By hanging the pots on a slant (see gallery), the water only drips out of one of the holes! This is another nice feature of the chain. I can change the angle or direction of slope for any pot at any time. So, what did I do about the bottom pot?…

For the last pot in the line, I poked a hole in a plastic bag, taped a piece of rigid tubing to it, and shoved a piece of flexible tubing in it. The tube connects straight back to the top of the resevoir. The net cup sits in the plastic bag. This is a simple solution that works like a charm. You can also see that the pot is hung at an angle.

This is where it all starts.

T-joint

The bottom of a middle pot

Pot-to-resevoir

Air Pump

Nutrient solution

Peter piper…

pot-to-chain connection point

resevoir connection point

Sideof the resevoir

Top of resevoir

Seedling Tray

Swiss Chard seedlings

Timer

A lovely tomato plant!

This is the whole setup

 

Hey fellow window farmers! I switched out my old gallon green tea jug with this…a football fish tank I’ve had since I was a little kid. There’s a built in filter system too, so hopefully that will help reduce the algae build up. Let me know what you all think!

Hey guys,

I’m about to start building my first system having looked at the plans for all three versions. I have a few questions about modifications that immediately spring to mind as I’m setting up.

1) Why does the bottom reservoir cap assembly in version 3 need to be the way it is? It seems like version 2 system seems a lot more simple, is there any reason why this can’t be used in a version 3 set up?

2) Why could the hydroponic cages not be placed deeper down the bottles? That way more plants (and bottles) could be accommodated in a single column. You’d need to cut down the bottles to do, which would require a bit more modification to the system, but I don’t see why this would be too difficult.

I realize how green I am to all this, so feel free to tell me if my ideas wouldn’t work and why!

Thanks.

A few days ago I noticed some problems with my setup: when the pump would turn on sometimes the airflow would go back down through the source tube and start bubbling up the reservoir rather than lifting water up the lift tube. I could fix it by releasing the air pressure in the lines and letting the water re-prime itself.

Over the weekend I didn’t have much time to work with it, but thankfully every time I peeked into my office things seemed to be moving smoothly.
Today when I sat down to do some work, I heard the pump click on and once again the bubbling sound of air coming into the reservoir. I was perplexed as to why it only seemed to fail when I was around.

I didn’t have time to debug / re-prime the system at that moment, so I just ignored it for a few minutes. Then to my great surprise, it suddenly fixed itself and started delivering water to my plants again.

My theory is that sometimes, after the pump shuts off, water runs back down the lift tube and sits stationary at a height above the t-joint. When the system first turns on, the pressure from this thin, tall water column is too much for the air pump so the air starts to backflow into the reservoir. In a few minutes, the water stuck in the lift tube flows back down below the t-joint, and which point air starts flowing up again. The system resets itself and everything works.

Since I use black hose for my lift tube I can’t quite see what’s going on, but I’m curious if anyone else has run into similar problems.

Hi,

I’m building the MAMA farm,

but I have some problems with the reservoir bottles.

I can’t figure this step out:

Next, attach the metal inflation needle to the threaded tapered end of the presta stem. Using pliers, tighten as tight as possible.

I collected a lot of presta stems, but I have no idea on how to attach the air needle.

Can someone help me?

Thanks

This isn’t our first hydro build, by far, but it is our first one to be hung in a window! It’s in an east facing window in our living room & we love how it brings the same esthetic as a houseplant, but the benefits of FOOD!

This was about a week after we set it up. We started the beans & cucumbers from seed in a little greenhouse on top of the fridge. The top two pots are cucumbers and the bottom has 4 green beans.

We hung the pots with some hemp we had in our craft surplus & made the trellis out of the hemp & bamboo stakes. I’ve even made a bow and arrow out of the bamboo!

This is how the middle & bottom pot get watered. There is a piece of bamboo shoved up there to keep the tubing straight.

Here’s the reservoir, made from a cereal tupperware we got at Target & some ducting tape to make it lightproof. We took the little hinged pour spout off of the lid and ran the watering and drainage tubing through the opening. You can also see the timer there, right now we run the water pump for 15 mins every 2 hours from 6am to 6pm. As the plants get bigger we might have to adjust the schedule, but for now it works out.

We use a water pump we had around the house and it works great until the water level in the res gets down to about 25%. It’s a good reminder that it’s time for a refill without having the pump run dry.

Our first sight of beans!

Beans, beans….

….and more BEANS!!

Okay, enough beans. Here’s our first cucumber flower!

We’re getting a lot of male flowers, just waiting for that female! Well, that’s what we have so far. If you have any specific questions on what we used or how we use it leave a comment or send a message & we’d love to share!

Happy Growing!

-The Sanders

Update: Do NOT use aluminum for the piping as I have. Apparently aluminum will release toxins in the water which will build up in your body. There are also reports of plants dying due to aluminum exposure. I’ll be replacing the aluminum pipes with plastic as soon as possible.

The construction part is finally complete! It turned out as good as I hoped, and much better than I expected!

Here are the earlier posts related to the same project: 1st , 2nd (the title said it was complete already, but it wasn’t pretty enough

Here are the first shots. I only have some tiny little shoots in there, but you’ll need to use your imagination on what it’ll look like in the spring. The rockwool needs to be cleaned up a bit and properly covered with pebbles.

Part list (total cost ~100 euros):

• 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)
• 1 Large floor flower pot. This is the same brand as the orchid pots so the color matches perfectly. (25 e at Bauhaus)
• 1 Inner pot. The inner pot is 22 cm tall, so below it lies my actual reservoir. The volume is somewhere around 5-10 liters. (15e at Bauhaus)
• 2 meters of aluminum plastic pipe, 6 mm diameter. One meter for drip pipes and another for the air lift.
• 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)
• 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 small pliers. (2 euros / meter at a local aquarium store)
• Needle for the airlift (3e at Bauhaus)

Update:

Here’s an additional picture to better explain how this reservoir works. A company called Elho makes these pots. The outer pot is perfect for the reservoir, and the inner pot is good for a bunch of plants.

We built a starter window farm earlier this year, and now I’d like to build a bigger one to cover the entire window. (I actually have a really huge window.)

But I’m having trouble understanding the assembly instructions for plumbing, specifically at and after bottle cap assembly (methods A, B, and C).  At the end of the instructions for each method, it ends with putting the other end of the airline tube into the pump.

I must have missed something or am not understanding how this works, but if you have four or more columns, how do they share one pump? In the full assembly picture, it looks like each doesn’t plug into the pump but rather into something with a loop above it. I can’t seem to find mention of this in the instructions.

Can someone please enlighten me?

Hi everybody !

It took me a couple of weeks of thinking, and a whole weekend to work out everything, but there it is. My sailboat windowfarm is now working on a regulated dripping system since… 5 hours. This one is not plastic-free, but it is electricity-free and if everything works out as planned, the dripping flow will be entirely automated… in between the moments I choose to close it (since there is no timer either on this installation).

By the way, Brian, I tried twice to send you a comment on your last post (Easy way to attach a T-Joint…), because I had a few questions, but nothing would pass. I posted another comment to someone else and it passed. So I don’t know what I did wrong or if you blocked the receiving of comments by mistake. Anyway, thanks a lot for your explanations and drawings. It made things a lot easier.

I’m still looking for a mainly non plastic dripping system for my clay pot windowfarm, so I may come back to the emitter valve (if I can find one somewhere) and glass or metal containers, but this one is my practice, servicing my all plastic sailboat windowfarm.

Photo 1 : While looking for an emitter in my local hydroponic store, the salesman directed me right to this product (which is intended for animal water tanks). At 22,99$ (Canadian), I couldn’t resist long, as he didn’t have the emitter and didn’t seem to know exactly what I was talking about. It ressembles a toilet float valve, only much more compact. The brand name is Little Giant, item number TM825, by Miller Manufacturing co. Glencoe, MN.

Photo 2 : Here’s one of the plans provided with the thing. It’s easy enough to assemble. You fix the red floater to the black housing with a “cotter pin”, you tighten your brackets to the black housing with two short screws, and later, you use two long screws to thighen the whole thing to the side of your reservoir. You have a washer to put down into the mouth where a garden hose will be screwed up (standard 3/4″).  That’s about it for the stuff provided in the box.

Photos 3 and 4 : I still needed other components though. I spent another 10 box on the rest. As I wasn’t just about to use a 10 foot garden hose, I needed to mount one much shorter. So I bought an adaptator (on photo 3, it’s the grey plastic part just under the yellow hose) between the 6″ bit of yellow garden hose that I used and the float valve (in black), and then another adaptator (on photo 4, it’s the black part) between the upper reservoir (a cheap plastic container that I had to pierce a round hole into) and the garden hose. Finally, I placed two of these plumbing metal necks (I don’t know their name in English) over both junctions to insure watertitghness. By the way, the green electric wire is just there to keep the garden hose bent down, because I was tight on vertical space. I only had 12″ vertical clearance. Now that the hose adapted in it’s place, I won’t need the wire anymore. With that bent in the middle of the garden hose, I was afraid to block the water’s flow, but thankfully, it just slows it down.

Photo 5 : I used a flimsy plastic container made of half a kitty litter container. It doesn’t show on the photo, but I put a small piece of wood between the container’s exterior side and the float valve brackets so both long screws could set onto it. It makes everything more tighten at the same time. The container is only 4 1/2″ deep. I think it’s just the minimum to make the float work properly (if you don’t need a fast refill).

Photo 6 : Here’s a view of the whole installation. the principles are quite simple. You have two reservoirs, one on top of the other. The upper reservoir will empty out gradually. The bottom reservoir acts like a buffer, because the float valve regulates the intake of water and keeps this reservoir always at the exact same level. This way, the water pressure in the bottom reservoir is alway the same, so you can adjust your dripping valve once and the water flow will remain constant until your upper reservoir is empty. In that event, the float valve reservoir would then start to empty itself and from that point, your water flow would not be even anymore, slowing gradually. One end of my drop-by-drop tubing is maintained at the bottom of the reservoir with a rock, just like in the previous system. The tubing runs over the edge of the tank, so I didn’t have to pierce any hole to drive the tubing through the container’s side. It lowers the risks of leaking, which is to greatly please me, considering the position of all this water just above my dictionnaries LOL ! The white plastic bottle neck is simply a piece I cut out and squeezed under the black float valve to stabilize it. It doesn’t get in the way of the red floater (which you cannot see on this photo, because at that moment, it was in its upper position, inside the black housing, shutting the flow of water).

There’s at least one drawback on this installation : it won’t be that easy to dismount it to clean up every component. I could not find the proper parts that would have allowed me to separate the two tanks in a jiffy. I tried with metal garden hose connectors, but it kept leaking, so I brought everything back to the hardware store to get a refund.  Next time, maybe ?

Photo 7 – 8 – 9 :  To make the installation a little tidier, I used an old wooden crate to put the float valve reservoir in it. It also acts às a support for the upper reservoir. It’s too long for nothing (about a third too long), but it’s 12″ wide, just the exact depth of my shelf. My instatallation is barely under 12″ high, so it almost scratches the upper shelf. But I can draw the whole installation a little outward (so it sticks out about an inch) and it becomes very easy to refill the upper reservoir (photos 8 and 9).

Photo 10 : A view of the whole thing. You’ll notice that my highest bottle is at least a foot lower than the shelf where the float valve reservoir is sitting. I think it’s the reason why I can get away with the water pressure given by less than 2 ” of water depth in that reservoir. Otherwise, the resistance in my tubing would be too high to let the water flow freely, possibly. It would be different if my reservoirs would be directly over the windowfarm, but the ceiling clearance is not sufficient to allow me such an installation.

Just before publishing this article, I noticed that the drip rate is at roughly one drop every 4,5 seconds. Five hours ago, I settled it at one drop every 2,5 seconds, so it slowed down very gradually. But it’s my drop-to-drop ajustment valve that is the culprit, I’m sure of it (it’ this small white thing on the tubing, with a red adjustment wheel on photo 10). The water level in the float-valve reservoir didn’t move a millimeter. I’ll give you an update on that.

As I succeeded in sending a first communication, here’s the information about my experiment. As I said,  two weeks ago, I constructed a starter system that could allow me to get familiarized with all this first hand. I didn’t use the plans provided on the site, just browsed around, read a lot,thought a lot and observed. The funny thing is that, besides the need to buy hydroton, I didn’t spend one dime on my small and crude installation. Here is what I used so far :

. 1   2L soda bottle

.1   1L soda bottle

.1  1L Pedialite bottle (an oral electrolyte maintenance solution to prevent dehydration during diarrhea and which is also very effective to stop heartburns as well, by the way). The bottle is nicely square and I could open four windows in it, one on each side. But the plastic is not entirely transparent. Rather a smoky white. It’s the bottle at the bottom of the line.

. 1 tubing for slowdrip enteral feeding (my students are mentally and physically disabled and some can’t feed themselves by their mouths, so this kind of tubing is very abundant in our recycling bin and never comes in direct contact with the person, just with the feeding solution). See third photo. The product is american. Don’t know its cost, but it should be quite affordable.

. 1  4L ice cream container as a top reservoir (see the top shelve in the 2nd photo)

. 1 small rock to anchor the tubing to the bottom of the reservoir. See second photo.

. 1 metal container as bottom reservoir (it’s coated with a cooked layer, but I don’t remember how it’s called). See at the bottom of the system in the second photo.

. 3 plastic flower pots instead of net pots (the type you find in gardening centers when you buy baby perennials. The plastic of the cheapest ones is very thin and so flimsy you can compress them into the bottles without breaking them. Poking holes or cutting slits in the sides is also very easy.) I didn’t post any photo.

. Instead of hydroton, I thought of using my husband’s old glass marbles collection from childhood days, but since we want to give them to our grandson eventually, I refrained from that. Glass is inert, after all, and the marbles are the right size, but then I realized how hydroton is light-weighted, how it absorbs water and is full of small holes, so I don’t think marbles would be a good substitute after all. Besides, hydroton is quite cheap.

. For making a dark room, I simply used an old paper bag from a boutique. The exterior layer (the side with the store’s logo on it) was black, so I put that side inside to face the roots, showing only the regular brown paper layer.

. To suspend the whole thing, my husband gave me a roll of electric wiring that was gattering dust in the basement. It’s copper covered with black plastic and should be very sturdy. Each bottle was then secured with gardening metal wire covered with plastic as well.

My first experiment to make water run through the system was with the small 600mL feeding reservoir you can see on the third photo, put directly over the line of bottles (fine, since it comes with a nice handle to suspend it). But the water pressure doesn’t ensure a regular flow. This means that you have to ajust the flow with the clamp about every hour. And after three hours, the bottle was empty. That’s why I came up with the 4L (1 gallon) reservoir. The flow is much more regular, needing adjustment only every 18 to 24 hours. Plus, it lasted 72 hours before coming to a halt. Much better.

I’m currently trying other experiments to see how the system can be improved and I’ll come back to you with this.