Windowfarms recommend a 4 outlet pump but many people already have a 1 outlet pump and probably would like to use the one they have.  So here I have a video about a method to split the air stream to work 2 or more columns. If you just split the air with a Y or T splitter (even if both airlift tubes are exactly the same), the air will “choose” one tube (or the other one) and then all or most of the air will go up that one with zero or almost zero airlift happening in the other one.  This is because the “starting pressure”  is higher than the “running pressure” for any airlift pump.  So whichever one starts first will probably stay running really well at the expense of the second one (which will be either really slow or not running at all!)

The method I show to prevent this is to throttle both of them.  In the video, I use little “taps” to tighten and restrict the airflow to both sides until both sides run. AND stay running!   For this to work, both airlifts should have similar submergence (but they do not need to go to the same height).  You might also be able to see from the video that you can have one going a bit faster than the other.  So possibly, you can supply more water to some plants when they are big while in the other airlift supplying just a little to them because they are tinier.

There are other methods too but this one should be easy to do and to adjust.

2  airlift columns from a single outlet air pump!

I only did 2 columns because I didn’t have enough tubing to show 3 working.

3 columns  might work in my case (my pump is an old aquarium pump that I found dumped on the side of the road so it is probably not such a good model)

Update 2nd Jan 2012.  3 columns works too but in the case of my pump it is the limit.  Video Jan 3 2012. 3 airlift tubes working from a one outlet aquarium bubble pump

Youtube now allows you to edit videos so if I am not too busy, I will “upgrade” the video (and this post)  over the next week or 2 and show methods to measure the flow or at least compare flows under different conditions too. Brian

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)

I did a little video today about lowering the airspeed through to windowfarm to vary (and sometimes increase!) the rate of airlift.  Depending on your tubes the rate can be quite slow and still give you good pumping. Check it out because I think it can help people to understand a bit better and to get things right first time.
Anyway here are some pictures that I took out of the video.

2 outlet air flow regulator valve

This is a little aquarium valve and bottom pic shows the adjustment knobs

You can either use it to regulate air to 2 t joints or just leave one open to the windowfarm and have the other one just a bit open to let some of the air escape.

Below is a head for connecting a tube under the reservoir. You might need a bit of gauze or window bug screen in the bottom to stop crud getting into the tubes.

Head for watering plants. Snip off the top and use the "neck" to attach tube

And you also can use this thing for aquariums as a bottom reservoir.

Aquarium attachment for tubing

And finally I am going to show you a pic of the bubble in the tubing.

plug of water

If you reduce the airflow into the t-joint and into the tube, sometimes the water flow increases. This is because the type of flow changes from churn flow to plug flow.

Plug flow can be quite slow sometimes. As the plugs of water rise, it changes from many short ones to a few long ones.

Watch the video to get more information.

Thanks Brian

This is an easily available attachment for pop bottles here in Canada. They are available in garden centers for watering plants.  This means the the entire windowfarm can be made from pop bottles and still get excellent airlift.

Your water tube would go down in a J shape to the t- joint to prevent back flow into the reservoir.

If you cut the “showerhead” top off, you can use an upturned pop bottle as your reservoir for a windowfarm and  attach the water pipe to a t-joint  outside  the bottle  and at whatever submergence you choose.  I think this can make life easier for everyone.

Plant watering attachment for pop bottles

This is a very interesting article, with lots of good information.

There is a large list of plants that can be grown hydroponically, and outlines the environmental benefits of hydroponics. Keep in mind, this is from a website that also has an online store, there is a little bit of advertising. Otherwise I found this to be a good read.

I hope this is useful!

http://www.growhubhydroponics.com/pdf/Hydroponic_Produce.pdf

I think this is my favourite part:

“With hydroponic technology and a controlled environment, you have the ability to grow premium quality produce using minimal space, water and fertilizer. Amazingly, with artificial light, 6 square feet of space has been proven to nutritionally feed a family of 4 year-round!”

I’ll be posting some information on my second WF hopefully by this weekend, but I wanted to throw this out to see what you think.  I have peas on the bottom level and lettuce on the next level up.  The peas are about 60 days old now and doing well, and these small bugs just showed up!  They look like some type of borer. They have a white/clear body and a black head.  Any ideas what they are and how they might get here?  On the seeds? In my rock wool supply? In my rain water?

Am I the only one with bug problems?  At least my spider mites are gone now…

Bugs In My Peas

 A big THANKS to @samenrahmen for knowing what these little buggers were.  Knowing what you are dealing with is half the battle and it all makes sense now.

To document this a bit more, I am adding a few more pictures to this post and changing the title.   Here is an example of the adult that has been buzing around that I just smashed.  I am surprised that my camera took a decent picture of it as it is only about 1 mm long.

Fungus Gnat Adult

 This now explains the dying leaves on the plant.   The lower leaves are drying out and dying and this symptom is slowly working its way up the vine.  I assume this can be caused by them  feeding on my roots.  Hopefully, I have caught this in time as the upper part of the plant is flowering nicely and peas are starting to grow.

Gnat Fly Leaf Damage

 In reading up on these gnats, I see that they like really wet conditions so I am going to cut way back on the watering cycles.  I had been thinking it was a bit too wet.  I had gotten a new air pump when I started this second WF and have not gotten a good feel for how much water the peas and lettuce like.

Adult Gnat Flies on Fly Paper

I bought some fly paper type stuff from HomeDepot.  It is the darker part of the image above.  It is a long piece of sticky plastic and came all rolled up in a tube.  It is incredibly sticky and does not want to straighten out.  To make it easier to work with I cut it into smaller strips and put it on some yellow construction paper.   It naturally wanted to curl up so I made in into a cylindar and put the tie on it.   I quickly learned to use rubber gloves.  In a matter of 24 hours, there were 12 flies stuck on it. 

I am giving them less water and I have also taken out as much of the rockwool as possible to give them a smaller home.  The majority of the roots on this one are actually in the resevoir below.  It had turned itself into a deep water culture.  I have also tried some hydrogen peroxide since that is what I had already in the house.  

As a side note, everything I have been doing has been with rockwool.  When I first started and went to the hydroponics store, they were out of the small bags of the clay pellets and I did not want to buy the big “life time” supply bag.  So this is what the recommended instead.  The one advantage has been that I can “accidentally” unplug the pump for a day and the plants don’t die.

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

Here’s an update on how my buttercrunch lettuce is doing.  I bought a small light for cloudy winter days and I have dialed in the watering schedule.  I have a timer for the light that turns it on at 7:00 a.m. and off at 9:00 p.m.   I also have a timer for the air pump that turns on for 30 minutes every two hours during the day, and for 15 minutes every 4 hours at night.  The lettuce seems to be doing very well.

Hello!

I am very excited to set up my window farm!

I managed to play around with my air lift with a airflow valve, and I have quite a range of drips.

My question is how much water should I be cycling through my window farm in a given period of time?

Also, is it better to have a steady slow drip or to have the pump on a timer and just run the water at certain intervals?

Thanks for your help.

Melissa

I’ve started tomatoes and peppers in the past using cheap florescent lights, I’ve read good and bad regarding the LED so I decided to reuse the florescent lights for my Window Farm – so far it’s working well…  Growing Tomatoes and Cilantro.