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

 

Hello, I’ve attempted my first window farm this week as a prototype for class. It’s been a bit difficult to find proper supplies in Hong Kong due to language barriers. Challenges and questions I’ve come across while exercising my poor engineering skills. I will be using black socks to cover the bottom of the bottles.

1. My seedlings have already been attacked twice with aphids and fungus gnats in it’s growing plugs. I had to start a fresh batch. If the seedlings are already so sensitive to the  moisture and humidity, how soon will my window farm be attacked by these pest? Anyone have experience with handling this in a humid country?

2. My tubing is too stiff to direct it away from the seedling. I’ve seen some systems using a toothpick or wooden chopstick, but my result was a moldy chopstick. I ended up using a fishing wire just to hold it down and a tape to keep the tube in place. I obviously need to find a better alternative. 

3. Reservoir problem. Due to the limited space in HK, I don’t have the luxury to have a big bottle for reservoir so I attempted to use a ketchup bottle on the bottom. I found the tip was a good way to plug the tubing in (I still need to reinforce it with plumbers tape, but haven’t found it yet).

4. Cutting through plastic was the biggest challenge.  I am not a very handy person, but I attempted to use the drill to make some holes on the bottom of the bottles but the bottom is thicker than the rest of the bottle, so I am not able to cut through it. In the end, I made a big circle but the bottles don’t fit perfectly. Any suggestions? I thought about using sticks to reinforce it.

5.I wanted to try out using water beads instead of clay pellets. Anyone have any success in it?

Yesterday my daughter and I built a 3 column hydroponic vertical window garden using a 20 gallon fish tank as the water reservoir. In the middle of the fish tank, I squeezed a length Of 3″ PVC tubing. I bore 3, 1&5/8″ holes into the tubing. I used this as the base for my three 6′ columns of 1.25″ PVC tubing. I used a submersible pump. connected it to 1/4″ tubing and used it to get the water up six feet. I then used Ts to try and bring the water to each column. 

It looks alright, but it has a few problems: The problems I am having: 1.The caps at the base of each plastic bottle do not drain well enough, so many of the planters become water logged. 2. I have not yet had success getting the water to all 3 columns simultaneously. 3. In addition I probably shocked an number of my plants. I’m going to play around with it, and see what I can do to improve things.

Check out some new Pictures here:

From windowfarm

From windowfarm

Oh, and this is the first salad I got from my windowfarm.

From windowfarm

I find that this sistem uses lots of energy and water to produce little food – I eat a lot of salad. It’s worth it though. I’m proud to sometimes eat my own produce.

So recently I built my windowfarm and everything seems to work, somewhat fine, however – at night it’s feeding damp to the window and the walls around it, resulting in rot and bad air in the room, I’m worried for my own health aswell as the walls and wood of the door, for now I’m drying it up by hand once or twice daily, but it handicaps the purpose of selfwatering since I might aswell water it by hand then, in any case I’d really appreciate any help from anyone who have had similar problems I’ll post pictures of the setup as soon as possible.

in short the setup is 2 columns with T-split tubing and a airliftpump, in a full glas door, the setup is about 10cm form the window, if that had effect on how well the damp catches on to the window.

Best Regards

- Filiziuq

Mike R. Lalti.

I have finally completed my windowfarm, and transferred my baby plants! So far it was neat watching the plants grow from seeds. I hope they bear fruit. I have 2 spinach plants, 2 different tomatoe plants, 3brocolli plants, and 3 mint plants, and 1 lettuce plant! I used the air T-lift system to get the water pumped to the top.

(First post as member!)

No under construction pictures, yet, but pictures of the space I have to work with. The plan is to work with the narrow window set on the far left to start.

Window Farm/Hydroponic Target Area

Microclimate/setup notes:

• There is a curtain rod that never gets used above the windows – I can use this to suspend the columns from.
• It gets full LIGHT for 80% of the day or more – there is no obstruction as we look over a harbour (Boston where the cruise ships dock/seaport) and we are the tallest point we can see.
• I can’t use the wider section because these are french doors that open to a balcony and the other small window area is a dedicated cat-viewing/perch area. (I’m amazed there wasn’t a cat there when I took this picture)

Materials:

• I already have full spectrum CFLs, conveniently, which partially factored into doing the second setup.
• I have two red and two blue LED grow lights from LED Wholesalers (12W, PAR38), already.
• The curtain rod above the windows wil be used for suspension. (I can hang from it and I’m about 130# – I wouldn’t want to do kipping pullups repeatedly on it, but is more than stable for this)

Plant selection for the vertical window garden:

• Catnip
• Spearmint
• Assorted kitchen herbs (chervil, thyme, lemon thyme, etc.) Rationale: Anything that comes in a plastic blister pack that has to be transported. I never use the entirety of these, they are $4USD per. Between plastic, the waste, the cost this is an ongoing pet peeve of mine.
• Specifically  NOT doing: Parsley, Cilantro, Basil. (These come in bulk and local)

Citrus Trees:

• I have 15 citrus trees (there are some in another room and some out of frame) and most aren’t doing too well (kaffir lime and calomondin orange are thriving, however). They used to be on the roofdeck of my previous place for the late spring->early fall and thrived. Wintering was always hit-miss, but this move was particularly bad. They’ve been yellowing leaves and have dropped between 50%->80% of their foliage. I suspect it is because this condo is so much moister/the soil doesn’t dry out fast enough and I’m seeing root rot. I’ve repotted them in fresh soil, but this has had very limited success.
• I’m looking at doing hydroponic citrus trees (marginally related to this community?) in the windows. Some of the trees have successfully fruited in the past. Since I’m acquiring the hydroton (per the materials sheet) for the columnar setup
• Advice needed:  ANY  experience anyone has doing this would be appreciated. I’m looking for setup thoughts (I’ve sketched out PVC exoskeletons for light rigging and water feeding on one end, to simple drip hoses on the other), nutrient thoughts (looking at Hoagland solutions as suggested by a few blogs – is there something better? One area I don’t have interest in is formulating my own nutrients for citrus trees)

Well, that’s it for now. This weekend will be materials gathering and whatnot until the hydroton and mesh cups arrive. Also, none of my friends that I’ve asked used disposable water bottles. Hah. Finding the water bottles is turning into the annoying part!

We are building our very own windowfarm.

The project starts now and it might take us some time to get going.

We’ll be posting the progress pictures here in this galery below, so stay in touch.

(I’m not quite shure about how this posting system works)

Latest Pictures: 19-07-2012

Depois de meus peixinhos morrerem de uma vez só, denovo, desisti de criá-los por enquanto e resolvi usar o aquário para outra coisa:

Montei uma windowfarm com garrafas de água mineral reaproveitadas e vasinhos plásticos. O sistema de irrigação foi constriudo com uma bomba de água de parabrisas de carro e mangueiras de aquário. E para automatizar o sistema estreiei meu garduino na protoboard!

É tudo novo pra mim, o arduino e sua programação e também o cultivo hidropônico. Estou bem entusiasmado com os resultados até agora…

Mais infos aqui: http://wiki.nosdigitais.teia.org.br/Garduino

1.In my very first attempt I did as it said in the instructions. I cut a V shape into the cork. It worked pretty well at first, but after a while it started to let through too much water and suddenly it didn´t let any water through. It was completely blocked.

2. In the next attempt I just made a small hole in the cork. This meant that water was allowed through at regular intervals, smoothly. But the hole also meant that there where some splashing and dripping on to the plants which they didn´t like.

3. So I made the hole bigger and used some of the leftover pipe. This worked fine, but after some hours it began to leak and part of the water wanted to go on the outside of the tube.

4. So today I used a glu gun to seal the space between the cork and the tube. So far this works great.

We’ll see if it holds..