Mo!
Well-Known Member
I primarily grow in a 3x3 tent using Hempy buckets and wanted to put together a flexible drain system for them so I no longer had to try to siphon nutrients out of drip trays or remove the plants to feed them. Because it's a tight space, I need the drain system to be flexible as I never know how the plants will need to be positioned - which is why Bato buckets don't work for me (although I did a few single stands out of PVC). I also wanted the system to be flexible so I could use multiple sized buckets as well as mess around with some Air Pots and the like at some point.
I ordered up a few of these Air Pot RTA stands hoping that my buckets would fit in the channels - which the buckets were *just* bigger than. A Homer bucket from HD will fit in there, but it would not sit all the way down in the channel so I wouldn't trust it on it's own sitting in there.
I was originally just going to get some sort of plastic mesh from a shelf or something to put a layer across the top to keep the bucket in place but I saw some milk crates while in HD and grabbed those instead.
Using my snips, I simply cut out the bottom of the milk crate, and then trimmed it off to the right size to sit in the top channel of the RTA tray.
I also needed to raise these trays up a little bit off the floor as they will run into my DIY drain bucket. I was thinking of using some #3 nursery pots as they fit perfect inside the legs on the bottom of the tray, but they were a little wobbly. So as luck turns out the rest of the milk crate can be used as well for this purpose - and it's the same heigh as they would have been on top of the #3 pots (actually about an inch lower - and every inch counts for height in a tent).
On the backside, the top channel would get caught on the lip which raised the back side up at least 1/2 an inch and was a little wobbly. So I went ahead and cut out the handle on that side so the tray would sit flat.
After a quick test, I determined that I wanted a *little* slope towards the front drain with the tray, so I cut up a few stick on feet that I had from some other project and stuck them on the back wall.
You could use your typical stick on feet from any electronics device, but I had some made of thicker foam with a rubberized top layer that I just cut up for this. I stuck them on the edge and it gave it a nice gentle slope that I liked. Better yet, the rubber top on the pads kept the tray from sliding at all as well.
That's it. Now I can move the trays around as needed in my tent. Cheap and easy, took all of 2 minutes to build, and I can use this for pretty much any type of pot that I want to.
I ordered up a few of these Air Pot RTA stands hoping that my buckets would fit in the channels - which the buckets were *just* bigger than. A Homer bucket from HD will fit in there, but it would not sit all the way down in the channel so I wouldn't trust it on it's own sitting in there.
I was originally just going to get some sort of plastic mesh from a shelf or something to put a layer across the top to keep the bucket in place but I saw some milk crates while in HD and grabbed those instead.
Using my snips, I simply cut out the bottom of the milk crate, and then trimmed it off to the right size to sit in the top channel of the RTA tray.
I also needed to raise these trays up a little bit off the floor as they will run into my DIY drain bucket. I was thinking of using some #3 nursery pots as they fit perfect inside the legs on the bottom of the tray, but they were a little wobbly. So as luck turns out the rest of the milk crate can be used as well for this purpose - and it's the same heigh as they would have been on top of the #3 pots (actually about an inch lower - and every inch counts for height in a tent).
On the backside, the top channel would get caught on the lip which raised the back side up at least 1/2 an inch and was a little wobbly. So I went ahead and cut out the handle on that side so the tray would sit flat.
After a quick test, I determined that I wanted a *little* slope towards the front drain with the tray, so I cut up a few stick on feet that I had from some other project and stuck them on the back wall.
You could use your typical stick on feet from any electronics device, but I had some made of thicker foam with a rubberized top layer that I just cut up for this. I stuck them on the edge and it gave it a nice gentle slope that I liked. Better yet, the rubber top on the pads kept the tray from sliding at all as well.
That's it. Now I can move the trays around as needed in my tent. Cheap and easy, took all of 2 minutes to build, and I can use this for pretty much any type of pot that I want to.
