DIY Drip Tray for Soil Grows

I've heard it said that laziness is the root of all innovation and I think that might be true. As much as I love growing indoors I don't like spending more time than necessary and I'm all over anything that will make it easier.

One chore that had been driving me nuts is emptying saucers after watering. At first I just picked up each plant and dumped the saucer out in a bucket. That worked for a while but then I started adding more plants and growing them taller and soon it wasn't an option anymore.

So I bought a shop vac to suck up the water. It works, but every square inch of my grow room is precious so there isn't a lot of space to move around and the shop vac was cumbersome. I also found myself reaching into all kinds of awkward spaces to reach plants in the back. To make matters worse sometimes the plants would take a while to drain and I'd have to get out the vac and do it all over again.

Finally I decided to do something about it and went to Home Depot looking for materials. What I finally came up with is pretty cheap, super easy to set up, works like a charm.

Here's what I bought:

• Two corrugated galvanized metal sheets, the kind you put on your roof. 26 guage 2 3/4' x 8'
• 3"x1"x8' primed boards
• 10' plastic gutter and end caps

The total was about $60.

The idea was to use the metal sheeting as a drip tray, the boards as supports and the gutter to collect all the water. Here's how it works:

First I put the metal sheeting in the grow room. They are only 27" wide and I needed 33" so I just overlapped two which also gives me the flexibility to make it wider or narrower.



Next I cut the boards into 30" lengths and stacked them to form the supports. 26 guage sheeting is pretty heavy duty so I only needed three. The low end is 3", middle is 3.5" and the high end is 4". I nailed them together but that was all. I also chose primed wood because it will be more resistant to mold.

Third was the gutter. Plastic gutters are cheap as hell and you can cut it to whatever length you need with a regular saw and just pop end caps on. I made mine 45" wide to hold as much water as possible while still short enough to not be in the way.



Finally I put my plants on it and watered the hell outta them.



It worked like a charm and filled up the gutter.

One problem I had was that the angle of the sheeting is slow low that the water would get to the end and run a couple inches on the bottom side before dripping off. I moved the gutter in closer but also used pliers to make small drain tips in the ends.



Problem solved.



I can't be the only guy out there that has had this problem. I wish I just had a drain in the floor so I wouldn't have to worry but that's just not an option. Has anybody come up with another solution?

Very nice ingenuity! You could go a few steps further and set that up on a table on fasten the gutter to the table and have a down spout going to a 5 gal bucket for easy removal.

Thanks for sharing!

I would definitely do that if I had a higher ceiling. I used to run a full ebb & flow hydro set up but took it out because there just wasn't enough space between the lights and the tray to grow a decent sized plant. I tried to keep this as low profile as possible and hate losing even the four inches!

Did I say every square inch of grow room is precious? Make that every cubic inch

nice.. looks like you still need to empty that gutter after every watering or two but at least you can just water them then deal with it later. I miss growing in soil sometimes but ya its such a pain in the ass dealing with the water.
Good looking grow btw. looks like your ladies are about to explode

Well I've still got the shop vac to get the water out but I can also just lift the gutter and pour it out easily enough. What I need now is a mini sump pump.

The ladies are ready to rock (they're a little droopy in the pic 'cause they just got transplanted). They're Jillybean's from TGA and are 15-17 inches tall (photos are from their first day of 12/12). Never grown em before but hear she's a yielder.

This is money and over the last couple weeks I have been ordering bits and pieces for my grow...I am doing (6) 400watt HPS and Sea of Green method...one of my biggest concerns was this issue...Now I am set and know exactly what I am doing...thanks for this!

Also, just curious the dimensions of those pots...diameter and volume. Thanks again!

They are 8" pots. 8" diameter and 8" tall so that makes them 1.5 gallons. I toss a handful of hydroton in the bottom to help drainage but that's just me.

whats the height of your room? and out of curiosity what grow medium are you using?

If you are willing to work with a 12 volt power supply then bilge pumps from boats are available in a wide variety of sizes and are usually controlled by an immersion switch. They turn on when liquid is there and turn off when not...

Appleseed...Thank you! That's a great tip.

-----------

I'm using a growlab tent with a 6'7" ceiling. With lights (hydrofarm radiant 8's) there isn't a ton of height. It's fine for soil grows but my ebb & flow table had to go

I've been using ProMix HD but am testing out Sunshine #4 on this grow. Both are pretty similar (peat/perlite). Half the plants are in promix, half Sunshine, let the best mix win.

Phase II is to add automatically controlled drip irrigation so I can take off for a couple days. I'm thinking of using rainbird lines and emitters but they have a tendency to leak and are hard to change configuration once set up.

Does anyone know a good alternative?