How to build a home made DIY Ebb & Flow

wats up everyone, just would like to get some more info on building my own ebb and flow system any info anyone..... been up all night looking but cant find any real info

^^^^^thanks but i checked that one out already..... im looking for this one http://www.hydroponics.net/images/MultiFlow-med.jpg

does anyone have anymore details

brooklyn87 said:

Click to expand...

This style of flood system is horrendously complicated compared to flood systems which have a tray above a tank of nutes. This arrangement is good if you have limited vertical height available, but smart growers grow short plants anyway.


image: SimplyHydro

Tray based systems have no float valves or fancy plumbing, just a pump which floods the tray to overflow and which allows drainback from the tray to the tank when the pump shuts off. If anything leaks in a tray-based system, it'll most likely end up in the tank rather than on the floor.

you can also make your trays out of wood to save money and use liners to waterproof them... more environmentally friendly

Sorry, but a proper injection-moulded plastic flood tray is MUCH better than any DIY tray. I've made trays before just as you describe. Even using 240 micron plastic as a liner, pinholes soon develop and the wood frame is soon constantly wet, causing mould and rot. A moulded tray has channels that allow water to drain away from the pots much better than a flat bottomed DIY tray.

Environmentally friendly! Are you considering for a nanosecond any of the megatons of CO2 created by the electricity generating plants that run indoor dope growers' lights? Indoor growers are among the biggest environmental vandals around!

The environmental impact of a plywood tray (that you'll probably wind up rebuilding in a few mos once the liner leaks) vs a proper plastic tray that lasts 2-3 years is fully negligible.

If you make your own table, rather than use plastic, use epoxy and fiberglass. Fillet the edges with micro balloons and epoxy, and the saturate the fiberglass and lay down. Epoxy is water proof however it is very brittle alone. For instance a pot or hydroton might even crack it.

I have been looking at this system too. I have only 6ft in my room. Im tired of the soil mess and watering is a bitch with no irrigation system. The thing about this system is its way over priced to buy. If anyone can give a schematic on how the internal pumps/controls work that would be grand. Also where to find such pumps would be nice aswell.

just looking at the system i think you could run one pump to fill the secondary rez wich would have a float valve similar to a toilet incase of over flooding. This portion of the flood cycle should be on a timer. So by the time the float valve shuts off the water level of the whole garden has reached a flooded stage the same height as the shut off in the secondary rez as water always seeks its own level. This is starting to make sense to me wow. Ok so as for draining the garden you would then have another pump inside the secondary rez to pump the solution back into the main rez on a seperate timer which would also drain the garden until secondary rez is empty. Im no expert on this by any means but am i on the right track here. If this is how it works you could easily build this system with all new parts for maybe $200 or less. 55 gallon drums are easy to get and so are 5 gallon buckets.

that system is greentrees multiflow system, it uses 5gallon buckets and a solid unit, look into CAP's ebb and grow, it uses 2 gallons buckets for much less hydroton to clean and grow large plants anyway. you can pick it up from Plantlighting.com for $399, everyone else has it for close to $600, plus the performance of flood and drain in buckets vs. a tray is much better, the drainage causes more o2 into the rootzone, the growth on these bucket systems is very close to the amazing growth rates of aeroponics

Here are some great plans.

http://www.bghydro.com/bgh/static/articles/0806_byos.asp

Nice dude great plan you think, i really appreciate to you about this.this is the way to expose your idea. nice to have this post.