NEW NFT (nutrient film technique) SOG SETUP

sherriberry

New Member
Alright, sorry for so many pics at once, i was drawing some stuff and got carried away.
These are TOP views of areo chamber shapes. I would make the curved walls out of pvc sheets which come in 4x8 sheets, and can be cut easily.
These chambers would be about 4 or 5 ft tall, and have an area under them and have a rigid stand at the base and up on top to keep them in shape.
Under the chambers, there would be a shower bladder as sold at lowes, which comes in any length you want, and its prob 4 feet wide. This bladder would be sandwiched and secured between the bottom frame and the pvc walls, so all water running down would hit the bladder.
The bladder will have a bulkhead drain fitting, and gravity drain to a main pipe that comes around under each chamber, and ends at the res.

In one of the pictures, the orange boxes are the res's, and the orange arrows signify the flow of the drain pipe.

The drain pipe would be similar to what heath already has set up, just no plants growing out of it

As far as securing the platns to the vertical walls, i have a solution, but i dont have a way to picture it,a nd describing it wouldnt make much sense until i can picture it, but it involves using a pvc pipe, and dilling a hole in the wall, and using a 45deg pipe bend, and putting the netpot in the pipe, and having the other end of the pipe go through the wall.

Securing it is the tricky part, but ive got it figured out i think

Inside the chambers, there will be hp aero misters.

I drew up a bunch of configureations, but i like the ones at the bottom the best.

The red squares at the bottom represent additional floor sitting rubbermaids, which would have plants growing up from those as well, so you have walls and floor covered.

green represents faces of the chamber that have plants frowing from them.

to enter some of the grow rooms, if a single chamber was on wheels, it could be clocked, or rotated, thus allowing a person to enter the grow circle.

im still trying to figure out if i want to build a fram that has a curve to it, and what i would make it out of.

The curve actually helps the pvc sheet stay rigid vertically, kind of like tape measure tape does.

hope this helps you guys follow what im trying to do.











This one is probably my favorite tho, as far as being doable, and cheap, and still function as I want it to.

I forgot to put tubs on the floor too, but you get the idea.

I figure each one of these chambers would be about 4 ft long, and almost 2 ft wide.

so figure it will fit in a 15x8 ft area no problem... and chambers could be made shorter for a different sized area.

i put 2 orange res's in this one... but youd really only need one res,

but 2 would come in handy if you had 2 stages of plants, so you get kind of a perpetual harvest.

Tubs on the floor could also hold earlier clones that still need root development before being able to fully utilize the aero chambers setup

 

sherriberry

New Member

if you had the space and had the money, this setup would probably out yeild just about anything else using only 6 lights.

so you figure heath is getting 42oz off a 600 watt light in his vertical tube grow with 4 rows of plants

here we have 6 of those, so, 3600 watts...

and you figure his chamber isnt hp aero, so you are up to over 3 lbs per light, so at least 18 lbs if you did this setup.

as far as the sprayers in the middle chambers go, you can run the feed lines up on the ceiling outside the grow room and then have them drop down into the chambers vertically, and be attached to sprayer T's, suspended in mid air in between oposing walls.

id do an air tight panda wrap room around all this stuff, and then have co2 and a portable ac, and just keep the air in the grow room, and the portible ac dehumidifies it all, and then you dont have to vent and worry about smell, or worry about c02 escaping.

You figure 18+lbs, in a 14x20 ft room...

and then figure we could add another row of plant sites instead of just the 4 or however many heath uses.

If you have a panda ceiling, then the plant will grow across the roof over the light, which is fine.

so extra plant sites, plus if you put tubs on the ground around the rooms to hold even more plants...

your talking prob 24lbs or more...

off 6 600w bulbs.... every 8 weeks.

This would have to be the most efficient way to grow if electricity is an issue.


edit: i put the 2 res's in the corners in the wrong spot, youd want to put them up by the door probably so you could put this in a smaller room, and not need a walk way all the way around the back to get to the res's
 

squarepush3r

Well-Known Member
well, you setup looks good, I didn't spend a whole lot of time following all of the diagrams. But, the vertical looks good with aero.


Simplicity is a good factor to have, I'm thinking a complicated multi-room aero vertical system may be efficient, but also maybe very prone to high maintenance or design time or prone to error. I would tend to aim for something more simple. Look, in Heaths case, he had the spiraling tube which help a water flow of about an inch in it. If his pump were to break, he would haev 1-2 days to come find it and fix it, no problem. An aero system clog or failure, you lose crops in a few hours. NFT may be a bit better than that, but true aero suspended roots are pretty prone to failure.


About my RDWC, daisy chaining idea, this is what I am planning to do for my next operation. You basically daisy chain DWC buckets, all connected with hose (except for there is no link between first and last bucket). Make your rez seperate, and make your rez have the water from the final bucket flow into it, and the pump from the rez into your first bucket.

All you need is 1 pump and the water flows just by circulation. The 2 issues are, to have an overflow out in case the water clogs, and to use big connector tubes (I think 2" or more). I'll try to make a picture :)

Its certainly not vertical, although I was thinking of making it partially aero, with sprayers to the roots of each pot/net pot, the have the water beneath. So, aero/dwc hybrid (not vertical). Vertical seems to require the need of high plant #, which I would avoid if possible
 

sherriberry

New Member
All you need is 1 pump and the water flows just by circulation. The 2 issues are, to have an overflow out in case the water clogs, and to use big connector tubes (I think 2" or more). I'll try to make a picture :)

i thought of this, but...

consider if a line gets clogged.... EVERYTHING gets F'd up

your first tub might flood, all tubs after that go dry, etc.

by splitting the flow and having it go both ways, you half your losses if things go wrong... AND your pump cant run dry because the water will divert to the other direction due to backpressure and gravity of the tub that would get clogged.... so all the water would start going only one way, and then go back to the middle tub.

So hypothetically,

if you had 5 tubs in a row, and the pump in the middle

1 2 3 4 5

so the pump is in tub 3, and it spits to 1 and 5

if a clog happens in 1, you only harm plants in tub 2.

if a clog happens in 5, you only harm plants in tub 4.

If a hose clogs in 2 or 4, nothing gets hurt.

Thats why i do it the way i do. Hope that makes sense
 

squarepush3r

Well-Known Member
i thought of this, but...

consider if a line gets clogged.... EVERYTHING gets F'd up

your first tub might flood, all tubs after that go dry, etc.

by splitting the flow and having it go both ways, you half your losses if things go wrong... AND your pump cant run dry because the water will divert to the other direction due to backpressure and gravity of the tub that would get clogged.... so all the water would start going only one way, and then go back to the middle tub.

So hypothetically,

if you had 5 tubs in a row, and the pump in the middle

1 2 3 4 5

so the pump is in tub 3, and it spits to 1 and 5

if a clog happens in 1, you only harm plants in tub 2.

if a clog happens in 5, you only harm plants in tub 4.

If a hose clogs in 2 or 4, nothing gets hurt.

Thats why i do it the way i do. Hope that makes sense
check this out for vertical aeroponic

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=151662


regarding the clog, heres how I deal with that. On the first tub input, you have an overflow connection, back or original reservoir preferable. If there is a clog, the water will raise up and go through the overflow tube before anything floods, etc..

It is a conern, on another grow, someone was using this system with 1 1/2" tubes, and the roots clogged em. He said he had like 5 0gallons of water on his floor, and reallllly messed up bad.


This system is basically a slightly upgarded DWC, all the tubs share a watter supply (plus for nurients and ph), and the added circulation helps with aeration. I'd expect it to operate on par with DWC, but its more expandable/better for larger scale.
 

sherriberry

New Member
yeah, to each their own i guess...

i found an awesome deal at a local shop that has 1" bulkhead fittings with the hose adapter built on, all in one piece, and they are 2 bucks.

so, i run 2 of those side by side, so if one clogs, im still safe.

again, if both do clog in mine tho, its fine because i have the water spliting and going both ways coming out of the pump straight to a T, and putting the pump in the middle tub.

i get plenty of flow because i use a 1600gph pump, so its 800gph each way.

If i wanted, i could put 2 pumps in there, and get the full 1600gph coming back each way, but the T is the key to solving ALL flodding problems... gravity makes it impossible for it to flood at that point bc water will always take path of least resistance.

Anyway, that vertical grow makes me feel like a hero farmer :)

heaths is way better if you havent checked it out

"heath vertical tube" will get you there in the search on this forum.

What i plan to do should make heaths look silly if all goes well.
 

sherriberry

New Member
part of the lid is a diagonal flap, and in this flap you could center one plant site, or have 2, one on each side of the flap.

i would probably do 2.

Then the flat top of the lid is the same size as the base of another chmaber... here i would cut nearly the entire bottom out, and the almost the entire top of the lid off... so the chambers would be open from one to another.

I already looked to see how the water would fall down, and if there would be any drips... there wont be, everything goes downhill back into the bucket, the things are perfect for our task.

some waterproof sealing tap would add comfort to the whole thing to keep any light out to keep algea bloom from occuring.

i would configure these in a setup similar to this pic, stacked 4 or 5 high...

 

sherriberry

New Member
i got another simple eureaka a minute ago...

not a huge thing, but new none the less...

k, so back to the vertical stackable tubs i linked above...

instead of sticking them on a stand so that they will gravity feed drain back to the res... thats wasted area...

so instead, it just dawned on me to use both of my techniques in one...

so if there are 5 levels of tubs lets say...

the top 4 levels are strictly aero.

The bottom layer of tubs, you connect them all from side to side with (2x) 1" hose bulkhead fittings, and just link them all together in a circle. You put a main res behind one of them.

you keep the water circulating, and you check the water at the main res and make sure its to spec on ph, etc.

so, the botoom layer ot tubs would have a coupel inches of dwc in them, and the top portion aero.

Cool thing is... this gives a real time, same nute, same strain comparison to aero vs dwc, so we can figure this out once and for all :)

if the dwc even comes close to doing as well as the aero does, trust me...

i will be creating a waterfalling vertical dwc bucket system... probably using the same buckets :)
 

sherriberry

New Member
the reason why a person has to have the dwc is to absorb the leftover mist that drips down from the top tubs... because if you dont, you are gonna have some shitty water laying in your bottom tubs... unless you put them up on stands and put drains on them... but then you just lost plant growing area

we are going to be plant growing gods before this is all said and done :)
 

NewGrowth

Well-Known Member
Hey sherri, I posted this on the other thread because I thought it was yours . . . sorry but here yah go again:
Hey sherri, good to see you have a thread on all these ideas. I've built my own custom vertical aero system myself. If you want to check it out feel free I've got pictures here . . .https://www.rollitup.org/grow-journals/187629-origami-hijack-plus-six-15.html#post3698929

If you are looking for a cycle timer to run your sprayers I use the CAP brand ART-DNe (google that and tons will come up) adjustable cycle timer they go for about $80 and are fully adjustable both on and off time as well as a photocell. If you want to go cheaper you could get one of their non-adjustable timers as well.

Good luck sherri, keep us updated . . . :peace:
 

sherriberry

New Member
i use the cap's now.

true hp aero uses so much pressure that when injected into a chamber, you only need to spray for literally 1 second.

this mist created kind of floats around like a fog, and lands on roots, and absorbed instantly.

it is sprayed every min or 2

it can only be done with high pressure

this takes a special timer obviously
 

repvip

Well-Known Member
The Cap timers are expensive, and somewhat low amperage rating. If you want to run more amperage without worrying about burning up your timer--you guess it--a relay works here too. It trips power from another source (another outlet) so pretty simple but a great idea..

The plans and idea came up in stinkbuds harvest a pound every 3 week thread. But good luck finding them :) It's not difficult at all. I wasn't sure at first, but now I use relays all the time. I just got one and played withit to figure out how it worked...

It's a 120v coil which connects a 120v circuit.. you can get 12v coils for 120v circuits and all sorts of things--you probably know more about them than I do at this point ;)
 
Top