Hydroponics

>>1112062

Can't you just put a bunch of spotlights on the ceiling to light the wall?

>>1112078
That's what I was talking about with my second plan. But, once the plants start growing out, I worry that the plants on the higher levels will block the plants at the lower levels.

There's also the issue that, if you move the grow lamps too far away, the amount of energy they impart to the plant may not be enough for it to actually grow. Most grow lamps recommend being ~2-4 feet from the plant.

damn druggies

>>1112078

Maybe I should say a ton instead of a bunch, you'll need about a kW of LED lighting.

>>1112080

A spotlight with a lens can have a much tighter beam than a lamp with only a reflector to concentrate the light. Most grow lamps just have a reflector.

>>1112081
I'm mostly interested in growing some herbs, lettuce, and peppers desu.

Weed is for degenerates.

>>1112082
A kW sounds about right. I plan on buying 3 or 4 ~300W lamps if I'm gonna hang lights from the ceiling.

>>1112062
fyi these threads are a thing: >>>/out/912838

>>1112089
Oh, thanks. I'll try asking them for advice, too. I didn't even think to check /out/.

>>1112087
the devils lettuce no doubt

These are the answer to your problem:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/291884696750

Worked for a hydroponic store that grew microgreens and these are how you build compact low energy grow spaces.

>>1112235
I'm down for LEDs, but again the problem is hanging the lights. I don't have the space for a horizontal stacked NFT rack or similar, and I can't hang large vertical lights in front of the rack.

>>1112106
>the devils lettuce
ok I lol'd

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>>1112989
Have the Reflector shaped to look like little suns or something . Have them move around on tracks.

Build the hydro system to slowly rotate and have the lights be on the wall.


Maybe build a skinny one of these.

>>1112989
No no no man. Don't hang the led lights. So I'm positive these are just the strips, which have an adhesive on the back and some wax paper. At the shop I worked at we bought these in bulk. It's a diy led system. The leds come on an adhesive strip and you stick them on a white wooden bar, then stick that in a clear tube with corks at the end. That's one led light. Now with some of our space limited systems, we hooked the led strips straight to some plastic on the system and reinforced it with some extra adhesive. Now the issue that you will have is that led strips give off some heat but the power consumption on them is so low that temperatures will only increase by a couple degrees and shouldn't be too much. So if you're okay with a little heat sink issue you can just stick these on top of the next Shelf and stack them

>>1113063
By the way all the lights will be daisy-chained to each other and they can easily be powered by a CCTV amp or some other small electronic amp

>>1113063
>you can just stick these on top of the next Shelf and stack them
I'm not building a shelved system.

>>1113063

Most LED strips are relatively low efficiency, you don't want to burn an extra kW because of low efficiency lighting.

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>>1113066

The system in the OP doesn't make a whole lot of sense though. A simple flat wall makes better use of the space and is easier to light.

>>1113079
A flat system against the wall is what I'm building. The picture in the OP was just some random shit I found on google.

>>1113080
To expand, the current plan is a few vertical 1.5-inch PVC pipes using wye tees as planting sites, with planting sites approx 8 inches apart.

I can probably fit about 7 or 8 of these on the wall, all emptying into a return pipe, which will dump back into the reservoir.

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>>1113083

That doesn't make sense to me, with vertical pipes having a steady flow while keeping the pipes filled is awkward.

You can simply have a high reservoir connected to the pipes at the bottom, pumping from the reservoir to the top of the pipes. If you do that though, when water evaporates and the level in the reservoir drops, the level in the pipes drops.

If you use horizontal pipes in zigzag the level in the reservoir can drop without causing problems.

>>1113096
Why would you need to have the pipes filled with water? That doesn't make any sense.

>>1113103

Nothing will get into the T sections, it will just drop straight down the pipe.

>>1113107
The roots will hang into the pipe. The whole system would need to be titled a few degrees to get the water to flow down the front face of the pipe, but that's trivial.

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I ran one for a few months. I took it apart because it only worked partially. I had no way to control the nutrients and fungi in the water and so my lettuce looked like this instead of like real lettuce. I had a pump that ran for 2 or 3 minutes every 15 minutes, which was enough to keep the perlite wet even when it was really hot.

Try the Kratky method, OP. You'll need no pump and it works. Depending on where you live you can find ready-made nutrient solution and it will probably be easier. Sun is also better than any amount of artifficial lighting.

>>1113066
Think with your noggin man. It might as well be a shelved unit with how you want it. A nft system on a wall stacked vertically. Led on the underside of every unit to provide light for the unit below

>>1113073
Why not? Led lighting is cheap. When I run my grow ops I can go overkill on leds and never have to worry about using too much. Burn the extra kilowatt and splurge because your saving tons anyways with leds. Now if you had hps or mh lighting it'd be a different story considering those lights can burn thousands of kilowatts and create heat issues.


If the system is too complex for you to design, consider changing it man. There's alot of really neat things you can do to conserve space man and you don't want to get cramped up designing a system that you cant build or will give you constant problems. I tell people this rule all the time: design it simple because 100 things will go wrong. And trust me they will when you least want it to. To me that's the fun part, but some people don't like running a sump pump at 1AM because of a overflow in a system or dealing with wiring their own lighting.

>>1113124
You think with your noggin, fag. Vertical systems are pretty common. A lot of commercial places are even starting to use them. Stacked NFT systems are kind of a waste of space compared to the efficiencies you can get out of a truly vertical system. Go look that shit up.

OP, it sounds like what you're trying to build should work fine. If you're only growing lettuce and shit, they don't even need all that much light. Some spotlights hung from the ceiling should be fine.

>>1113125
He's talking about LED strips, not LEDs in general.

>Burn the extra kilowatt and splurge because your saving tons anyways with leds
I'd much rather spend extra on lights that aren't shit than spend extra money every month pretending that I saved money.

>If the system is too complex for you to design
Asking for help with a design doesn't mean a design is too complex. That's a retarded line of reasoning.

>>1113113
This happens on a flow system. The first plants absorb more nutrient than the later plants and there isn't an even distribution of nutrients. One way to fight this would be to use clones only. Cloning the lettuce would make sure they are mostly similar by nature and slightly different because of nurture.

Also just a fun fact: artificial light can top sunlight if used correctly. If I had two hps lights in a room, their light waves cross at a point and create a sweet spot where the light spectrum widens. This spot with intense light can pull off some plants that just don't grow large in size naturally. Also full spectrum leds provide spectrums the sunlight can't provide because of the atmosphere and ozone.

>>1113113
>>1113131
This is one of the benefits of actual vertical hydro systems. Each growing tower gets its own water/nutrient feed. The flow is actually a shorter path than in a system like >>1113113 or >>1113096. Nutrients get much more evenly distributed instead of earlier plants leeching all the nutrients away, which means healthier plants for less nutrient.

>>1113131
>Also just a fun fact: artificial light can top sunlight if used correctly

It can, but sun costs 0 dollars. It's not really worth using artificial lighting unless you're growing some very valuable crops.

>>1112062
>Obviously, lighting the plants from the side isn't optimal, and I'm not confident they'd get the light they need
phototropism

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tfw i designed an automated aeroponics habitat with co2 enrichment and 24+ channels of controllable PAR horticultural LEDs.

ive been working 2 years saving pennies and perfecting my circuits and plumbing and will finally be able to hit execute on my BoM next month.

I've recently added 3 poles to adjust the height of the top LED array.

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>>1113871
360 LEDs
>60 Red 3w
>60 Deep Red 3w
>60 Far Red 3w
>60 Blue 1w
>60 Royal Blue 1w
>60 Full Spectrum 1w

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here's my set up, using a fill drain cycle with 1 bin and 1 sump. i have t12 grow light fixtures in the room with it, and it's been chugging along. The strawberries, goji berry bush, and assorted herbs are doing really well whereas from the cold i've had some minor failures recently. I intend to replant garlic to see how it re-situates in this system.

the next development I'm going to attempt is much like >>1113096 trying to grow spinach, the planter next to the system you'll see is me trying to grow from seedling spinach, but to little success. I realize this of course is from user error, and it's just a little too cold for them to actually sprout.

my recommendations for OP is to get T8 light fixtures to have inbetween the grow towers such that you have rows of towers, and the lights hung inbetween. you could alternatively go with the >>1112235 idea, and just have strips hung down from the same racks your towers are hung from, just again inbetween the towers. Maybe like a wall of lights tapped to a wood wall inbetween them? you can have it pretty close to the towers, thus not worrying as much about the space problem.

Any suggestions for my garden? I just started last month, and have encountered plenty of problems.

Also, I hope no one here uses pH up or down, as regular vinegar and baking soda do a fine job of adjusting pH when put in the sump tank.

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>>1114563
that picture sucked, here's a better one that actually shows the small amount of progress i have on the goji bush.

also, the plant to the side is a banana tree that doesn't like to be but so wet, i intend to have it in a deep water culture project down the road but does anyone have any experience in raising them?

>>1114567
Do you have parkinsons?

>>1112062
Tbh i've had much better experience with aeroponics as opposed to hydro.
Firstly the yield can be quite a bit higher, and the weight of the entire set up is less, with less water to change etc.
you should consider it op.
also as far as lighting goes, led panels is were its at, simply hang the panels, many of them have intergrated cooling and timers and such, its far better than the mess otherwise.
Also the chinese led grow lights are often half or a third of their rated output, overheat and aren't electrically safe.

>>1113871
Thats a seriously nice setup desu.
That sort of thing could be made into a product
> le croud funding meme.

I've build aero systems inside fish tanks before with decent results, athough its a pita.

Another setup i did was outdoor aeroponics in which i did not recycle the water, with the run off being fed to an inground veggie garden with decent results.
anyways your thingy looks nice although i doubt that there is enough room for the root, that design defs couldn't be used for root vegtables or the kush (which if im to be honest, is something that should be accomidated for if you ever made that into a product, becuase then you'd get lots of sales :3 )

also co2 sensors are expensive, like really expensive, how are you planning on generating co2? yeast, combustion of hydrocarbons?
It might be worth considering having a seperate chamber which is used for composting to generate co2 and leave usful mulch, which would be usful for hybrid aeroponics.

>>1113875
hmm, maybe consider adding a few uv led's for sterilisation mould is a huge problem in a lot of setups, you can't always rely on <50% humidity outside.
I've had decent luck with ozone but its not the safest stuff

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Oh man am i late for this thread, Listen here OP, i've grown tomatoes peppers, lettuce and much more hydroponically for a few years now and have experimented enough that i know what works and what doesn't.

You said you're doing a wall grow and you're mainly sticking to leafy greens, thats good, because you can forget growing anything that fruits in an NFT/vertical grow, you just dont have the room for it, tomatoes/peppers take up too much space, both vertically and via root growth, a tomato plant will clog up an NFT system before you have a single tomato to eat and would get so tall that it would shade everything else.

another plus of only doing leaf greens is that the light requirement doesnt have to be huge, LEDs would be the way to go here, but i'm not sure about those LED strips that one anon suggested, they just dont look strong enough.

I would suggest you go for something like pic related (not mine) and mount a single e27 type spot light housing on the ceiling a couple of feet away from the wall and direct the light at an angle on the plants,

Now you're thinking why a single e27 housing bulb? surely a single bulb cant produce enough light..

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and you'd be right, a single bulb cant, but you would still only need a single spot housing, you'll need to get one of these splitters:
https://www.amazon.com/uxcell%C2%AE-Socket-Splitter-Adapter-Building/dp/B01EX2JZME/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

and to it you would screw in seven 15w/1500 lumen LED bulbs, its important that you find the ones that are no less then 1500 lumens per bulb, should be 14.5/15w.

The last step is removing the plastic dome that is glued onto the LED bulbs, all they do is diffuse the light, and you want it directional, this is by far the cheapest solution to indoor growing, i'm using it myself.

>>1114674
>>1114678
Don't worry, I've been reading everything that gets posted. This is some good shit, thanks.

I design is pretty similar to that picture, except with pipes and wye tees instead of gutters because that shit is messy as fuck and honestly forming the metal sounds like a gigantic pain in the dickhole (plus, the fact that some of the metal gets pushed into the tube could direct water flow away from the plants)

I'll definitely consider building a housing with a splitter like that. Sounds like just want I'm looking for.

>>1114678
>>1115103
Oh, also, you're recommending regular white LED bulbs? Not grow lights? Wouldn't it be more energy efficient to use grow lights?

>>1115105
Well "grow lights" is such a big catch all term, an HPS/MH bulb setup is not very efficient, generate a lot of heat, and at the distance you'll be mounting them a lot of light is gonna run off to the sides even with a reflector.

a good LED grow light should have lenses that would make the light directional so even at a distance you would still have a somewhat tight beam.

these lights are efficient and stay cool but they're not cheap and are usually just a square block so hanging it from the ceiling at an angle wont be easy.

i suggested the LED bulbs since its the cheapest option and its easy to mount, you really dont need to care all that much about light spectrum for lettuce and herbs, bluer light is suppose to be good for leaf growth so buying "daylight" bulbs is what you would want, but honestly even the warm white ones work just fine..

Once you remove the dome form these bulbs you're left with the same tech that LED grow lights use, just less directional since you have no lens to focus it further.

choosing what to go with really depends on how far you'll be mounting the light from the plants, unfocused LED lose their appeal after a certain distance.

>>1114678

If you want a spotlight you need lenses, otherwise it's pretty much 180. I see there's 54W PAR grow lamps from the chinks with lenses for around 20 bucks, which seems a great deal if they're not absolute trash.

They don't mention the spread of the lenses, but it's going to be much tighter than raw LEDs (also slightly less light over all).

>>1115229
>from the chinks
>if they're not absolute trash

anyways i found these babies:

philips e27 17w 1250 lumen 25 degree beam bulb:
bulbs.com/product/17PAR38-F25-3000-DIM-AF-SO

philips e27 32w 2800 lumen 25 degree beam bulb:
bulbs.com/product/32PAR38-LED-830-F25-ND-120V

same bulb but with 15 degree beam:
bulbs.com/product/32PAR38-LED-830-S15-ND-120V

any one of these would probably work really well as spot lights from the ceiling thanks to the tight beam

>>1115241

The Philips bulb will have better electronics and LED chips, but the chink bulb has a better spectrum.

Would be interesting to just get a 34W chink PAR grow lamps and a 32W philips one and just grow two plants with them.

>>1115254
But does the spectrum really matter in OP's case? all hes doing is herbs and lettuce, technically the bluer the light the better for him, and that Phillips 17w bulb also comes in 4000k i believe.