Very Easy Homemade Aeroponics System
My biggest problem with homemade aeroponics systems, as you probably already know by now, has always been the clogging spray emitters. Somebody really had their thinking caps on when they came up with this design here. All you need is a 5 gallon bucket, an aquarium water pump, and some old garden hose or tubing.
The pump is submersed in a few inches of nutrient solution. The tubing (or hose) has several 1/16 inch holes drilled into it. The tubing is positioned to coil around the container from bottom to top, and is plugged at the end. You can see from the photo how the roots will be getting good coverage with the nutrient solution. A 200 gph aquarium pump works well for this.
The lid of the bucket will usually be cut to accomodate a 3 or 4 inch netted pot, either filled with expanded clay pellets or containing a rockwool block. Plants may need to be hand watered until the roots begin to hang. The biggest disadvantage to this homemade aeroponics system is the small nutrient reservoir. The smaller the reservoir, the more quickly the solution will become unhealthy for the plants.
To learn more about maintaining the nutrients in ANY hydroponic gardening system, read these hydroponic feeding tips, or get started on the right path with my organic hydroponics feeding tips, which happen to be one of the easiest feeding plans ever.
Multi-Pod Aeroponic Design
With a little modification, the design above can fashioned into a larger homemade aeroponics system. This design uses a much larger reservoir, which will help you avoid plant nutrition problems. Each container may have its own aquarium pump in the reservoir, or a more powerful pump may be used to supply all four containers with nutrient solution.
A 1/3 horse power pump moving about 2200 gph at a pressure of 10 psi would be a good choice for this setup. As you can see from the picture, small leaks in the plumbing would not be a concern with this design.
Check out other homemade hydroponics systems here
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