No problem with leaks/Your next hydroponic system

by Jerry Morse
(Vicksburg, MS - USA)

In the article I was reading, you said to check out your next hydroponic system in which leaks were not a concern. Do you have this system on your web?
I tried doing strawberries in a home made hydroponic system last winter and killed all of them, plus It is a real hassle if I have an overflow or a leak in my work shop.
Thanks,
Jerry Morse

Answer: Jerry- the page you are referring to, "My Next Hydroponic System", I haven't finished writing yet.... however, I can give you a sneak peak of what the page is about. My next system is a modification on My Most Successful Homemade Hydroponic System. Over time, I have been able to work out most of the problems with my homemade systems. This last attempt was the most successful and problem free garden I have ever had. In fact, the only problem I had with the system was a few small leaks. By the time my plants were half way through the flowering/fruiting period, their root systems had gotten so thick that the water was having a hard time flowing through the system as fast as it was being pumped into the system. At some point the problem became critical and was causing a small amount of water to back up and spill out of a few of the plant holes.

As I described on that page, my solution was to install a "T" at the water pump, with one side recirculating inside the nutrient reservoir and the other side pumping into the hydro system. This effectively cut the rate of water flow in half, but the change had no negative effects on the plants. For my next homemade hydroponic system, I decided to give the plants a little more room for their roots to grow out. I am going to accomplish this by using 6 inch PVC pipe instead of 4 inch PVC pipe. This would stop the leaking problem described above.

I am also considering another change to the design....getting rid of the nutrient reservoir altogether. I believe by using 6 inch PVC pipe that the hydroponic system itself will hold enough nutrient solution to keep all of the plants happy (I usually aim to provide 3/4 to 1 gallon of nutrient solution per plant). The only problem with this idea is the convenience of nutrient solution changes.

Having an external nutrient reservoir separate from the hydroponic system is convenient when it comes to nutrient changes for two reasons..... One- it is easy to just pick up and dump (or swap out with another reservoir filled with plain water). Two- it is nice to be able to test the new nutrient solution with a TDS meter and a Ph meter before actually sending it through the system to all of the plants....I can foresee potential problems with trying to mix up fresh nutrient solution right in the 6 inch PVC pipes where the roots are growing- lots of potential for damaging the roots.

One final idea comes from yet another page I will be writing in the near future....a revolution in aeroponics as far as I am concerned. If you read my pages on aeroponics, you will recall how aeroponic systems require a high pressure pump and therefore extra attention. A system I saw recently, though, has solved that problem by using EZ Clone sprayers. The system used a 396 GPH low pressure pump to feed a 1/2 inch PVC line. Using an 11/64 inch drill bit, Holes were made in the 1/2 inch line wherever a spray head was required. The spray heads simply screwed into the 1/2 inch PVC line with the help of some pliers. The 1/2 inch PVC line ran inside the larger PVC pipe that held the plants, and a spray head was placed in between each plant site in the system. With a setup like this, you will never have an "overflow", because the pipes in the system do not actually hold any standing water... they merely drain the water coming from the spray heads.

Ever since seeing this new design, I have been tempted to build a system using the EZ Clone spray heads inside 6 inch PVC pipe, draining into a separate external nutrient reservoir. The system would have all of the benefits that I like, plus would solve the little problems I still had with my old design. If you decide to go this route, be sure to read my advice on using a manifold, as it would apply in this case. I sure hope this helps!