Thursday, April 4, 2013

Hydroponic Design



This Guy Has the Right Idea


I really enjoy the simplicity and cleanliness of this design. The white pvc aligned in parallel to imitate traditional agricultural methods. Although vertical gardens are interesting to see as well, the problem that I see with those is that if using low wattage lighting like fluorescent or LED, the light will not penetrate the lower levels of the garden hence more light will be needed. Seeing that I would like everything to run off of solar power, this method is not an option to me as I need to be aware of my energy consumption. 

This exact system is almost exactly like my idea but my system will aquaponic. 

Instead of the system only having a reservoir on the one side, I would like the fish bed to be placed under the entire length of the plant bed. Allowing one side of the pvc to be used for water inlet and the other to drain. 

This would be an interesting Experiment


I wouldn't consider this a vertical garden because it does not have the tower structure as traditional vertical gardens. But seeing that it saves space by stack/staggering the pvc, it might be beneficial for indoor grows. It would not be hard to have the lights hinge upwards to move out of the way, which would fix the only problem I have with this design, plants are not accessible due to the diagonally  hanging light.


This is something I drew up yesterday, but I'm not sure how I like the aquarium up top because of weight and having the lights possibly heat the take more, which I don't know if that is good or bad. The reason that I wanted to design a tank like this is to somehow use gravity to feed the plants and just have one sump that would cycle the water black up to the top of the aquarium. I am going to design another system that has the aquarium on the bottom to allow the water to drain back into the tank via gravity and previous pressure in the lines. I'll draw one up and update this post later today.



***UPDATE***  4/02/13   4:25 PM
Here is the new design that I am going to start working with. Something very simple to use and easy to take care of. My goal is to eventually have an entire Aquaponic system running off of Solar Energy. Pumps/Lights.
***UPDATE***  4/02/13   4:25 PM









No comments:

Post a Comment