Howdy peeps!

Back when I first became aware of aeroponics (watching educational television, of course) I was intrigued. The big challenge to getting the best growth rate and production in any gardening is often making oxygen available to the roots to metabolize nutrients. A system where the roots are suspended in oxygen rich air while being occasionally hit with droplets of nutrient solution seemed to be the ultimate performance system. The disappointment was when I priced out some ready built systems and found them to be outrageously expensive (e.g. aeroflow). Not to be denied we did some experimenting and built some prototype small systems and eventually the bigger system we finished last weekend. Here's how we did it:
First a trip to the local building store for a dozen plastic 5 gallon buckets, then to the irrigation section for about 40' of 1/2" black poly tubing, 34 T-barbs and 2 straight barb connectors to fit the poly, and 24 of the 180 degree plastic micro sprayers (actually they are sold in 10 packs for about $6).


Then a plastic storage tub, we like the black ones with the yellow lids that are about 20 gallon capacity, they're incredibley versatile for building cloners etc. but in this case for a nute reservior.


And last to the tool section and buy a bit/tap combination in 10/32 size.


Then to the hydro store for a submersible water pump. If you are going to build one with 10-12 stations like this one I would recommend the 500 gph size. It's about $30 and has a sponge prefilter. It's not a matter of the flow rate because even with 24 spray heads you're only going to be running about 10 gph, but the bigger pump provides better pressure for a better spray pattern. (Lesson one about aero: clogged spray heads are bad so do everything you can to keep particles out of your system. I can't emphasize enough, squeaky clean. Lesson two: organic nutrients are not well suited to aero but your milage may vary) and two dozen 3" plastic net baskets and neoprene inserts.


Preparing the buckets is pretty cut and dried. Use a 3" hole saw to cut the hole in the lids for baskets. Then drill two 1/2" holes in the bucket, one about 1 1/2" from the bottom, the other about 6" down from the top. The spray heads angle the pattern up about 45 degrees so positioning them down a bit directs the spray toward the lower part of the basket. You then take one of your t-barbs and force it into the lower hole in the bucket from the outside. The barbs should seal up nicely in the 1/2" hole but if you have any problems with leaks a bit of silicone sealer fixes that right up. When you get to the last bucket in the string, instead of a t-barb, you will insert a straight barb connector.



Next build a spray manifold for each bucket by cutting a 30" piece of the poly and fitting each end onto the opposite sides of a t-barb creating a loop



Drill two holes opposite each other on the top surface of the poly with the bit that came with the drill/tap set and use the tap to thread them. Poly is very soft so it takes no pressure at all to punch through it. Then thread a microsprayer into each of these holes and aim them toward the inside of your loop. Now force the remaining barb end through the upper hole in the bucket from the inside. Cut about 2" of the poly tubing and fit it on to the portion of the barb protruding through the upper hole on the outside of the bucket and insert a t-barb into the open end.


We built a bench out of 2x4 about 20" tall to place the buckets above the reservior because your drain is gravity powered. String together the top barbs with pieces of poly cut about 12-13" long, then do the same with the lower holes.


Last connect the pump to the line going to the upper holes, and a drain line from the lower set of holes to the reservior. You now have a recycling aeroponic unit ready for nutes and plants.

Aeroponics is like a high performance car. much less forgiving of error and hardware problems. Check your spray heads daily for clogs and if necessary clean them out with a 5/32" drill bit. Stay on top of your PH and keep it between 5.8 and 6.0 to allow the plants to absorb nutrients properly. You'll also find that when the plants are growing and metabolizing at this rate your water loss through transpiration will be proportionally higher. In our unit with 12 ladies I have to add about 2 gallons a day of r/o water, especially when using co2.

Nice, very nice. Great job this will help out a lot of people. +rep

Hell yea very nice. This is exactly what I was thinking of doing . Very good job. +reps

Ops forgot to mention that this system needs to be on a 1 minute on-4 minutes off spray timer. If you try to do continuous spray, it will not drain fast enough.

Peace,
Bak Alchisk

very nice job there! +rep. if i had room to build something like that!

looks great awesome guide!! + rep!! those fuckin leaves are huge lol!

I love the big fan leaves of Indica dominant strains.

Thanks all.
I do however, have to confess that I had omitted a couple of lessons learned. If I were to do the same build again, whether 2 buckets or 12, I would use larger diameter tubing for the drain side. The 1 on 4 off timer on the pump is part of enhancing the aeroponics advantage in oxygen supply to the roots, but in this case was also necessary to prevent an undesirably high nute level in the buckets as they weren't draining as fast as the sprayers were filling. How far would you have to go for true aeroponics? how about 2 1/2 feet of vertical space for root dangle and droplet size down below 50 microns, which would mean a high pressure pump that would cost more than this entire build did. But I do intend to try that one of these days.


FMIF Ops

Howdy people,
Thought I would give you a progress report on the new build. When looking at the build pics and the update bear in mind the tallest of these was 14" on 1/30 and is now 30". I tried to get the angle about right for comparison but ran out of room to back away and cut a bit off the top. <shrugs> You wouldn't think it would be so hard 3 days later. <evil grin>

Peace
FMIF, Ops

Looks great, I see that you posted about your drain pipe size. I was gonna ask if the drain line needed to be bigger than the inline.(my assumption was that it needs to be bigger so that the buckets would drain faster, wasn't sure just what my thoughts were) I am a novice to hydro. Thanks so much for this tutorial.