Budget DIY Hydroponics/NFT

Hello there and welcome to my DIY thread on RIU

Never got round to properly introduce myself, so quick recap.

Started growing back in 1998, when I as living at home, yes my parents were cool with that.

First strain grown both inside and outside was Skunk#1 from Positronics, smelled like catpiss mixed with oranges.

Thereafter I had several grows in my rented apartment and with friends at varies locations.
Was on OverGrow and CannabisWorld back in the day as MoS, but since OverGrow went down. I have not been posting much online since before October last year, so upwards and onwards.

Thought I would share some information and pictures on the type of hydroponics system/NFT I have been using since 2005. Back in 2000 I started out bying an expensive AeroFlo system from GHE. Had 35 plants under 2 x 600 watt HPS for 5 years.

After we bought our recent home, I wanted to grow again, but under smaller conditions, due to certain circumstances.

2 very important things to mention.

1) I love my girlfriend.
2) I like marijuana

In order to get those aspects to work in harmony, I have to restrain myself and my dear hobby.
So that being said, I can grow but under relative small conditions due to the above mentioned criteria.

Motto being KISS.

I typically grow in a small space, a homemade closet, pictures to follow. And since soil isnt my thing. I grow in hydroponics making my own version of the AeroFlo system from GHE, which is a NFT system(Nutrient Film Technique) with my own modifications.

The system is as mentioned a NFT system and not a DWC system hence the pipes are pretty shallow 4½ inches and the waterlevel is kept a 2-2½ inches from start to finish.

Reason for making it myself is because the AeroFlo pipes are too large, expensive and therefore dont fit in tight spaces eg. a closet.

AeroFlo system are basically a recirculation system, where water is pumped into the pipes and then runs down the pipe to the drain and back to the reservoir continuesly.

They have several small hoses at different points on the AeroFlo pipes where the water is pumped in.
I normally just use ½ inch gardenhose for watering with 1 or 2 T-fittings(16 mm) in each pipe, which gives a good waterflow by being bigger than those from the org. AeroFlo.

More easy to maintain hence its doesnt clog up due to the size of the hose ½ inch/16 mm fittings.
This time around I have decided to have 2 fittings in each pipe, hence my new waterpump is bigger at 265 us gallons pr. hour(1000 liters pr hour)

I let the pump run 24/7 during a grow, hence thats how I have always done it, some peple let the pump run for 15 minutes on and 45 minutes of every hour, to each their own.

Therefore been building my own AeroFlo copy like this one for years, because it is easy to customise for the space you have.

I have seen others here on RUI like Billy Liar https://www.rollitup.org/members/billy-liar.172441/ doing his own version of the AeroFlo, although his drainage and watersupply are a bit different than the AeroFlo system and my modified system.

One of the nice aspects of this system and the setup I use it in, is that the system, pipes and light setup) inside the closet has a total height of only 11 inches, which allowes me to grow plants 30 inches tall in a closet with a height of 43 inches, light setup 2 x 50 watt HPS and MH in veg for 14 days then 100 watt HPS + 150 watt HPS for about 14 days in veg and 30 days into flower before finishing them with 2 x 250 HPS with Cooltubes. Leaving 2 inches of clearance come late flower.

Here I will quickly show you how to make a small system for 10 plants in a closet which has the following dimensions;

Lenght = 50 inches/125 cm, a tad longer that the height of the closet, because of space between the plants in the end of the pipes towards the walls must be the same, here 7 inches/17,5 cm.

Width = 26 inches/65 cm, giving me 5,5 inches/14 cm of space between the 2 pipes and the backwall plus the doors.

Height = 43 inches/107,5 cm

All inside dimensions, closet is 3,2 inches/8 cm larger in L/W/H because I´ve made it with 1,6 inch/40 mm Rockwool insulation.

In order for it to be both insulated against any cold and be as soundproof as possible. Closet height with reservoir chamber is 58,5 inches/cm 146 cm.

Here you see the closet just before the system is installed;

The system is quite simple and easy to build and very importantly its cheap, plus the beauty of it is that when you have the basic components at hand, you can at anytime, make it bigger if your grow conditions change and you have more space, hence its only the pipes that need to be bought a new.

You will need the following components;

2 pipes/tubes(40inches/100cm), I have always used sewerpipe with a width of 4,3 inches/110mm, these come in standard lenghts here in Europe,

40 inch/100cm, 80 inch/200cm and up to 120 inch/300cm. Price for pipes here is 8,5 $/2 x 4,25 $, with 5 plants that gives you a distance between of about 6 inches/15 cm between them.

2 Plugs for the pipes = 7,5 $/2 x 3,75 $

4 End caps for the plugs = 15 $/4 x 3,75 $

4 Clamps for holding the pipes = 9 $/4 x 2,25 $

10 Netpots = 1,5 $ in the size of 2inches/5 cm, a standard size, often seen with aquarium plants. Teku is the name of these ones, cost about 15 cents a piece

2 Pipes for drainage = 6 $/2 x 3 $, width 2 inches/5 cm and 20 inches long/standard size), lenght with this setup is 16 inches/40 cm.

2 Rubber drain fittings/uniseals these can be bought from GHE as spareparts = 10 $/2 x 5 $

2 Rubber fittings/uniseals from the GHE Aquafarm = 4 $/2 x 2 $

1 Gardenhose ½ inch of good quality eg. Gardena, 3,3 feet/100 cm is enough for this setup = 3 $

Finally, the plastic fittings for the water connections.

3 x T piece in 16mm/GHE Aquafarm = 4,5 $/3 x 1,5 $

4 x 90° degree angles also in 16mm/GHE Aquafarm = 6 $/4 x 1,5 $

1 Reservoir, a basic bedroller with a lid, contains 7,5 us gallons/28 liters, Price 7 $

All in all for the system, before adding a pump of choice is then;

90 $/80 Euros

And finally a waterpump, here I have a 265 gph/1000 liter per hour, which delivers plenty of water, you can go bigger or a bit smaller, but in my experience the better waterflow you have, the better it is basically. Price for the pump was only 20 $. So all included, I have spent 110 $/88 Euro for this setup

Cost example compared with a bought system; (115 $ with pipes for 20 plants) to compare with an AeroFlo with 20 plants which is around 400 $/345 Euro.

As mentioned, if you at one point have more space eg. a room, all you need to do is bye some new pipes, more netpots and some more gardenhose, and you are cooking with fire.

Final note before more pictures are shown, because you build this system yourself you have total control on how many plants you want in the pipes, what distance the plants are to have between them.

Here I am greedy so to speak, hence the distance between the plants is only 6,5 inches, which is too little, but because I am growing from seed I want 10 plants to begin with and hopefully end up with 7-10 girls. Moving them around after sexing has taken place.

Here are all the components shown to clarify:

And here a picture of the tools you need, cup drill for the netpots(Teku 2 inch) must be 40mm, cup drill for drains must be 54mm and finally drill for water hose is 20mm.

More to follow tomorrow, busy beaver tonight, if you catch my drift

so is this more of a setup for a SoG grow? meaning smaller plants with one main cola?

or the bigger the diameter pipe, the bigger the plants can be?

Looks interesting, in for the ride!

Thanks!

Well, the plan is to FIM the plants several times, so I hopefully end up with many colas, not just one main cola pr plant.

The pipe size can give you very large plants, if you have the room(s) for it, they are also the perfect size for a small closet.

Where I am located you can get the same type of pipe in 160mm/6,4 inch diameter, but they are more difficult to work with, plus in this setup, the choosen size works much better. I would not go any smaller than the 110mm/4,4 inches

Now building it.

When having 5 plants which is equal to 10inches/25 cm with the netpots, there are then 6 spaces in total between them, start to finish. Therefore the holes are drilled as shown on the pictures, the space between the holes are 6,5 inches/16 cm. These are drilled first and on the pipes I use there is even guide line so to speak to follow, as you can see on the picture. Now that these 5 plantholes are drilled, we need to drill the hole for the drain, can the first time be a bit tricky, hence you want to insure that the drainhole is opposite to the plantholes, see picture. I admit that the holes could have been drilled better, ohh mary jane and not a pro builder...

Assembling the pipes is very simple, you just beat them together and you are done, no glue required hence the pipes have rubber gaskets in them.

Before installing the pipes in the closet, I mount the rubberfittings/uniseals for the drainpipes from experience with these 2 inch netpots I know that the drainpipe needs to go 2,5 inches/6,25 cm up in the pipe, leaving about ½ inch/1,25 cm of distance between the watertable and the bottom of the netpot. Hence you dont want the plants to be soaking directly in the water. The roots will always find the water.

So the reservoir in short also needs a bit of work, as you can see on the following picture you need to drill some holes in the lid plus a hole for adding water to the reservoir. Very often the type of bedrollers that I use, are made of clear plastic, therefore they need to be covered with plastics, in order to have a lightproof reservoir. In order to cover this reservoir, I have found double sticky tape, as used for carpets to be an inexpensive way of covering different things. Here I had a very stury plastic bag, that I used to cover the bedroller with. Here the lid is already black, so that hasnt been covered. This particular reservoir has been used before, therefore I cant show you the simple build process of it, but you get the picture from the picture.

Now the pipes and the reservoir are ready to be installed, which then looks like this.



After that, all you need to do is add water and nutrients to the reservoir and start up the pump.

Looks very simple man, good stuff... Let's see if i'm making sense of this.

So basically the big pipes aren't even connected together... They're fed from the top from those feed lines, and draining straight to the reservoir. Correct?

I noticed, because in all of my hydro systems i always try to go for 1 continuous loop or line because i like to avoid having stagnant spots.

Do you use sprayers or misters? or is the water just straight up pumped from the hoses?

What about the plants opposite to the drain pipes? Doesn't the water get stagnant?

What about your ambient temps? Hydro systems are very temperature sensitive

It is very simple, KISS motto.

Yes the pipes are not connected, only connected via the feedlines, plants are fed from the top and water runs straight into the reservoir.

There are no sprayers or misters, the water is as you mention pumped from the hoses into the 90° angels placed in each pipe.

By having 2 of these 90° degree angles in each pipe all the plants get a good flow of water around their roots and by having the pump running 24/7 it doesnt get stagnated, in my experience.

There is about 10 liters/2,5 us gallons of water in each pipe constantly and with a 1000 liter/265 gph pump, the water is there by being exchanged so to speak in each pipe at a rate of 8,33 liters pr minute/2,16 gallons pr minute.

The water with lights on is around 20-22° degrees Celcius, and around 20° when lights are off, I have a heater in the reservoir to make sure that the temp stays at 20° Celcius with lights out.

More to come later...

Have a Good weekend

Now lets grow some plants.

My rules in regard to strains.

Always mostly indica dominated strains, not that keen on sativas, autos and haze, although I recently gave Haze a chance with a Jack F1 from Spliff Seeds, conclusion simply not to my liking.

Sativas I dont have room for and I prefer couchlock over being ”high” and active. Never done autos, hence I dont know if the taste of the ruderalis is present in them.

This time around I was going to use the following selection.

2 x Sand Storm regular from Cannabiogen

2 x Critical Kush Fem from Barneys Farm

2 x Muse Fem from R-Kiem

2 x Super Skunk Fem from Bulk Seed Bank

2 x Dawg regular from Crocketts Family Farms

As part of the Ultimate Growing Competetion here on RIU, but sadly that didnt work out for me.

Seeds were put to germinate on the 15 of March and meanwhile I was building the new closet, they were transferred to the system, on the 21 of March. Sadly the first 2 Sand Storm didnt germinate, so I had to start some up again, which are now growing fine.1 of the 2 Dawgs also didnt germinate, that was then replaced with a fem Northern Lights x Cronic, a freebie from MidWeekSong.



Nutrients as always with me GHE, FloraMicro and FloraBloom and PH-down, no need for FloraGrow, like Lukas. Ph kept at 6,0 during the entire run, tap water is at 0,7 EC ending up at around 1,5-1,8 EC depending on the plants, tricky because different strains react differently to nutes.



Veg. time this time around will be about 4-5 weeks at 20 hours with 2 x 50 watt HPS and MH for 2 weeks, changing lights tomorrow for 100 watt HPS and a 150 watt HPS with CoolTubes. I give them 24 hours of darkness, before flowering at around 60-70 days with 2x250 watt HPS also CoolTube setup.

I would like to grow with LEDs/COB leds in the future but since this is a lowbudget grow and I already have alot of HPS light I will use them this time.

Final thing today, is that not the cuttest HPS bulb you have ever seen.



More to follow tomorrow...

From yesterday April 5th. 14 days in system for most of them except the Northern Lights x Chronic and the 2 Sand Storm, notice how different the sizes are between the Super Skunk and the rest of them, seeds were also very small.

Picture update every Saturday from now on...

Have a Good weekend...

Well since this is now a grow journal, its time to move, see you perhaps in the Grow Journal forum...

Save yourself time and $ in the future and dont use Barney Farm gear....

Well, they were a freebie and so far I must say the 2 Critical Kush are growing strong, time will tell...

Nice thread m8 i cant wait to get mine started

cheers mate, have a good day...