Semi-large scale hydroponics question.

Hi all, I'm new to the forums and I love the access of information on this site. I'm currently planning a flow and ebb hydroponics set up but I have a few questions about the construction of the set up.

Firstly, the total height of my room is only 6 feet, and from my research most hydroponics systems are gravity drained. Due to the scale I am planning, I don't have the height to put my water container underneath my flower bed. Should I have a dual pump system that pumps in and pumps out?

The footage of my growing area is expected to be 12 ft x 4 ft holding 40 plants. Assuming 6 inches of nutrient water and 25% extra in my tank, I'm looking at a 225 gallon tank for storage. Does this sound about right to the more experienced members of the board?

well for the pump in pump out, that imo is not a good idea for the fact that the pump in the tray will not pump all the water back to the res and your plants will be sitting in water. now in a space of that height if you are set on flood tables a straight forward sog op is prably your best bet (zero veg clones straight to flower) if you want to go with larger plants then a system like the ebb and grow might be what you want to do.

What are some alternatives to draining my table if I can't use gravity

you could tilt the table slightly to one corner
which ever you drain from. run that into a smaller container and pump from that

Distiller said:

What are some alternatives to draining my table if I can't use gravity

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do like bleed said but its going to be allot of work, you are going to need multiple pumps (3 i presume) one in the main larger res to fill the smaller res, one in the smaller res to feed the tray and one in the smaller res to pump back to the main res when flood cycle is finished, now its not going to be that easy as you will need to fab up vacuum breaks on ALL the lines for the fact that once the pump in the larger res is done filling and turns off it will have a siphon going and could flood the smaller res just some food for thought. sounds to me your going to be making a control bucket (just like a ebb and grow anyway lol).

Sounds like it might just be easier to develop a top feed system. Only thing I can think of is hand fabricate a 12 ft x 5 ft x 12 in resevoir.

So perhaps a better method would be to veg in rockwool cubes and plant in expanded clay pellet troughs with a top feed system?