Verical Aeroponic Experimentation- Have You Done It? Please Post Your Experiences!

Hello fellow enthusiasts, I'm new to this forum but I've been reading it for over a year, and growing for longer than that. This site has a plethora of good members that are interested in aeroponic growing, so I start this thread with the hope that some of these people will drop by here and share some of their knowledge with me.

I've tried many methods of growing in my short grow career, and the pinnacle for me and some others is the successful combination of vertical and aeroponic techniques.

The light usage of a vertically oriented canopy, especially when arranged into a cylinder, is unmatched- I don't think there is any question of that. Theoretically perhaps a sphere would be better.

The usefulness of high Pressure aeroponics to feed the the plants is a bit more in debate, but for the purposes of this thread, I'm a fan of it and want to use it.

To cut to the chase, these roots you see here are the best I've done so far with HP aero.



This pic is the first rig that I tried, when I first decided to attempt vertical and aeroponic growing, both at the same time.


It was fed by a sump pump from a large tub res, and had spray tubes with holes in them that dangled down inside the vertical pipe. The fittings are all 3" lightweight pvc. Ultimately I upgraded the feed system several times, all the way up to setting up a high pressure aero system with accumulator tank and solenoid. I stopped short of putting a mist head at every plant site, but that was what it needed. Ultimately it was a failure, and I retired nearly $500 worth of plastic with no production.

I went back to the drawing board and drew countless designs, but cost and practicality always drew me back down to earth, especially considering my previous expensive failure(s). I realized that until I really knew the ins and outs of all that is required, I needed to stay cheap and disposable, as well as modular, with any systems going forward.

This is what I came up with: A vertical rack of horizontal pipes, arranged in rings. This is merely experimental, but it has wheels to allow it to be rotated, so that it can be tended from one spot, bringing the plants to you. With a 30" diameter cylindrical screen in the center, the plants will have about 10" or so between the netcup center and the screen, so I theorize that I can tend the plants completely from the outside of the rings.


Not present in that pic are the vertical lighting or the cylindrical screen that will surround it. My idea is that with perhaps 36 sites, 12 per ring, that I can grow approximately 24"-30" plants, perhaps a week from clone, and get a full cylindrical screen.

I realize that these few pics don't really tell much of a story, but the purpose of this thread is to give me a home base on RIU while I talk to the people here about their experiences with vertical aero. This site has the most operational units/journals and interested parties, from what I've seen.

I've also seen that the aero crowd can get a little contentious at times, so hopefully we can all get along!

I owe a tremendous debt to Cavadge, Atomizer, Fatman, Treefarmer, Petflora, Bob Smith, and so many others, hopefully now that I have a RIU presence I can interact with all these people for real. Well, except Fatman- dude's banned from everywhere. His history lives on!

Next post will show my HP aero system, which is in use right now but needs work, so I'll get some pics while I perform that.

As stated in the title please feel free to post any experiences you care to share with a vertical aero noob!

I don't really have any great info on growing vertical as I'm still relatively new
to the idea, but I've got a vertical aero system I've designed that's modular and
perpetual. I've only run a portion of the system on a test and so far I really liked
what I saw and have clones rooting now to run the full system in all it's glory. It's
not an uber efficient vertical system but suits my needs while still giving better
efficiency than a horizontal grow.

I helped a friend a few years ago run a vertical system using that underground black
tubing as well. They were running more of an NFT using the system in a spiral but
it was really cheap and easy to setup/break down once the frame was assembled.

Looking forward to seeing more!

IMO using mist (fine mist) as the sole feed for a plant doesnt work well in small containers. roots that are truely fed fine mist need more volume than a typical root system if they are to utilize the mist properly.

sorry to hear you couldnt finish a run and had to toss the system. you probably could have run the system with more of a LP timer setting and been able to at least get something for your time and money. of coarse if the top plant sites were blocking the tubes completly the bottom ones probably would have suffered(if one mister on top only) but even if the top roots were fluffy and filling the tubes if the feed timing would be increased the roots would smooth out and develop more like regular hydro roots allowing solution to flow past to the lower ones. if you were setup for DTW then some way to recir would be needed also.

Accumulaors and selonoids arent just for HP as ive used them on many LP systems to improve performance and save pump wear.

disposition84 said:

I don't really have any great info on growing vertical as I'm still relatively new
to the idea, but I've got a vertical aero system I've designed that's modular and
perpetual. I've only run a portion of the system on a test and so far I really liked
what I saw and have clones rooting now to run the full system in all it's glory. It's
not an uber efficient vertical system but suits my needs while still giving better
efficiency than a horizontal grow.

I helped a friend a few years ago run a vertical system using that underground black
tubing as well. They were running more of an NFT using the system in a spiral but
it was really cheap and easy to setup/break down once the frame was assembled.

Looking forward to seeing more!

Click to expand...

Hey Man, you should have been among those I mentioned before, I looked at all your work I could find before I posted here. I'm eager to see how it all works out for you.

I too considered a spiral, and if it was a linear RSWC/NFT type deal that would really work. With this setup, I wanted to be able to change the height settings of the rings, and I plan to feed the nutrients via my HP aero rig. This system is designed to be cheap and easy to change.

I feel that the main advantage to vertical is the lighting and square footage gains- if I can grow even average plants I should do well. My current grow has about 7 more weeks of flowering, so it will be until then when I can put this system into action.

Thanks for responding, and as soon as I get 25 posts I'll ask a mod to fix that typo in my title-

tree farmer said:

IMO using mist (fine mist) as the sole feed for a plant doesnt work well in small containers. roots that are truely fed fine mist need more volume than a typical root system if they are to utilize the mist properly.

sorry to hear you couldnt finish a run and had to toss the system. you probably could have run the system with more of a LP timer setting and been able to at least get something for your time and money. of coarse if the top plant sites were blocking the tubes completly the bottom ones probably would have suffered(if one mister on top only) but even if the top roots were fluffy and filling the tubes if the feed timing would be increased the roots would smooth out and develop more like regular hydro roots allowing solution to flow past to the lower ones. if you were setup for DTW then some way to recir would be needed also.

Accumulaors and selonoids arent just for HP as ive used them on many LP systems to improve performance and save pump wear.

Click to expand...

Wow, super glad to see you here tree farmer. I've read all those threads from the past few years, tried to learn the knowledge, and yeah I saw the arguments, lol!

Thanks for blessing my thread with your presence. I agree that to do true aero you need larger spaces to work with. This is what led me to eventually abandon the little pipes and get a larger tub. What I came up with was directly influenced by your plug and play pods. Here is part of what I have running now:


Here it is in action. I could do larger plants, but I had little time, and this was the first experimental run, so I decided to run a bunch of little ones as experiments.


As far as my white pvc system, I never got too far with it so it wasn't too big a loss.. I still have all the parts. But when I designed/built that thing, I hadn't even learned about HP aero yet, I was trying to run it LP!

I ultimately switched to horizontal tubes as above, because I realize that as roots fill the tubes, it will transition from aero to nft. I figure that will be fine, though, as I plan to keep the plants fairly small. I just need this as a platform to test out vertical, cylindrical light/screen setups.

I agree that solenoids and accumulators are the bomb- I have two sets now. Battery backup too. That's why I want to use it to feed my rings even though it isn't really necessary- I just love the low water use and ease of manipulation.

Thanks for coming by, I hope you will check back regularly to inform my progress as I attempt to master vertical aero!

As I promised before, here is a shot of my newly revamped hp aero supply unit.


This setup was designed from reading tree farmer's thread, and that of another guy called Cavadge that followed that thread to build his system. Mine is a bit more streamlined, it is about as simple as I could get it.

The setup, from 12:00 in the back: The power board, from an alarm system, also charges the 2 batteries that provide 24vdc for the solenoid/timer if power fails. It will run the system for days, the accumulator lasts about 1.5 days at this number of misters and timing. Moving clockwise, there is the timer which mounts right on the valve, the accumulator tank, then you can follow the supply tube back around to the left you can see the filter with it's high side gauge and the regulator with its gauge. From there it runs through the valve, out the back, and into the tent.


Res and pump (aquatec ddp 5800) in its box on the bottom shelf.


This system has worked well, without fail for a while now. Time will tell if it holds up. Thanks for taking an interest.

Hey, if any MOD happens to see this, would you please correct the first word of my thread title to say "Vertical" instead of "Verical"? Thanks- trying not to look like a total idiot!

So I'm curious as to why HP aero is so enticing for so many? I haven't really educated myself on the
subject so I'm not trying to attack it, I'm simply curious as to why it's better than LP aero I guess.

I would presume there is some sort of significant gain to going through the effort? Or is it really
just a matter of enjoying your hobby and like to tinker with things to make them advanced?

I mean I see those roots look pretty stellar, but I haven't seen many bud pictures that were produced
solely by HP aero to make me shit my pants and have a burning desire to learn about HP.

Your setup looks really advanced and professional and I'd love to eventually go that route one day
if there were some more motivation, which is why I'm asking

You need to be self motivated to make the leap, if you need a reason to get into hp aero then its probably not the right method for you