Being a few weeks into our building, we have a much better idea of how much work goes into building a hydroponic system. We have one completed system (seen below) that when connected to an air pump, has a continuous flow of water up through the tube. We haven't really updated our blog as the problems occurred, because we focused so much on fixing them, so we're going to discuss them now after fixing everything!
The first and biggest issue we faced was getting the water to the top of the tube and out the other side. Because the tube we had was so wide, there was a large amount of air inside and made it difficult for the water to move in a upwards direction. To fix this, we attached over 50 zip-ties to the rod and tube, which placed restrictions on the tube, making the tube smaller and almost forcing the water to go upwards. As we increased the amount of zip-ties, the better the flow got. Eventually, we got that constant flow of water we needed.
The second major issue we faced was the straightness of our rod, the entire system at an angle. This wouldn't be a problem other than the fact that the angle made water drip out of the system instead of straight downwards through it. To fix this, we duct taped the bottom of system where the last 1/2 gallon bottle and the 1 liter bottom connect. Taping more on the side that the rod faced away from, we kind of pulled the rod more up and down instead of to the side. This fixed the issue of loosing water.
These are the only two major issues we have faced in the building of our first hydroponic system. But we also had some smaller issues, like bubbles escaping inside our 1 liter bottle with the needle, but these were easily fixed by adding more plumber's tape.
Today we watered the plants until the outside wrapping felt completely damp and there was water leftover in the dish, so that the kale can continuously get water. While one of us did that, others worked on building our second system, which was our main objective of the day. Our building is going well, and we are excited to see if it really works once we put our plants inside. Our next step is checking everything in our systems and then transferring our plants to our systems!!
PLEASE ask us any questions on our Instagram in the comments or on our Tumblr!
