Seeking Advice on Vertical Farming
 

Hi,

I'm just getting into Hydroponics and after watching a bunch of YouTube videos I've decided that I want to pursue vertical hydro farming as it looks like the best use of my small space.

Current Plan:
- Grow Tent 4x4 ft
- LED lighting down the centre (12-18" away from towers).
- Grow Towers along the side
- Approx 3x3ft DWG sump at the bottom
- Water drip/flow through an open cell growing medium in each tower.

Thoughts?

Hello Tesseract,
My thoughts on the information you provided are, going vertical is a great way to maximize space. LED's, well glad your rich. I cant wait 5-10 years to break even making back all the money in energy savings I shelled out up front to grow with LED's. A vertical light in the center? I don't know how you plan to design the system/s and/or what plants you plan to grow, but if the light is to the side of the plant's you may have a problem with the plants trying to grow sideways instead of upward. That may even lead to stability problems. I would use pond and fountain pumps instead of sump pumps. Far less costly and in most cases more water flow as well.

I'm looking at LEDs for three reasons:
- better energy usage (I live in Ontario, electricity is pricy)
- lower heat generation (don't require super fancy setups for venting heat etc).
- increase plant density (12-18" from the lights means I can pack more plants in a smaller space, right now looking at 15:1 square footage ratio in my design as space is a bit of a premium for me).

Everybody wants to use LED for lower energy costs, but the reality is it generally takes 5-10 years to save enough money in energy bills to make back the difference from the high up front costs. Essentially your just paying 5-10 years worth of savings up front. So your not actually saving anything for the first 5-10 years tell after you break even. When you pack plants in closely together, you just get over crowded plants. If your just growing seedlings it's fine to pack them in close, but if you expect them to reach full size they need room to grow. Spacing would be determined by the size of the full grown plant. LED'S do run cooler than HID, but if the plants your growing will do fine under florescent lighting, florescent lights aren't much different than LED''s in that respect.