I had defiantly expected to have the hydro systems running by now. But due to many issues, I need about $500-$600 more to finish everything and have plants growing. I still need to finish the pluming, order the pots, install the electrical, as well as the ventilation fans. I have a check coming in a week or so that will be enough for the rest of what I need to finish the pluming, so hopefully I will have the hydro systems running and tested in a couple weeks.
The water filtration system is ready to run, but I haven't ran water through it yet. Simply because the plan is to get the pluming finished first, get the reservoirs cleaned out and refiled with water from the filtration system in order to test the system for leaks, and make sure it's all flowing (flooding and draining) correctly before adding the
nutrients and plants. I thought about just running water through the filtration system for the fun of it, but we have been having nights that were getting into the mid 30's and I didn't want to risk it freezing and cracking the filter housings, filters, or PVC tubing with it just sitting outside for now.
I cant think of anything that I would really have done differently, unless money wasn't an issue. In that case I would have went with the see through cartridge housings for the seatmate filters. But they run just about twice the price just to be able to see when the cartridge is getting dirty ($30+ for the see through verse $18 for the regular housings). I'll just take the cartridge out to look at it, but I plan on replacing it about every 2 weeks to a month anyhow (they only run $10 for two of them). I also probably would either double up the single one micron filter (running parallel), or went with the large carriage and housing (commercial size) to allow a faster water flow rate for that filter. I think that filter is a 1-1/2 or 2 gallon a minute flow rate (I forget now), and is the lowest of them all. Also if money wasn't an issue I would also add a couple filter housings for the ion exchange filter/s. I will probably add those later anyway, or just take out one of the carbon filters and replace it with a carbon/ion exchange filter (something like this as an example
GAC KDF Filter, 6-stage Water Filtration Cartridge). Originally I had planed to use carbon/ion filter cartridges anyway, I just haven't seen any here in town.
I do plan on getting a ppm meter someday just to see how the filters affect the ppm. But ppm alone isn't a good test, it would only tell me the before and after readings. Not what the water had in it to begin with, and what is still left in it after. Which is what I actually want to know. I'll go to the water company to find out what and how much of everything that is in our source water there generally is. From that I may change (or add) a couple of the filters for specific minerals that are in high concentrations in our source water. The ion exchange filters aren't exactly cheep (and I'll likely need to order those online), so I would want them to be able to take out the specific minerals I need them to. But money is an issue (at least at first), so I'll do any upgrades later.
I finished the greenhouse door a while a go, and also started the pluming. I still need to take some updated pictures of the pluming I've done so far, but I'll post the pictures I have now. Well because I had so many pictures, and sense I need to make another post for the pluming pictures anyway, I'll wait until I take the updated pictures of the pluming for that post. I'll try to remember to take those tomorrow.
You can see in the pictures that not only did I use tons of screws, but I also glued the whole thing together with liquid nails. I glued each seem and board. I cut the sections so they fit tightly together, and I used a square to make sure I had square corners. I attached the plastic covering to the door the same way I did to the door frame. The only problem I had was that the doorway wasn't plumed before I built the door. I knew I would need to shim it, but wasn't expecting to need to shim it in two directions at the same time. The top two hinges needed to be both pulled out, and tapered inward. So I cut two pieces of leftover OSB to the right shapes, glued them together to make a large shim that fixed both problems. Then I screwed it into the doorway frame to create a plum doorway to attach the hinges to. It looks a little odd, but it hangs as well as opens and closes perfectly.
I wasn't going to make a doorway threshold. I was just going to pack the dirt up until it was almost flush with the bottom of the door. But my mom brought up the fact that the rabbits could dig under it, so I created the wood threshold so they couldn't get under it. It would only take one rabbit to get in and hop on top of the bottom grow beds to destroy 2 weeks worth of income, so the extra effort's was easily worth the piece of mind to me.