Ya CrossOps,
I know what you mean. It's a compromise between durability/strength, space, blocking/not blocking light, as well as ease of maintenance. Then there's the cost of the various materials you can use/need to build it with and compromising design for something affordable. It will be interesting to see what you ultimately decide on. I know you have some very ambitious plans for that space, and the actual layout/hydroponic setup/s will dictate what's needed for support. Then it's just a mater of figuring out how much it will cost with various materials, then compromising for what you can afford to do.
In my case, when each level is flooded there will be nearly 2000 pounds on each level. The structure I build/built needs to be able to easily support 6000 pounds total. So it may seem like overkill the way I did it, but that's why I did. If I used steel/aluminum/metal framing support, it would be a much smaller footprint and allow more light to get to the plants. But would likely cost 10-20 times more. So I gave that as the compromise. With that much weight to support I simply needed strength, so any type of plastic materials wouldn't work (without being to cumbersome). If I used smaller wood (like 2x2's or 2x3's), I wouldn't have nearly the strength I needed unless I used so much more wood, especially for the for the vertical supports. Then the extra support framing would make maintenance much more difficult, as well as block more light to the plants on the lower levels. Of witch I will already need to delegate to the plants with lower light requirements to that space.
|