[txice]

Thanks .

Originally Posted by GpsFrontier

I also see now how the upside down lid fits. It looks secure enough but if not it would be simple enough to drop some pins in the corners.

It is indeed quite secure and there have been no issues with leaking at all. The wife and I thought we might need to get some sort of clip of some kind to pinch down the ends, but just the weather striping and the weight of the lid itself is proving enough to prevent water from coming out. The odd thing about this model of the tote is that the larger size (the 54 gal one) is the only version of this tote where the lid actually fits inside the tote upside down. The smaller sizes of the same design don't work the same way (at least not the ones they had at the store there that I tested).

Originally Posted by GpsFrontier

One painting it black works great to light proof it, but I would paint it white after to reflect light so it wont absorb heat as much.

You know I wanted to do that, but the wife thinks the black looks better ....what can ya do right?? In all honesty though, I can't necessarily disagree with her on that point alone, lol.

Originally Posted by GpsFrontier

The second is I don't know if you glued P.V.C. tubing and if not that is fine but if you did it would be imposable to clean it out.

I actually did not for this exact reason. Since all the tubing remains inside the tub, I didn't care about small leaks and I wanted to be able to take it apart if need be for what ever reason. The one exception is that I did glue the "T" connection coming from the pump to the "+" connection it's flush with. I did that mainly for support because the pice of pipe that joined those two pieces together was so small it seemed unstable.

As for the pump itself, I indeed did purchase this from one of the local hydroponics stores. The box printing indicates the pump is "ideal for ebb and flow or drip hydroponic systems", but does not give any information relative to aeroponics such as PSI or number of emitters supported. The pump isn't designed to be used in a "true aeroponic" type system where high pressure is needed. The only tech detail I can find for it simply lists head feet and volume which is 8 ft and 400gph respectively. I used to have a PSI guage I could screw onto a faucet to read pressure coming out of it...I could maybe see if I could find it again and do a test hookup to the pump to get a PSI reading. I'm wager it would be fairly low though.

The pump itself is made by Hydrofarm and it's the ActiveAqua AAPW400 model pump. Here is a direct link to the manufacturers web page for this particular pump: Hydrofarm - Active Aqua AAPW400 ActiveAqua Pump 400 GPH.

They list the pump for $26.95 but the guy at my hydro store only charged me a flat $20 for them.

Yes, I ran several tests to ensure a nice even spray across all the emitters and that there was a fair amount of pressure coming out. It's not a "hard" spray per say, but it's coming out of the sprayers pretty good. Certainly not enough pressure to actually turn the water into a fine mist, but I get a nice fan spray out of all of them. I don't doubt I could easily add a handfull of sprayers without any noticable drop in performance, but how far could I actually expand before seeing a drop?? I don't know to be honest. As a comparison my first system has a 185gph pump with 8 of the same emitters inside a much smaller tote and, though I get good enough coverage for the application, it's a fairly weak spray and I honestly feel the pump should be a bit larger (or that I should at the least reduce the number of sprayers). Though I could also say that the new 400gph pump I have in the larger system would be waaaay to much for the smaller one.