[GpsFrontier]

That would be great also (much less work for me, too ). Do you have a link to where I can buy these. How wide are they?

Here is a link that I found, but they are very common and you should be able to find them at any home improvement store. Home Depot and Lowes both have a whole isle dedicated to them. Plastmo - Rainware System

Another option is to use the 4 inch ADS tubing found by the P.V.C. tubing (it is used for irrigation), and either cut it longways in half to make 2 pieces or just cut out what you need along the top. It runs about $8 for a 10 foot piece. If you need it wider you can get 6 or 8 inch P.V.C. tubing from a pluming supply house. It's a little more expensive though, the 6 inch wide tubing I got here ran about $1.78 a foot.

That would be nice! The hydroponics store in town isn't open during convenient times. I think the owner has a day job? I dunno, I just know that every time I go there the door is locked.

We don't even have a hydroponics store here in town. I was just thinking of using regular trash bags, and if they are not thick enough just double or triple them up. It wouldn't matter the color if you were going to cover them up anyway. If not you can use a black one to block light then a white one over it to reflect light.

I've never used dolomite before and am open to suggestions on calcium levels.

I will need to look into the dolomite and info about the calcium levels. I am not sure that is an issue with the flora series of nutrients I use.

I've read that you need a 5-gallon bag for tomatoes but commercial greenhouses grow three of them on a 4" x 36" rockwall slab so I am really uncertain about the actual size of the root ball.

Tomato plant sizes can vary greatly from small container variety's to the large beefsteak variety's. Commercial operations also usually train the plants and cut all the suckers off, so they basically only have one vine growing upward per plant. Their root systems don't get nearly as big doing that either. They also swap out the plants much sooner. As soon as they harvest they have another new plant to replace it with. My rule of thumb is to give the plants as much root space as I can, hopefully without costing a lot in growing medium.

I had hoped that keeping the nutrient temp lower may help a bit as well.

I don't know what the temp of your nutrients were, but I have learned that if you cant keep their temperature under control there is no point to trying to grow anything. That's what lead to the demise of my plants last summer. The Geothermal designs I have will take care of that for me this year.

I wondered if anyone had used the 6mil as a protective mulch as I described above and if that can be helpful in keeping the roots from getting waterlogged.

As far as rain goes I don't think the leaves and fruits themselves would be too badly harmed even by a Dallas downpour but due to excess water in the root zone.

I may be a little confused here but I think the idea is to use the 6mil protective mulch to block light to help stop algae as well as to block rain water from getting to the roots. If you are planing to use what I am thinking of, it will block the light but it allows water to go right through it.

I'm using generic planters that function similar to Earthboxes. 4 are 24"L x 12"W x 12"H and the other 2 are 2-gallon round containers. They all have a water reservoir in the bottom separated from the medium by a mesh/screen. The soil/medium is the wick.

Yes this is a wick system. This may be a bit difficult to control the the moisture level of the growing medium if the medium itself is the wick. If the medium is touching the water it will suck it up real fast saturating the medium. If it is not touching the water it wont be able to suck anything up. You may want to leave the water level below the medium so it is not touching, and then use some nylon felt material cut into long strips for a wick. Otherwise I fear that the medium will become to saturated and water log the roots.

pvc/vinyl fence posts and caps are what you are after for NFT.

Generally that is what most people use, but you wont be able to get the bags inside them very easily. The rain gutters have 3 sides and you can get an optional top portion that clips right on top, that would make maintenance and cleaning much easier. You can also use the rain gutter down spout tubes instead of the fence post tubes. The down spouts are not usually square but will lay down flat just fine, just cut holes in the top side to place the baskets into. The rain gutters are usually cheaper than the fence post tubing also. If needing more root space I would suggest using the ADS irrigation tubing I mentioned earlier. How big do you need the trough the bags will be resting in to be?