Hello Bigdaddy216,
It's a very simple and easy system to build. Perfect for people who want to start to get their feet wet (no pun intended) growing hydroponically. Normally I wouldn't grow a plant like the pepper/chilli plant in this type of system because it will be too much maintenance when the plant gets big. But I knew I wasn't going to be growing it to full size because it would wind up getting to hot here before then anyway.
I attached some pictures of it a few weeks before I puled it up in early July. By then it was drinking 2-1/2 to 3 gallons of water each day, and I needed to add about all that back in ice to keep the root zone cool. I added ice back until the water level was correct again twice a day. Both late night before I went to bed, and mid afternoon. I could have kept it going a little longer if I created a shade cover for it, but I had a business meting out of town, and it wouldn't last one day without attending to it, much 3 days. So I harvested all the peppers and cut it up before I left. I really only built the system to take pictures and put the design plans on my website. In case you haven't seen them here is a link to the design plans for it.
Easy to build five gallon bucket DWC system
The plant can get at least twice as big as it did when I cut it up. That's why if I had meant to keep it to full size, I would have used a
drip system to grow it in. I plan to grow them commercially, and when I do, I'll have rows of five gallon buckets filled with coco chips (and rocks on the bottom) designed as a drip system. With the pepper plants growing under shade cloth, and a mister system on a timer to cool the plants as well as raise humidity levels around the plants. I hope to grow 4 to 6 peppers for personal use next year, but would do it the same way, in the same type of drip system under shade cloth with misters, just on a smaller scale than commercially with 50-100 pants growing.