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Looking at your drawing the only problem I see is that it looks like the spray line is in the bottom of the rails. That is problematic because the roots will grow into your spray holes and clog them up.
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Actually it isn't designed as an
aeroponic system, so there are no sprayers. But your absolutely right, of there were I would place the spray line at the top apex, spraying down. It would be fairly easy to construct as an aeroponic system using PVC tubing, and creating a support for it on both ends, then just screwing the emitters/misters directly into the PVC tubing. However depending on the amount of misters in the system, that may require a larger
pump to be able to provide enough pressure to all the misters for a good spray coverage. I haven't tested the pump in my estimate using misters yet.
P.S. I did forget one part, a timer for the pump. Though even for a aeropponic design a 15 minute minimum on/off timer would do just fine, and run $10 or less at Kmart. I got a 30 minute minimum on/off timeer (they call a heavy duty timer), at Kmart for about $7 that works nicely. just make sure it is a 15 amp timer (usually called heavy duty).
The way I plan to use the system is as a flood and drain system (although it can easily be modified to run as a NFT or aeroponic, and back again). There's a couple or reasons that I would choose a flood and drain over a aeroponic design. The biggest is that the misters can clog from the mineral buildup, and being inside a tube like that, it would be hard to notice (until the plants were showing signs of wilting/dying). Basically each mister is a potential problem, and unless you had extra misting tubes ready to install/swap out for a clogged one (so that would make the exchange quick), there's even more risk of damage to all the plants in the tube, and/or entire system because of maintenance downtime. That can be a real problem when growing outside, in direct sunlight, and in the summer heat like I do (where you can't control the climate like you can growing inside).
Another reason is even though an aeroponic design wouldn't require nearly as much
nutrient solution to get the roots wet that flooding the tube will, I don't really see that as a benefit. I would still want the reservoir to be about the same size. Smaller volumes of water just wind up having pH swings, and much larger fluctuations in the mineral salts (
nutrients) in the nutrient solution. Larger volumes of water have what I call buffer water, and buffer against these swings.
From my experience a 10 foot long (4 inch wide) round tube (
that I grew my peas in) will take 5-6 gallons of water to flood. So 4 five foot (4 inch) square tubes should take about 10-12 gallons to flood. Depending on how you space your plants, even at a 1 foot spacing that would be about 10 plants per tube (but I would probably space about 9-10 inches apart). So even for small plants like strawberries or lettuce that are recommended to have 1/2 gallon of nutrient solution per plant as a minimum. For 40 plants that would be a minimum reservoir size of 20 gallons (18 gallons for 36 plants). So even going by using the minimum recommended volume of nutrient solution for small plants, as well as the amount of plants, there should be plenty of water to flood the system without running the pump dry. But I use more than the minimum volume of water recommended, as a buffer against nutrient and pH swings.
Something that you cant see in the images is the overflow tube adjustment. It's a simple insert that adjusts the water height in the tube, changing the height of the tube will change the height of water level in each tube. And I can use the system as a NFT by simply taking the adjustment tube out, or if I want water level higher, insert a small adjustment tube (and still use it as an NFT system).
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I do feel sorry for anyone trying to build a 72 site version. Drilling all those holes is quite a task
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Making the holes isn't a problem for me, I use a simple rotary tool (picture attached) that I bought at the swap meet years ago for about 10 or 12 bucks. I just use one of the baskets, and draw a template on a flexible piece of plastics like a sour creme lid, and cut it out. I used a flexible template so it would bend on the round tube I used when I went to draw the outline I was going to cut on the tube. Making the template just smaller than the basket, so the the lip of the basket rests on the edge of the cut hole. I cut all 12 holes in the tube for my peas in about 10 minutes. In fact, it took longer to measure the spacing (and making sure they were in a straight line), than to actually cut the holes. Any hole saw will work fine as well, it is just a mater of getting one the right size. They do make adjustable size hole saws, but can be pricey. I think the one I saw was about $40. I'll stick with the rotary tool, it's a lot more versatile anyway. I have plans to use this same concept/design on a larger scale, using 20, 10-15 feet long tubes (picture attached).
P.S. ProZachJ
You can easily upload pictures using the manage attachments button, located below the Submit reply and preview post buttons in the additional options sections. Just click on manage attachments button, and use the window that pops up to browse to the picture on your computer, then just double click on it. You can upload as many as 20 images to each post (5 at a time), and it will create a clickable thumbnail image, just like I did in this post. That way the picture/s wont blow out the the thread.