In the beginning, I had a couple large PVC pipes of the thick variety arranged and plumbed into the lines that will feed the greater hydroponic garden system. I still had to add end caps and cut holes in the pipes to accommodate planter cups. Unfortunately, these pipes are larger than the 6" I believed the pipes to be. I don't know if they're more like 8" or some other type of PVC pipe, but in either case, I can't use them for the hydroponic garden arrangement in the greenhouse. There was an alternative however. The old Double Barrel Hydroponic Garden tubes I still had laying around after dismantling the decaying wood table that held them would fit in this application perfectly.
These PVC tubes were a little longer than the pipes I had in the greenhouse. I would have to cut the pipes down, taking away one of the holes in each pipe, leaving four spots for each pipe. I was able to remove the end caps on one pipe but the other was glued in place, probably due to leaking troubles I had with the pipes when the old garden setup was operational. I ended up cutting the capped ends off that pipe while just cutting the pipe on the other one, omitting one of the holes in each. With the pipes cut up and ready for use, I had to arrange the connecting pipes that would drain the overflow from one pipe and dump it into the other pipe. Using the same fittings I used in the other PVC pipes, I eyeballed where the holes needed to go and drilled them out with a step bit. I then used a 1/2" NPT pipe tap to tap the holes to screw the fittings in place, but not after wrapping teflon tape around the threads first. With the piping that connects the two pipes done, I could move on to the input and output lines. Since I pressed the pipes and fittings together, I was able to pull apart the end fittings on the two lines in order to trim the pipes down so I could get the end fittings to line up where I needed them to be. As before, I drilled and tapped holes near the ends of both pipes, then lined everything up so I could press together the pipes and connect to the ends to the fittings that were screwed into the holes. I did have to do some angling of the pipes to get them to line up where they would connect, which resulted in an awkward routing of the pipes. I might come back later and add some extra fittings and short cuts of pipe where they would bring the angles back to a more right angled appearance, just for aesthetics. With the plumbing done, I inserted some planter cups from some old seedlings which I saved specifically for this purpose. I will have to trim a couple of the holes to better accommodate the cups as they need to fit into the pipes at a low enough level to be immersed in the water when it floods the pipes, which is about halfway up. Lastly, I will need to add a submersible pump to the drum and have a timer ready so when I do get power to the greenhouse, I can press the HPG system into service all across the board, given the idea that everything is pretty much ready. I just need to add Perlite to the planters and well, plants. The ole lady did give me the idea of trying to set up some kind of rainwater catchment system to catch runoff from the roof and route it into the drum to refill it. It would actually be an excellent idea, I just have to rig up some kind of valve or cutoff that would close up the feed tube so when the drum is full no more water will be allowed to flow into the drum. This would definitely be a good supplement and another part to the self sufficiency of this setup. If the hydroponic gardens can be resupplied by rainwater, the main water lines won't have to refill the drum. Only other thing that would make this even better is powering the gardens off solar panels, which really isn't that hard. If I use grow lights, that's another story.
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May 2023
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