my gravity fed air atomizing aeroponic system

so today was an interesting day. i checked on my plants and things were looking good. i continue to see more fine hair growth.
you cant see much detail in the big picture, but its there. im hoping to do a lot better. going to add a little bit of hygrozyme tomorrow. see if it can dissolve the dead roots on my hrdro type roots

check out my new gravity reservoir

heres some examples of the solar coleus, theres dozens and dozens of varietys of this plant. they arent like other coleus plants which typically prefer shade. this one loves the sun and will grow in to a miniture shrub in a few weeks. im never growing house plants in this thing again such a waste of time.


also do these soil roots make the aero grade?

check out my electrical usage for the last 363 hours. 2.8 kilowatt hours, would have used at least 90 kwh's to light the space properly with 500watts and 12/12

so i have some great ideas for my new prototype 64 site chamber

+. the setup( im going to build my chamber on top a pallet). ill be able to move it around with a pallet jacks. if i decide i want to move it outside for the day ill be able to do that. if i want to move it back in i can do that too. if i want to load it onto a truck and drive it across town, that will also be a possibility.

+my waste water will run into a 4 oz plastic cup this way ill be able to track the recent ec and ph activity

+im going to do a better job of attaching my lid to my chamber, i will attempt to make it as air tight as possible. i will construct two ports that will let built up air volume out of the chamber. but not mist droplets. not sure how to put it into words yet. itll probably involve tyvek

+im going to spray the inside with a black rubber coating. better pictures this way.

+i will use the same foil faced styrofoam to make my walls and bottom, its easy to cut, cheap, and will meet my prototyping needs, as there wont be much weight on top.



big pimpin baby

found some wise words from atomizer think im going go follow this stratgegy and stop fucking with the misting time, i already know 1 second paints my roots with tiny droplets

I tend to leave the misting pulse timing alone as much as possible and just vary the pause time.
My reasoning is the misting duration will be directly linked to the pause duration.. making the roots even slightly wetter (relatively)will mean they can handle a much longer pause. Altering the mist timing affects two variables, messing with the pause timing only really affects one. Thats my take on it anyway. Atomizer

Black pond liner and a roll of double sided carpet tape is the cheapest option for waterproofing a big chamber

Atomizer said:

Black pond liner and a roll of double sided carpet tape is the cheapest option for waterproofing a big chamber

Click to expand...

more wise words from the atomizer.

hey atomizer need your opinion, so a few months ago me and my grandpa were working on diying some 0.016" biocontrol nozzles. he went on vacation to hawaii for the winter so we had to stop.
he has a wood\metalworking shop. i told a few people here, and they basically told me i was a retard, and that this was some proprietary shit that couldnt be duplicated by any mere mortal, i dont see it that way

anyway we found that it had a 1/32 inch pin placed a certain distance from the orifice, i cant remember the measurement.
we were going to design it with 1/8 inch female theads instead of male threads, lower cost to connect to a jg tee, and easier to manufacture.

i purchased a 4 foot rod of 3/4inch acetal plastic, i also bought a box of 0.016inch drill bits. he had some 1/16 inch stainless steel welding rod that we were going to bend in a loop.

do you know if theres anything special to these nozzles that i am unaware of? theres no whirl vanes or impellers inside that i can see, just a 0.016" orifice shooting a stream of water at a 1/32 inch impingment pin X distance away

am i crazy? i just dont see paying 5 dollars a nozzle plus insane shipping form someone named stoner.

It wouldnt be easy to make them, the pins on the bete`s are stepped so its rigid enough to take the force of the jet without moving or vibrating. The alignment and distance of the pin from the orifice will have to be spot on. If you have the tools and materials you`ve got nothing to lose, whats the worse that can happen

Patent US3894691 from 1975 might provide some insight.
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3894691.html

Judging from the text, you`ll probably need an orifice diameter of 1/64" (0.5mm) and a better set of eyes than me lol
Looks like it might need to be even smaller. With a 0.5mm diameter orifice 2mm in length you`ll need to force 4.8gph (0.08gpm) through it to get a velocity of 135ft/second.
A 0.25mm orifice, 2mm long needs 1.2gph (0.02gpm) for 135ft/sec, sounds like a more reasonable hourly flowrate.

damn looks like ill have something to do when cant sleep tonight.

i plan on turning my present chamber into a hpa chamber with 8 bio control nozzles
, i suppose i should see if i even likie hpa before i start making my own custom nozzles for it.




what do you think of my nozzle placement they will be down firing, do you think its enough nozzles, to many?
also is there any merit to adding a normally open solenoid to my system to recover nutrient that would have ended up as overspray as the pressure is ramping down in my 0.177inch ID lines. or is this bunk?
im really excited to be able to do this in my house with hid lights. i cant do air atomizing though to noisey the neighbors complain

my aa chamber got to 90F today and 95f outside chamber. the water in my resevoir only reached 82F thought accordint to my ir termerature gun.

the roots which are slowly recovering from before didnt give a shit, if anything i saw more growth today than usual. interesting

also i filled my cloner with ro water and added 1ppm free chlorine. i added 5 plants out of 95. i would like to see how they react to chlorine. if nothing seems to be aloof i will transfer another 90 to the system tomarow night. i will grow 64 in my new 4X4 system. i will grow 10 in coco coir and 10 in peatmoss/perlite. and any more left over in peatmoss/perlite/mushroom compost. just to see the differences

If the nozzles are attached to a loop you`ll have around 9ft of .177" tube after the solenoid, it wont hold a lot so any over run will be small. If the layout is the same as in the pic you`ll have a lot more tube. The solenoid will allow the lines to drain, you`ll end up with air in them which will have to be purged during the misting pulse.

By my reckoning with the chamber insulation level you`ll need to cool at least the air line to 15F-16F below the desired chamber temperature in order to maintain it. A coil of airline in a picnic/igloo cooler filled wih cold water will do if you insulate the lines to the nozzles. A picnic/igloo cooler with insulated outlet lines will keep the nutes cooler than the bucket. Running AA in a hot greenhouse is always going to be a challenge

oops i was just trying to point out which were nozzles. i was thinking of running two solenoids 4 nozzles each, in a straight line. ill forget the normaly open solenoid.
are check valves at the nozzles something that could help?
do you think i would get good mist covereage with this layout, using the bios?

Atomizer said:

By my reckoning with the chamber insulation level you`ll need to cool at least the air line to 15F-16F below the desired chamber temperature in order to maintain it. A coil of airline in a picnic/igloo cooler filled wih cold water will do if you insulate the lines to the nozzles. A picnic/igloo cooler with insulated outlet lines will keep the nutes cooler than the bucket. Running AA in a hot greenhouse is always going to be a challenge

Click to expand...

at this point im just playing around with my aa observing trying to get anything i can from it, before i have rooted solar coleus cutting to put in my new chamber. once i build my new chamber i will be able to move it around the greenhouse, its currently in a room meant for propagation. ill be able to move my new chamber to a room that never goes over 80F. and if it get to hot in there i can move it into a sheltered area outside.

is there any reason the roots cant take 90F. i know im not growing an ideal plant in my system, but the roots at the end of the day were hairier than ive ever seen them before.

I deliberately ran a chamber at 85-90F for 18 hours to see what would happen. In the short term, it doesnt seem to hurt too much but it could take a toll if you did it every day.
Cooling the air from the compressor tank doesnt take much coiled tube. Cooling 50 cubic feet of air by 1 deg F would heat 1lb of water by 1 deg F. Submerge some airline in a 5 gallon bucket of water and check how cold the air is, it should take less than a second to drop 20F. The igloo cooler may only need filling with cold water once a day.

thanks for the heads up, i think ill run the these wandering jews hot the rest off the grow just to see the effects. dont want to really repot them into a hanging basket anyways.

i m gonna do what you said with the new chamber. i think ill have to upgrade the size of my air lines, to provide enough volume to my nozzles without haveing to crank the regulator pressure setting up to compensate. i think ill try 5/8inch OD pex as i have a roll of it already, up from 3/8 inch ID. maybe i should get a new pressure regularor too? its a 1\4 inch NPT regularor not sure on the CFM per minute. but i bet its a constriction.im going to buy one thats 1/2 inch and 100CFM just to be future safe.

http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/WILKERSON-Pneumatic-Regulator-6B209?Pid=search

As long as you know what pressure is at the nozzles i wouldnt spend too much cash on extra hardware. G-love never mentioned having to compensate for pressure loss in the lines so you can assume any reference to psi settings in his journals were based on the bambi`s regulator pressure guage and not the actual psi at the nozzles. He wasnt as thorough at testing every detail as we are

If the greenhouse is 90F and you pump 85F air into the chamber even 12" thick insulation wont help. If you can cool the air to 60F en route, the chamber temp shouldnt have climbed to much above 70F when the next mist pulse hits (unless its a really long pause duration). You can estimate the likely performance using basic heatloss formula`s. All you need is the insulation r-value, chamber surface area and volume, along with the inside and outside temperature.

damn there you go making this things easy again
the main reason i was thinking of running bigger air lines was because i have a 50psi pressure differential pressure switch. and i thought if i got my nessisry pressure regulator setting down to the mid 40s i could take full advantage of this.
i would really like my air compressor to last until the end of june. after that it will get a little hot in here

so heres my cloner with with 95 solar coleus cuttings

heres two different root shots with wandering jews, not super impressive compared to the last picture

heres my top growth

i got this 86 gallon pressure tank, it wont keep its air pressure. im thinking i will someday use it to gravity feed nozzles. kind of a super sized version of what im doing now. either that or ill recycle it

damn this shit is really holding up my aeroponic adventures, i bought a pallet with 260 5kg bales and ive got 200 left. cant beat the price though, $3.25 per bale, im thinking of hustling them on craigslist

the imfamous high surface area roots, seems as though i have a long way to go. i wonder if wandering Jew is even capable of this root morphology. i hope not