wk420
Active Member
I grow in soil in a tent. I got really tired of emptying my plant saucers after every watering or vacuuming them out. My solution was to build a platform that spans my whole 4x8 tent that is 9" tall in the back, and 8" in the front so the water will run downhill. I looked at ebb and flow trays and wasn't about to pay a few hundred for a piece of plastic, so I went to home depot and got 3 "washing machine trays." A bit shallower, but if you're not using it for ebb n flow it doesn't matter! I felt like a genius when I thought of this until I had to figure out how I was going to capture my waste water. (I started by just putting large bowls under each bulkhead drain, but this led to tent flooding) Anyways each tray has a 1" PVC bulkhead, so I got all the right fittings to tie them together and all three trays drain into a shallow bus tub type container. I would like to find a pump to empty that bus tub so I don't have to... being that the PVC is not "dry fitted" and it would be a pain in the ass. I was doing some thinking and I know a submersible pump wont work because they cant run dry, and I know that at some point that would occur. After I realized that wouldn't work, I started thinking about a sump pump. But that would be overkill for a 5 gallon bus tub. Then I was thinking I could maybe hook a submersible pump up to a float switch, but I don't know if the float switch would even have enough room to turn on and off in 3"-5" of water. Then I found some 12v bilge pumps on Amazon that can run dry, but now I am lost in my thoughts and came here for advice. If anyone has 2 cents on what I should do I would really appreciate it!! Thanks fam
