@anon32470837 thank you for such a wonderful journal! I’m doing my research on aeroponic for I believe more than 3 weeks already, having this thread opened in one of browser’s tabs for quite some time and happy I finally read it and didn’t just close. And it’s like a breath of fresh air: seems that almost everybody either think that all they do is obvious or that it’s sacred knowledge has to snuff out with its holder.
I’m struggling to find any useful info about AAA, especially regarding nozzles.
It’s impossible to attach information I’ve found so far about these Chinese nozzles you tried to use before so here is the link to the pdf. I believe they try to copy Spraying System CO. nozzles: just compare the KMECO AA nozzles data with the one from spray.com. I’ve got an offer for $36 with free delivery for JCO body assembly (with clog clean needle) and around $20 for 1/4J + SU13 caps or 1/4J + SUE28B caps. For JAO version they ask $120 which I believe is way too high. Don’t know if it worth to go this way after this thread. Could you remember what troubles did you have with this nozzles?
But still can’t decide how many nozzles do I need and how to properly position them.
I’m going to grow strawberry. I live in a place where temperature is below 0 C for almost half a year and would like to find a way to grow strawberry indoor the year round. I hope to be able to scale but want to start with a small setup.
I have a lot of unanswered questions.
The first one as I’ve said is nozzles. I can’t find any useful info about strawberry’s roots length for aeroponics, but for soil its under 12". I’ve decide to start with a 120L plastic chamber with around 16" depth (29" x 22.5" x 16"). I thought to begin with one flat fan nozzle per box at around 14" from the top on the short dimension (spraying in parallel to the bottom): I remember Atomizer said he was able to mist 700L chamber with just one flat fan nozzle. It might be that rotating nozzle he showed somewhere though. Don’t know if mist be able to go up. My calculations show that I’ll need to mist 0.84 seconds to throw ~1.9ml of liquid max (lower at earlier stages). Later I want to make a custom build of longer and wider stacked boxes to be able to scale but first I need to understand roots and crown lengths.
Do you think it worth to try? Will mist go up, especially to the side where the nozzle sits? Another option is to use two nozzles on opposite walls and start one first and after it finishes - start the second.
I understand that I don’t give much information but I don’t have it either. Hope yet only. I don’t even know how far from each other it is better to put rootstocks: I’ve found that it’s better to have ~24" gaps, but every video I’ve seen so far they sit much denser.
The second thing is nutrients. There are a lot info about hydroponic strawberry growing but almost nothing about aeroponic. Currently have no idea about nutrients combination and proportions.
The next one is light. I believe it’s a good idea to go with LEDs and actually ready to build something by myself from scratch but don’t know where to start. I need 19-20 DLI for strawberry, so need pretty strong and consistent light. Or may be it’s better to go with something like QB288?..
I’m going to use raspberry and solid state relays to work with solenoids and sensors. But again: what sensors are better? What parameters to control at all? I thought that it might be useful to control liquid flow per nozzle to control clogging but all the sensors I’ve found so far are much less accurate than necessary to be able to control so low liquid amounts. By the way, did you face any nozzles clogging so far?
And so on… have a lot to search.
But again let me thank you for this thread and a lot of useful information!
Hello @heathen! Welcome to Over Grow and thanks for dropping in to my thread!
I had the same problem. The few who have been doing AAA long term just dont want to share the most critical information - nozzle details. I think its an ego thing. Most people come to the forums looking for information and help, but also to help others. Thats the whole purpose of these forums - to share information and help each other. So why would some one come on to the forums and NOT share? The only reason I can see is so they can feel smarter than anyone else.
I think that makes them small people.
The taller the root chamber the better - I think - but 16" should be a good place to start. I would consider 16" a minimum though. Roots seem to be able to fill what ever space you give them, and the larger the roots, the larger the plants. At least thats how it seems to work for cannabis.
Designing an aero system is a matter of trying to match up the nozzle details to the chamber size and the number of plants. Its a complex problem in some ways as you are finding out. You need to balance out air flow rates and pressure, liquid flow rates and siphon or pressure feed, throw distance, chamber size, On time and OFF time, droplet sizes, do you point them up or down or sideways, what type of nutrients, clogs, root zone temperatures, etc etc etc.
One important thing to look at is the throw distance of the nozzle or how far the mist travels. In those PDF’s you linked, its distance “D”. The problem I had with the nozzles from Spray.com, and the cheap ones from Amazon, is that the shortest distance D was over 2.5 meters, and that was at the lowest air pressure. At higher air pressures, where you get better atomization, the throw distances increased far more. The problem with long throw distances in short root chambers, is that droplets dont bounce. Any mist that hits a wall of the chamber stays there, so long throw distances wont work well in small chambers.
The other problem for me was air use. Those nozzles all have much higher air consumption and also require much higher air pressure. The charts seem to list a minimum of 10 PSI (0.7 bar), but they work much better at 30-40 PSI (2 to 3 bar) and up as far as atomization - but that also increases throw distance.
The Delavan nozzles Im using now will work down to 3 PSI (0.2 bar) but work much better at 5 to 6 PSI. I cant find the throw distance numbers at the moment, but it is closer to 1 meter than 2 based on what it looks like to me.
Those things plus cost are the reasons I chose the nozzles Im using now.
In your situation, I think the Delavan would work much better, but if you do expand to where you are using large/long grow chambers, then the others may work better.
You can get the Delavan nozzles for around $25 each on Ebay. If you want the adaptors, they cost an extra $20 or so. I made my own crude adaptors for almost no cost - just some scraps of 1/2" PVC pipe and hot glue. The other big advantage of these nozzles is they are virtually clog free. The air and water passages are very large, but it might depend on the nutrients you use. If you have a filter before the nozzles, you will probably be fine either way, but organic nutrients tend to clog up filters. Im using non-organic nutrients for that reason as well as to limit bacterial growth in the reservoir.
That is a very difficult question to answer, but you need to consider throw distance first. If the throw distance is too long, most of your mist will just stick to the sides of the chamber. In general, I would try to position the nozzles so they have the longest distance possible before the mist hits anything - roots or walls. I think shooting up from the bottom of the chamber is more efficient as far as mist coverage and use to the plants, but that means the roots can cover them up easier as they grow. Shooting from the top down makes it dificult to get the roots started when they are small. They dont get enough mist in the very early stages to survive the transition from seedling.
Look above for the link to my new thread. I have made several changes to the system and where the nozzles are placed. Im still not 100% happy, but it seems to be working fairly well. I now have the nozzles near the top of the chamber shooting sideways.
Yes, the droplets will float around on the air currents for a long time if they are small enough. I just posted some new videos in the new thread that show how that looks with the nozzles in the new locations. You can also see some of that in the videos early in this thread.
Yes. I think this will work fine. You can probably just use very short ON times. I also like the idea of having the nozzles on separate timers and alternating like you said. I have been thinking about doing something like that as well - one timer for each nozzle and have them fire at different times. Its worth trying I think.
That is another trade off I think. If they are too close together, one set of roots might block mist from getting to another plant, or block the mist from getting to all parts of the chamber. I have had that problem each grow so far. On the last grow, it looked to me like one plant was stunted because the roots from two other plants crowded too close. This time, I have more space, so we will see how that goes.
I strongly recommend you stay away from any nutes that have organic components. Thats not because of the plants, but because you will want to keep the PH of the nute water within a narrow range. Organic nutes grow bacteria that can make the PH almost impossible to control. I now only use Jacks 321 and its working very well for me. Jacks is sold all over the world I think or you should be able to find something similar. Its also very inexpensive to use.
I have no idea what EC levels or PH strawberries will like though.
LED’s are the best way to go in my opinion, but which ones you use depends on your budget. The QB’s are supposed to be very good, but are $$. Or you can build your own LED lights for a much lower cost if you know some basics and dont mind doing the work.
Here are a couple of threads to give you some info on DIY lights.
You need to control lights - ON/OFF timing and you may want to dim them as well.
Temperatures - you need to monitor temps in the root zone and in the plant zone. You also need a way to control those temps up or down.
I dont know about strawberries, but you may also want to monitor and control humidity.
I would not try to control or monitor flow rates for air or water. The nozzles will take what they need based on air pressure and siphon height or water pressure.
You do want to monitor and control air pressure closely though. Thats a key way to control flow rates and droplet sizes. If you are pressure feeding the nozzles instead of siphon, then you will want to monitor water pressure too. If you are siphon feeding, then the water level in the siphon tank would be good info.
You probably also want to monitor the rez water level and temps.
Not with the Delavan nozzles - the openings are all quite large - at least 2 MM or larger.
You are very welcome and thank you for the compliment!
Good luck with your project and please feel free to ask any other questions.
Also, when you get started on it, post your progress here on OG. Even if it is strawberries
I’m actually not growing Cannabis! But We’re experts in Strawberry Cultivars and crops like lettuce, chard, basil, and baby varieties… First of all let me CONGRATULATE to all of you enthusiasts and NerdFarmers to bring all of you to the Aeroponics World…
We’re now growing OUTDOOR with HPA and with Vertical Farming, Biology and Water Technology with Big Results here in Mexico.
We are LATIDO VERDE Co. and you can find us on FB.
The picture it’s one of the first setups that we made and uses misting pulse each 4 hrs with hydroponics soliles media. We want to share more pics but the forum didn’t allowed.
it’s difficult to see the actual construction and plant roots. Do the forums let you post more now? Seems like a polymer tube with more tubes angling upwards with the plant inside. Hard to see the misting system. We can definitely feast on more details
ok I get it, above the tube is a mister that sprays mist down inside that is absorbed by the medium. The pants are in tubes of medium that goes into a larger tube of medium which is sprayed. Any waste run out of that system?
Yes!!! and in that years we were not running Drain to Waste… We recirculate the Nutrient Solution… and the system was design for a House or Restaurant not for a Greenhouse to big Production… Know we have running the version 5 of this industria vertical chamber and we use it for Big Production with true aeroponics…
Sorry for the non-replies. My computer died and Ive been in windows hell re-installing crap. Making progress, but still at it. I expect to be finished by the end of the next century!
ugh I know that feeling! Mine went south last month…red light on the cpu! ARrrrrr! Lucky I got to keep all the data on the hard drives. Y-uh know, I saw a hydroponic system at my kids high school - shit where were all the good toys when I was young? They’re growing hydroponics at the high school lol! Couldn’t believe it.
Just an UPDATE… We will try Coolnet Single Pro NETAFIM Nozzles 5 bar Max. Prssure for our new Greenhouse Projects with Vertical Farming and other amazing Techs like Water Managment and Magnetic Ionizatio, Biotech For NanoFertilizers and organic Enrichment and also CO2 enrichmment and Automatization and Electronics…
We was planning to make an AAA system with our own Vertical Industrial Design for Vertical Farming… It’s not Indoor, also could works for that… But we will try in the next year for Outdoor Vertical Farming… Our system could have a height of 4- 6 meters and a 250-300 density per square meter plants…AMAZING it’s a new score for Outdoor Growing!!!
@anon32470837 Larry!! And all the community…
Could you recommend to us Pressure Valve Control in order to have the Low Pressure for AAA. And of course AAA Nozzles that you tested…
If you have a link or the datasheet or the part name we will appreciate.
Thanks a lot.
