Hey pals, my obsession with aeroponics (and aquaponics but I’ll leave it for later) is eternal!
This time I’d like to share system we have built with friends for cold basement of family house. Clones were supplied by @Dr.Smokalot … You will like it… It is not as easy as previous small cabinet vertical scrog aero, this one is heavy and a lot of work.
If you live in area cold enough you can operate this system continuously for whole year.
Saw-horses are made of square wood 7 x 5 cm. Tubings are cheap polypropylene sewage pipes which you can get in any plumber’s of hobbyist’s shop (homedepot, etc) for about $7 per meter of length. Its 125 mm diameter and sold in lengths of 1, 1.5, 2 and 5 meters. You can cut them for any length you need, just for ending you will need caps and also connector (connector has inlet sockets on both side so you can insert pipe from one side and cap from another). You can glue it but I recommend having it detachable just using seals.
We have opted for 12 plants per tube which is 250 cm long. Our goal was Sea of Green style, mimicking “stadium effect”.
In each tube there are inserted 5 cm water plant baskets which hold plant inserted in clay peebles. It is enough to hold support for plants which as you can see overgrown little bit on our first attempt :).
Along with each pipe leads black hose connected to high pressure deposit pump. This hose is attached with clamps (see pics) to brown pipe and each 30 cm there is drilled hole and sprayer protruding from black hose to tubing. This sprayers ensure mist-like environment in tubing. We have them running 24/7 so there is constant stream of well aired nute solution.
On each saw-horse is 150 cm wide and 250 cm long and there are 7 tubings forming V shape and creating stadium effect. This has worked, but planting uniform clones of single strain is preferred. We had some troubles because of plants in the middle overgrowing the rest and one of disadvantages of this system is that you can’t move the plants throughout the vegetating phase.
Saw-horses were built so there we allow gravity to do its work and drain out tubes into yellow hoses which return water to our reservoir in the middle.
There are total 6 HPS lamps, 600 watt output each. Above each saw-horse there are 3 lamps. Space is roughly 250 cm (length of tubings) times.
Total growing foot print is 250x150 cm each saw-horse, so about 7,5 square meters. This gives us roughly 480 watts per square meter.
In following picture you can see large cooler that we applied after running into problems with heat. Air temps were about 25°C with lights on, which wouldn’t be problem if we were growing in soil or other “solid” medium. But in aeroponics (bubblers) there is limit in about 24°C which you cannot cross otherwise your roots will start to deteoriate… Basically they don’t have enough air, quickly lose their naturally white color and start to decay.
There is additional cooler in the reservoir (see pic). Through transparent lines (these with green line) circulates pure water from cooler to another room in which we have just another 100 liter barrel. That room is cooler and serves just to cool water in nutes reservoir.
Temps are crucial in aeroponics and you will learn that just in the first round. We have learned this the hardway, because unfortunately we have started in winter and summer surprised us.
Don’t even bother to build this if you can’t supply water cooler than 24 degrees Celsius.
Plants are approaching to harvest day, there can be see slight nute overdose (burn on leave tips) and also start of flush (slightly yellowing leaves).
I’ve got question about variety… It was C4 from Chimera Seeds… Very, very killing effect when smoked :)…
That is pretty solid built arena, it must have took few hours to build it properly… Congrats!
btw. leaves looks like slight N deficiency or proper flushing…
I say the same as you @HydroPower! That would have taken me at least three weekends or one whole week at it everyday, CONGRATS @Style!
Come to think of it… I wouldn’t have done it… JAJAJA
Nice grow mate 
Stay safe and grow hard
