my gravity fed air atomizing aeroponic system

[Atomizer]

Stuff as much tubing in as you can and the air should exit at or just below the temperature of the water (or air) in the coolbox. Fit the middle leg of a tee to the outlet tube, top leg goes to the solenoid and the bottom leg to the condensate drain.
It doesnt have to look pretty to be effective

 

[indrhrvest]

so heres my game plan for my full scale system. what do yall think, eventually i want to be able to exert a lot of control over the system using a smart phone. im thinking lots of sensors, cameras and lots of redundancys i can turn on and off. for instance if i had a solenoid go bad i would have a shut off that i can turn off to stop the solenoid and another solenoid that i could switch to using a relay. also i would like to have 3 different timers that i can switch back and forth to if i noticed my current setting were not working.

View attachment 2665537

Here's a few pics of our completed design...

 

[oxanaca]

thats a really clean design indr. alot nicer than the fly by night stuff i put together.
looks like youve cut down from three injectors to two. will ph be controlled from this unit as well?

 

[indrhrvest]

thats a really clean design indr. alot nicer than the fly by night stuff i put together.
looks like youve cut down from three injectors to two. will ph be controlled from this unit as well?

Yeah, we are using the Hanna BL7916. The unit isn't 100% finished yet, I still need to add the accesories and wire everything up. The system is wide enough to support up to 6 injectors. We are just going to use two this go round. Probably going to go with Canna.

 

[oxanaca]

Yeah, we are using the Hanna BL7916. The unit isn't 100% finished yet, I still need to add the accesories and wire everything up. The system is wide enough to support up to 6 injectors. We are just going to use two this go round. Probably going to go with Canna.

i thought you guys would have your own line of fertillizers.

 

[indrhrvest]

i thought you guys would have your own line of fertillizers.

One thing at a time.. baby steps.

 

[oxanaca]

im just finishing my cooler box i ended up using 3/8 inch ID pex. according to the calculator with my current setting of 3.4CFM and 0.375ID the air flow threw the tube is 74 feet per second

it claims that with a starting Psi of 23. 20 feet of lenght . 3.4 CFM and 0.375ID pipe. i will lose 0.68PSI.

 

[Atomizer]

Looks good for a test. I would try to use more tubing as theres loads of room in that big old cooler. I arranged the tubing coil from one end to the other and then looped back over the top to exit on the same side. Cable ties are handy for keeping it in place but you might need a chunk of paving slab to keep the coil submerged when its full of air

 

[oxanaca]

do you think i should run 2 lines in parallel instead of in series, i bought 2, 25 foot rolls. it seems like it would be more efficent. i would have bought 1/2 inch ID but i didnt have the fittings

 

[Atomizer]

Aye, that would be better, 2 coils in parallel would half the velocity (less loss). For 1/2" tube i used 5/8" brass hose barbs with a 1/4" bsp male thread, you have to heat the pipe up to get them in but they dont leak

Another addition to my outdoor collection. Its a 50ft trek up the yard but you cant complain when you get 130,000 lux for free

 

[oxanaca]

i missed the picture some how it looks sweet.

 

[oxanaca]

so a lot of things have happened since my last update. i cant believe i managed to keep all the plants alive for 4 months. i lost the battery charger to my camera so i havent been ablet to take any picutres lately

i ended up building a air cooler. it is 25 feet of 1/2 inch ID pex and there is about 6 gallons of water. unfortunaly it only drops the temp in my chamber 1-3 degrees
heres reasons why i think im not getting results

-im not pushing enough air per misting cycle. im going to try cranking my pressure up to 2.1 bar and lengthening my misting cycle on my #5 nozzle to move more volume
-my chamber doesnt have very good insulation on the top
-i havent insulated the 1/4ID inch tubes leading from the box to the solenoids. im not sure how much this would matter as theres only about 6 feet of em. and the air only spends a fraction of the time in the 1/4 tube compared to the 1/2inch tube.

i had my first system failure. one of my air solenoids doesnt close completely, so there is a minor leak, im going to have to fix it before i try increasing the pressure.

 

[Atomizer]

Might just be a bit of crap stopping it from closing completely, i`d run some water under pressure through it and see if that clears it.
The extra air pressure and extended pulse to counter the drop in flowrate should help cool the chamber. Decent insulation is a must for AA, 2" thick foil faced is pretty good as it also blocks radiant heat and is lightproof.
Make sure you dont leave anything black on the outside of the chamber, i forgot to paint the netpot tops on the new chamber white and they managed to top 50C (122F) in the sun

 

[oxanaca]

so i ended up shutting my system down, and while i never ended up getting any trichoblasts, as jimmy luffnan calls them, intentionally. i think i did do a pretty good job of not killing them for 4 months.
the last 2 weeks or so i was running an EC of over 2.5 just to see if i could kill them and i was unsuccessful

heres some pictures of the end of my "grow". repotted everything and have it on my deck growing nicely no. there is also some pictures of some trichoblast roots i managed to maintain for about two weeks in my system, they were from roots that were in a dry tray that had grown out the bottom of a pot.

 

[oxanaca]

heres a picture of 7 soil solar coleuss i transplanted 10 days before i added solar coleuss to the AA system,sitting nextr to a pot full of aa solar coleuss. seems my peat moss skills are ahead of my AA skills at this time

 

[oxanaca]

the rest of the pictures