Small Fish, Big Pond

Continued.

I didn’t like the drains on the end caps. It worked great at first but it was too easy to bump the drain hose and dislodge the end cap; then they leaked. So I went back to the original method, just drill a hole in the bottom, beneath the drain access hole. This is also where the feeder lines will come out since the caps will be on both ends.

Then I glued a garden hose adapter to the bottom to attach the drain lines to. You don’t really need that but I thought it would allow a bit more flexibility in how the planters can be placed. The alternative is to just glue a PVC piece over the hole, drill a hole in the top of the reservoir and drop line up the PVC pipe over the hole (that’s how I did it last time).

A bead of plumbers putty will be used to seal the end caps. Just pretend you’re in kindergarten making snakes.

Then put the bead in the bottom of the cap. It doesn’t need to go all around because the nutrient level will never be more than a quarter of an inch up.

Here’s what it looks like on the inside when the caps are pushed on.

Filtering was a problem on the last attempt. Here I have a simple aquarium pump and a cheap aquarium bio-filter from the pet store.

Carve a hole halfway into the filter so it can go over the intake.

Here it is fitted on.

And you can see it inside when all bottled up.

Here are all the components for the manifold that will split the pump into the 4 feeder lines.

And again all glued together. The black end pieces were just screwed on so that they can be disassembled to get to the filters inside.

Now we can immerse the pump in water, position the drains over the reservoir and give it all a test. Looking straight down you can see how holes sprat at the planter positions.

It’s a bit hard to see but on the right of the netpot you can see the stream of water spraying in.

And the view looking down the whole system. The streams may not spray with much force but they don’t need to. As it is they already pump much more solution into the system than they need. But unlike a drip garden this will drain out one end and be recycled back into the lines.

We finally had some sunny weather to go outside and show everything in action. The system is complete setup and running, the only thing missing was the cover to a the reservoir and some plants to start growing.

The planters can be doubled up if length is an issue.

It can even be bent to go on the corner of a balcony. The PVC legs are handmade, more professional looking ones can be bought online or like I did last year you can just flip over buckets or use cinderblocks. The important part is that one be at least an inch taller than the other so nutrient drains easily and not pool (which can cause rot).

When hauling this out of the garage and onto the back deck I realized how well it all packs up. The legs, pump, drain hoses, and end caps fit in the reservoir with room to spare. The small tote on top has the nutrient fertilizers and pH balance solutions in it. All of this can easily be carried around and stashed in any storage space for the winter.

Although it snowed here for the last 3 days it’s the last snow of the year and next week I should be able to clean up a space outside to put this and get a few plants in it.

I’m going to round up all the receipts I have and figure exactly what the costs was for this. I’m estimating about $100-$120, and that’s only because of the $40 pump and $30 for the 8ft vinyl post.