Hydroponic Food Factory

Step 10 Cap the ends

Push the caps onto the pipe, and mark how far it goes.

You only want to glue in one half of the cap pair at a time, as the hose will push outwards and pop the cap off otherwise.

Line the caps up so the drain hose is at the bottom, and the other end goes to the top of the next pipe.
This way, when the water flows, it will splash around more, dissolving more oxygen into the water, which is important for the plant's roots.

The blue stuff I'm using is a plumber's cement.
A friend gave it to me, it is about a decade out of date, but we aren't doing anything too important here, so it does the job just fine.

You want to paint it on liberally on both the pipe, and the inside of the end cap.

Push the end cap on, and make sure you have the hose lined up right, hold the end cap firm for about 5 minutes while it sets.


You need to give it a day to fully dry properly before you complete the other join.

Comments

[marcwolf]

Very nice Idea. I was thinking of something similar but using normal guttering rather than pipes. One trick is not to put the outlet at the bottom of the endcap but about 3/4 of the way up. That way you will always have some liquid in the pipe (no brown leaves), and the system relies more on top-up and overflow. The inlet tops up the level of the liquid, and any excess overflows down to the next level and so on down to your sump. Hope the idea helps. Marc

[NathanWilliams]

With normal guttering, make sure it won't react badly with the nutrients, as the salts might corrode the metal, or the metal might affect the nutrient mix. Also, be careful not to drown the roots. If you have the water that high, you might want to consider adding some airstones (like for a fish tank), to keep the water full of oxygen.