Making Hydroponic System Plans At Home

When you decide to start hydroponics as a hobby one thing that might put you off is the cost. Like any hobby it requires a little investment on your part. There is still a way to indulge in this hobby even if you don’t feel like you have much spare cash to indulge in this hobby. Homemade hydroponic system plans are a great way to save cost.

While you might not find that you have the impressive crop yields that are associated with hydroponics, you will still be able to get a decent crop yield when you build hydroponics system at home.

The Hand Watered Bucket

The hand watered bucket is one of the easiest hydroponic system plans that you could decide to build on your own. It requires very little equipment and is very cheap to build. Both very attractive features of any hydroponic system plans.

Use a five gallon bucket that has been cleaned with vinegar, and then some soap and water. Drill some holes on the sides of the bucket, the holes need to be around an inch and a half above from the bottom of the bucket. You will probably need about 6 to 10 holes, the bigger the holes are the more likely it is for the growing medium to dry out.

If you find that your growing medium does not hold together well, or you are particular about the area around your hydroponic system plans being clean, then you might want to have a little window screen on the inside of the bucket. This stops the growing medium from falling out. Hold it in place and use a little silicone sealant to glue it to the bucket. Wait for this to dry before adding any growing medium to your hydroponic system plans.

Next all you need to do is add the growing medium to the bucket. Before adding the growing medium to your hand watered bucket hydroponic system plans you will need to treat the growing medium. This means either washing or soaking the growing medium, depending on the type of medium you have chosen.

Mix up the hydroponic nutrients that you want to use, and check the pH level. This is important to make sure that you have the right nutrient levels for your plants. Then add this solution to the bucket until you see a little water seeping out of the holes you have drilled in the bucket. Remember that you should pour the nutrients in very slowly.

A Common Choice: Hydroponic Drip System

There are different places where hydroponic system plans can be obtained, either for free or for a price. In addition, there are companies that will sell hydroponic drip systems pre-made so that the individual does not have to try to follow a plan to get the system built. Building a system from scratch, although fairly simple with most systems, still leaves the possibility of not doing something correctly which will make the system ineffective. Buying a pre-made system allows the individual to have a product that is guaranteed to work for years to come.

Wick versus Drip

There are two systems that are most commonly made from scratch and those are the wick system and the drip hydroponic system. The wick system is very simply constructed. It uses a tray that holds the plants which sits on top of the reservoir that holds the water and nutrient solution. These two pieces are held together by a wick which allows the water solution to transmit these elements into the tray with the plants. The down side to this system is that there is not a way to regulate the amount of solution that is getting to the plants, which means that a small amount of plants can be grown at one time.

The drip hydroponic system is built in much the same way with the tray that sits on top of the reservoir. In this system, however, instead of using wicks to transmit the solution to the plants, there is a submerged pump system that transmits the solution to the plants at whatever rate the person sets on the meter. The solution goes into the tray a drip at a time so that there is a constant flow of nutrients without the plants becoming overly submerged like in other systems.

There are benefits to using the drip hydroponic system, such as the fact that the individual does not have to monitor the system as often as other systems since the pump and timer handles everything automatically. In addition, since the flow rate can be regulated, there can be larger plants grown as well as larger numbers of plants grown at a time in the system. One down side to using the drip hydroponic system is that it is more expensive than the wick system since the pump for the system has to be bought as well. However, this is a popular system, especially for use in greenhouses where larger numbers of plants are grown at a time.