Airlift Window Farm

Empathy Lodge's first attempt at a hydroponic garden. If this works out we hope to grow some more veggies year round.

soon we'll add another tier and a plant, as well as some lights or move the whole thing into a window.
we got the plans off of windowfarms.org. They have downloadable .pdf for this system as well as a larger, more complex one. check it out.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• empathy lodge
• airlift
• hydroponic
• window
• garden

[saeidmomtahan]

@rerikamsamerica Have you figured out the Airlift thing? I'm struggling with the same thing. I think the size of the pump is critical, I'm using a small pump which I need to upsize. Also air-tightness I think is critical

[rerikamsamerica]

Im having trouble getting the airlift thing to work. i have smaller tubing hooked to the pump and then thru to the bottom of some larger black tubing, yet the air lift still fails. what is absolutely necessary to make air lift work? ive been searching for help, i just need to hear from a real person who's done it before!

thanks!

[itisphoto]

Unbelievably wasteful and inefficient. All you need to do is stick the plant in a pot; put the pot in a sunny windowsill and water once a week for all the basil you care to have.

[dbraven]

It looks like it works, but seriously it is so inefficient. The pump probably works on 12V 0,5A so it gives 6W of power consumption per hour of work. A uC controlled system that would sprinkle the roots lets say every 10 min or a dripping system that would pump 1l of nutrients and let it drip for 3-4hours depending on the nozzle diameter.

[clipninja]

great video, thanks for uplading. I found this while trying to research why my airlift wasn't working. I'm at a pretty big disadvantage because i've been living in Korea for a while (hey, the project made it over here at least!) and I can't get the right materials as easily as I can back in the States.

My air pump isn't even putting water up halfway the airlift tube, do you think the problem is the airpump or the tube size? Tube size is close to what it was in the PDF. Thanks a lot!

[timjam74]

you should add another vid since you added another level.

[themintypeach]

Nice job! I'm trying to set up this version of the window farm too. Just out of curiosity, what air pump model did you use?