Urban Survivalists

This week we are getting pretty serious about our growing setup. We had initially thought about going a similar direction as Kellbot here, here, here, here, and here, but reconsidered. We figured we might as well go hole-hog and build a full test stand with two sheet-type grow platforms. What resulted–in its unfinished stages–is shown below.

Our initial frame sans trays which we have made but not installed.

Our idea came from the videos we had posted last week of various commercial operations. They had frames like ours–even seemed to be made of PVC–with grow trays leaning against the top center pole like little green roofs. Since we eventually wanted to grow enough food to sustain ourselves we went for the big setup first. Let’s hope this doesn’t bite us in the butt!

Frame

Here’s our build breakdown:

Materials:

• Eleven 2 ft segments of 1″ PVC (any schedule).
• Four 2 ft segments of 3/4″ PVC (any schedule).
• Eight PVC corners (1″ x 1″ x 1/2″) with the 1/2″ threaded. (It was all we could find!)
• Eight PVC male 1/2″ threaded to 3/4″ slip adapters.
• Two 1″ 3-way Tees.
• Two 1″ 90 degree elbows.

Tools:

• A hacksaw
• A measuring tape

Steps:

1. Gather up all your stuff from a local store or order online as in pictures 1-5.
2. Assemble the eight corner pieces with the eight 1/2″ threaded adapter pieces as in pictures 6-8.
3. Assemble the base as in pictures 9-10.
4. Attach the 3/4″ uprights to the base as in pictures 11-12.
5. Attach the four remaining corner assemblies to the tops of the 3/4″ uprights as in pictures 13-14.
6. Put two 1″ bars between two adjacent upright posts as in pictures 15-16.
7. Cut 1-3/8″ off of the two remaining 2 ft lengths of 1″ pipe as in pictures 17-20.
8. Now cut the two pipes in half, 11-5/16″, as in pictures 21-23.
9. Assemble the top support rail as shown in pictures 24-29.
10. Done!

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11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29

Growing Mats

With the frame done, we wanted to move on to our growing mats. The basic idea is that we will have plant holes through two pieces of plexi-glass that will be zip tied together at one end and slung over the center bar of our frame. Filter cloth will be attached to the outside of these panels and the plants will sprout directly on/through the filter cloth (we hope). Check the video we posted a link to last week for reference. We were going to use a couple sheets of opaque plastic so that the roots would be in darkness…that is, until we took a close look at the video–we keep bringing it up! The video showed no measures being taken to keep the roots in darkness, so we figured to heck with it! Our roots will be given the light treatment and we’ll see how things play out.

The sheets we chose to use were 20″ x 36″ plexi-glass which fits on our frame nicely. The thickness didn’t matter too much as it wasn’t going to take much load–hopefully more later as we get heavier and more awesome plants growing!–and we consider this thing a quick lash-up. Holes were laid out in a pattern we fitting three rows of 2″x2″ spacing, three rows of 3″x3″ spacing, and two rows of 4″x6″ spacing. These were then drilled out using standard wood spade bits and lots of tedious work which would have been alleviated much if you have a laser cutter to work with. See the picture sequence below for more detail. We aren’t going into this bit yet as we aren’t sure this is what we want to do. The frame is pretty solid but this part, not so much.

1	2	3	4	5	6

Here’s how we imagine things working. We’ll sprout our seeds over a separate container running a fogger so that the mats can lay flat and the seeds won’t fall off. Once the seeds have sprouted and grown through the mat, we will transfer the whole rig to the frame where we will seal the root chamber off so that the fog we blow into it will be trapped and not wasted. Once the roots have been saturated during a given watering event, the excess water will collect in the bottom of the root chamber, in our case on a sheet of clear plastic.  Then it will run off into a bucket for collection. The bucket will feed into the fogger chamber. The fogging chamber, here’s a shocker, creates the fog which is then blown through a flexible tube into the root chamber for the next watering event. We’ve sketched out a picture below for your edification.

Please don’t tease us about the drawing…it’s special to us!

We’ve also set up a small test rig to verify that the seeds will sprout given just moisture and a filter cloth. There is no nutrient solution in the setup you see below but that isn’t going to be necessary since we just want to see the plants sprout. Once they have come to life, we will promptly kill them for science…hehe.

And here’s how the trays will go on the frame:

And over this will go the filter cloth.

Fan Unboxing

We also got our supposedly waterproof fan from NewEgg. We must be some kinda n00bs and idiots to have took the packaging literally on this one. It looks like any other case fan, maybe a little smoother rotation. Anyway, the pictures are below.

Next Week

We will begin work on the control electronics so that the fogger can be on a timer for our system. Also, work on the fogger box will commence so that it is a nice neat package separate from the frame.

Thats it for now. Be safe and sustainable!

P&S