kb jb

this maybe a dumb question but whats is it? ive never heard of it.

420bill

A way to grow plants without soil or a hydroponic set up. The plants are held above a system that constantly sprays the roots with water mixed with nutrients

Sensi

could anyone explain an inexpensive method to create an aeroponic system?

peace,
sensi

Internode

Sensi,
The phrase inexpensive and aeroponic usually do not go together too well. Aero tends to be very expensive. The traditional way of doing it ( such as Gen Hydroponics ) is to use a big pipe (say 6" diameter) and lay small bore piping inside that has spray spreaders mounted in line on it. The spray spreader merely has to be a small bore hole spraying out onto a small plastic nodule that simply gets in the way of the jet of nutrients, causing the spray. The plants are suspended in the top of the pipe and the feed line runs along the bottom of the pipe. That way the roots are suspended over the spray points. I know this because I used to work in the Hydroponics business. Personally, I would not use aero for the following reasons. The General Hydroponics set-up is bloody expensive! The way in which Gen hydro have set it up the growing pods are too close together for crops that have any kind of stem (their press shots always show them being used with lettuces)and so the system is proportionally much more expensive as half of it is unusable. The spray nodules get blocked easily and are impossible to get to after about 4 weeks when the pipe is one solid mass of roots. Any plant that misses its feed will fall over and die in about 3 hours. Add to that the almost round the clock vigilance required due to the speed of the growth and I think you have to ask the question as to whether or not the couple of weeks that may be saved over the course of a crop is really that important when it has cost you loads and made you a prisoner in your own house for over 3 months? Personally I wouldn't, and in the shop where I used to work we had so many of these bloody units brought back in for sale for whatever we would give them for it, it was untrue. We once bought a 78 pod system (over $3000) for under $200 as the person had lost everything after the pump screwed up while they were working, and they just wanted rid of it.
However, aero is a very interesting system to use if you understand the principles involved. If you are aware of the different growth rates that you can expect for different systems it can work. For example, soil is snail pace and takes a couple of weeks longer than hydro, whic is like public bus pace. Aeroponics is like Ferrari pace, with prospective problems appearing and taking hold very quickly. If you can anticipate as many possible eventualities in the Cannabis growth cycle as possible you should have good results, and save acouple of weeks on the hydro arrangement. The supposed increase in yield rarely happen in the aero world I find, with an increase in the number of plants having to be grown to get back the same as in hydro. And if you think that plants have a tendency to topple in NFT systems, wait until you see them fall in an aero system!
If youi could suss a better arrangement than the one that Gen Hydro sell (not too difficult if you put your mind to it) you could have some fantastic results. Try using polystyrene topping to suspend the plants through to enable you to get at any spray points that clog. Get a good pump with the capacity not to spray the one end of the pipe more heavily than the other (closed points in the pipe can artificially increase the pressure in the main feed pipes to get this to happen). Check your design well before you implement it, due to the aforementioned problems of access whence underway. God this is turning into a rant. (i.e you root system will grow over 6" in a normal week so if a problem becomes apparent with a dripper in week 5, with a tube containing 30 plants, then you will be faced with untangling 75 feet (25 metres) of roots). Personally i have never found a design on the net for aero that I would be happy would avoid masses of root disease. Perhaps you would be better advised to invest in General Hydroponics clone tub that operates on the aeroponics principle. I have used one of these with fantastic results before. The roots of the cutting develop after about 4 days and then go mental until about day 10 when I usually would remove them as each cutting has over 10" of white, glistening roots.
If you are really keen to do it your way then maybe use run-to-waste rather than a recirculating system.
Whatever, just keep us posted as to how you get on.

Tp

Hey, could you use a fish tank for this?

Super_Woman

ha-ha-ha!!! thats funny! they wrote a serious responce with details and you.....ha-ha-ha!!! im sorry i hpoe i havent offended you. taht aw a stonne r response on m,y part

Cassius

What happened to internode? Sounds quite knowlegable. Still around by some other alias? Hmm.

~C~