Well, more pictures soon.  I will be doing the plumbing next.  Have fun and good growing,  chuck.  Like live music?  Check out my www.bluesrus.com site

NEW WING CONSTRUCTION SHOTS I am sticking pretty much with the original design used last year.  The project is the  addition of three  more 4 inch plastic irrigation pipe cup trough growers.  The cups I use are large 24 oz styrofoam Dixie cups.

This is a shot of the existing cup system.  The new one will be basicaly the same.

These 10 foot 4 inch plastic irrigation pipes were purchased for around $2.50 each.  I overlapped 2X4s to make up three rails to mount the pipe on.  I placed blocks underneath the upper ends of the pipes to make feeding the nutrients into the pipe easier.

Here, I have used some wire to temporarely hold the pipes to the rails.  Later, I will use duct tape to secure the pipes to the rails.

I will block up the tank about 10 inches above the ground because I want to use gravity flow from this tank to the pump tank/

The whole system. The top float system which is also the upper nurient tank is a childs swimming pool.  The trough system uses a plastic tarp stretched over wood rails to form troughs.  The troughs have course larger gravel in the bottom and finer baked clay granuals above.  The operation is that nutrients squirt out from tiny holes onto the top of the troughs and then flows down to the courser gravel where it flows down to the bottom where the nutrients run into the pump tank where a sump pump sends the nutrients back up toward the main nutrient tank.  On the way however, the return line is split to divert nutrients to the top of the irrigation pipes.  The pipes have been cut to allow the large cups to be inserted into the pipe.  Cups are cut on the bottom to form a flap to allow nutrients to flow into the growing medium in the cups.  I have used perlite and the baked clay.  Both work well, but the baked clay can be reused over and over.  Smooth pond gravel works fine too.

This picture of the trough portion of the system is very easy to use.  Roots do not attatch to the clay granuales, but the density and heavy weight allows plants to anchor themselves very well.

Well, more pictures soon.  I will be doing the plumbing next.  Have fun and good growing,  chuck.  Like live music?  Check out my www.bluesrus.com site