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Next system

I am looking at several styles of growbeds for my next system. One of the candidates is to use a series of PVC tubes for the growbeds.

Just curious of the experiences of people who have tried this.

How do you measure the cubic feet of grow bed to determine the GB/FT balance?

Can I just add water at the top and let it drain through or do I need to have several place where the water is spread across multiple pipes? The question here is, would the first plants get all the "good" nutrients and the last plants get nothing?

Thanks in advance.

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Permalink Reply by Lance Rose on June 4, 2012 at 12:32pm

I forgot about worms. How do they fare in such a system?

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Permalink Reply by TCLynx on June 6, 2012 at 7:02pm

NO, I don't think using PVC pipes as grow beds is a good idea unless the pipes are big enough for you to crawl through.

Any system I've seen with less than 6" pipes used with gravel in it had extreme root clogging dangers in the pipes.

I did see one system where the guy cut 2' pvc pipes open and used them like ultra long barrels sort of but that took lots of extra work and $$ so not worth it unless you have the pipes for free and lots of cool tools and labor to help you do it.

The nutrients are in solution so the plants all share.

If you are not going to fill the pipes with media, then it is called NFT and you need to filter the water really really good before sending the water to the pipes. Trying to figure out ratios with NFT is pretty pointless since ratios are really more to figure out filtration.

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Permalink Reply by Lance Rose on June 7, 2012 at 9:17am

Thanks. that will save me a bunch of thought and time. You know I don't need to spend too much time thinking!

TCLynx said:

NO, I don't think using PVC pipes as grow beds is a good idea unless the pipes are big enough for you to crawl through.

Any system I've seen with less than 6" pipes used with gravel in it had extreme root clogging dangers in the pipes.

I did see one system where the guy cut 2' pvc pipes open and used them like ultra long barrels sort of but that took lots of extra work and $$ so not worth it unless you have the pipes for free and lots of cool tools and labor to help you do it.

The nutrients are in solution so the plants all share.

If you are not going to fill the pipes with media, then it is called NFT and you need to filter the water really really good before sending the water to the pipes. Trying to figure out ratios with NFT is pretty pointless since ratios are really more to figure out filtration.