For this project I designed a Hydroponic system for your entrance way. designed to work like a NFT flow system with a deep water back up system when the power cuts off.

I will explore the research i have conducted and the process i took to get to the final design.

 IN a Hydroponic system:

The picture above shows a normal NFT system where the water flows through a tube to carry nutrients to the roots of the plants

a Deep water system uses a floating platform to submerge the roots of the plants directly into the water solution for the nutrients.

Initially I struggled to gain access to hydroponic nutrient in the west Rand area close to me, and my seedling needed to start accessing water on this stage so with research I came across a substance called Compost tea to use in gardens. I Wondered if compost tea can be used in a hydroponic system and after a bit of research, I found a study by UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN SYSTEM (2010). This study focused on using compost tea in hydroponic systems to reduce the chemical waste that gets dumped into rivers. Their mixture called for 200g of compost in a stocking bag for 19l water. I adapted this volume to 300g of compost to 30l of water for initial testing

After 24 hours of running the compost tea bin I started by diluting 6l of compost tea to 10l of water. Using this mixture, I created a rough Deepwater system using a polystyrene box and potting plants with sawdust inside to start testing the nutrient value of the water.

After running the setup for a while, I checked on the plants and was pleased to see the plants where still alive and doing well, even thought the leaves leaves where hanging a bit. This can be seen in figure 4.

At this point I got Hydroponic Nutrients and reworked my setup to run both a system with hydroponic nutrients you can buy and a compost tea mixture, one major difference with the compost tea setup is that I left the compost bag in the system so that as the plants use the nutrients the nutrients can be replaced

The compost tea did a lot better that the hydroponic nutrients. I am not entirely sure why this is but after a week of running the setup some plants in the Hydroponic nutrient setup have died while the plants in my compost tea mixture is not only surviving but some have doubled in in size and is very healthy. This confirms for me that not only is Compost tea a viable route to follow for a hydroponic system but can be a lot better, this may be because it is an easier method to add nutrients in the water with a big room of error while the Hydroponic nutrients needs precise measurements and is easier to make a mistake in it.

For a hydroponic system I will need to filter out all the compost to stop the system from blocking up from a buildup a compost in the pipes of the system.

  I tested a method of creating compost tea by having the water falling down on top of the compost through a both filter wool and a filter pad and found the water does not flow through the compost fast enough and just ends up overflowing into the system and this kind of setup will unfortunately not work to create the compost tea in a hydroponic system. With a little bit of thinking I drew inspiration from aquarium pumps that has a filter medium directly before the pump to filter out solid waste. For this I tested out both a filter pad used in aquamarine system and a Water fountain filter pad both gives promising results. I decided to use the normal filter pad due to the price difference between the 2

you can see the first testing I did of the final design system using an NFT flow system with a build in Deepwater system as a backup for load shedding. From this test I learned you I will need to use a flow control valve to make sure there does not flow to much water in to system to stop the overflowing of water. I will need to either make sure the outlets of the water are big enough so that the stones that I use to keep the plants upright does not block it or have a strainer of sorts to keep the stones away from the holes on the system.

Due to leak in the system the initial testing model ran out of water over the first weekend that it ran without anyone noticing. The only place where there where still water left in the system was in the top layer with plants. Because these plants survived over the weekend without any harm, I feel safe to say that my built in back up system works well and that if a black out happens the plants will be able to survive long enough for the power to return