Before i started setting up my grow, i wasnt sure on how to water the plants !
i'd read a lot about NFT, Flood & Drain, bubblers & drip feeds.

anyway, i decided on making my own dripper system

i got 2 micro kits from ebay costing £8 + p&p

[attachmentid=59844]

2 hose connectors £2.60 + p&p

[attachmentid=46125]

25m of 4mm tubing £ 5 + p&p

1 maxijet 1000 lph water pump £ 4 + p&p

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1 koi carp manifold £ 5.50 + p&p

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2m of 13mm tubing from B&Q £ 3

1 20ltr plastic storage box £ 4

1 tube of marine sealant £ 3

2 32"x16" plastic storage containers £ 10

1 pack of 100 cable ties £ 1

1 tube of super glue £ 2

a grand total of around £ 57

with the 32"x16" plastic trays, i drilled a hole in both so that when they were side to side,
the 2 holes were next to each other, i then tried fitting the hose connectors making sure they fitted,
if you have to widen the hole, use a sharp knife to slowly widen the hole,
when it screws in ok, i took it back out & used lots of marine sealant to seal any gaps,
then screwed it all back together, i gave it 24 hours to set.

i then cut a length of 13mm tubing to connect the pump to the manifold, using cable ties to hold everything in place,

then run the 4mm tubing around your tray/storage container
( you should add a lot of extra tubing between the plants in case you need to make any other adjustments later on )

then cut the 4mm tubing where your going to put the inline drippers & use the pot stakes to hold them in place.

i ran my tubing in a loop attaching both ends to the manifold,
( you can get 4mm end caps if you only want to run the tubing in single lengths )
but i found out when i was testing the system that the loop method was a bit better at circulating the water feed.

heres some other tips on setting up this system !

before you attach the manifold, you should test it for leaks, i used super glue to plug any gaps around the taps.

i used a cable tie to hold the manifold out of the water as super glue breaks down if it gets wet.

when your attaching the 4mm tubing, it helps if you can heat it up a bit either using boiling water or in my case, a lighter
this ensures a tight fit when the tubing cools down !!

heres some pics of it running

[attachmentid=46133]

What a friend of mine did was take the correx cover off an un-used nft tank, put his pots on their, and set the pump up with a dripper. Water just runs down the shelf, as it would with nft, but you can move the pots around, etc. thought it was a neat idea myself.

Hi,
that's a similar system to what i made myself,i was given a couple of old nft trays,so i made a wooden frame to hold them popped 6 10 ltr pots on top filled with pebbles and an old storage box for the nutes i also added a couple of airstones to mine,i must say am impressed with the results bin vegging blueberry's for 3 weeks now on 20 inches just about to start flowering phase.[attachmentid=59836]

are you sure uve priced your pump right mate? unless im mistaken those are about 30 quid unless urs is different?

very good if it really was 4 quid

nice system mate, i myself have a flood and drain setup but it is like yours. i have my res's directly below the trays in my veg system which has 6 pots per tray with pebbles in them and the tray is then flooded feeding the 6 pots. every 3 hours. reason for pots is to keep the roots seperate, although they are coming out the holes now so I put pebbles in the trays aswell

yep, £4 + £2.50 P&P, it was brand new in the box too.

i didnt realise they cost £30 tho

where from ?

ebay, must have been lucky

Nice job mate, very rewarding bit of DIY
bloody good price for the pump as well
cheers
Baz

havent updated this thread in a while, heres some better pics when it was up n runnin & some things i did wrong.



i vegged them in 3" rockwool cubes & the trays are 36"X20" plastic storage boxes.




the above pic gives you a better idea of the res set up.




heres the plants potted in 6" pots & filled with clay pebbles.

the biggest mistake i found was not using either black tubing or white sheeting to block the tubes from the uvs, algea galore

the 2 bits outlined is the thermo probe & where i put the drainage holes, i cut them in the bottom middle corners so that when the trays where tilled a bit, they drained no problem !