Hey guys welcome back to my channel. So today I'm going to share with you the walkthrough and build process for my first attempt at this freestanding hydroponic grow garden tower. Now lately I've been crazy obsessed with growing my own vegetables for consumption.
So one thing I noticed aside from the time spent maintaining my garden was the cost to maintain it. Not only do you constantly have to buy soil, fertilizer, nutrients, and other things to maintain your garden, but it also takes up a lot of space. And because I live in a place with constantly changing weather, I can only harvest my crops seasonally.
Now I did set up an indoor garden in my garage, but again that takes up a lot of space, maintenance, and even attracts annoying little insects in a space where I don't want any of that. So because of that, I started to research alternatives that were cheaper, more efficient, and more convenient. And I came across hydroponics.
Now there are a lot of companies out there that are building and selling hydroponic grow gardens similar to this one but they're crazy expensive charging upwards of 400 to 600 dollars for one of these towers. I figured that this was something that shouldn't be too complicated that I could tackle and started working on building my own. I figured I could build it at a fraction of the cost and save money not only on the build but also on soil and water at the same time and ongoing.
It would also save space since I'm planting vertically instead of horizontally across an open space and from what I've heard and read vegetables are healthier and taste much better through these hydroponic gardens. Anyway stay tuned and we'll walk through the entire build process and see how it turns out. Now from looking online and doing a little bit of research, these hydroponic systems generally cost about $400 to $600 if you purchase a professionally built system.
Now I'm going to try and build one based on readily available materials that I can purchase from Lowe's and Home Depot at a fraction of the cost. Now most of the materials I bought include a ton of PVC piping and accessories, and from what I've seen, that's really all you need, aside from a small water pump that helps water continuously flow and recycle through the system. So for this DIY project I decided to buy this 12 inch miter saw from Cobalt.
Now I do have a 7 inch miter saw from Cobalt as well, but because I wanted to make sure that I could do cuts in one slice, I wanted to make sure that I got the bigger one so I could do projects faster. So during this build I'm also going to be unboxing and reviewing this new saw that I bought. So let's start by unboxing this.
Okay, so this is going to be the new 12-inch cobalt miter saw that I'm going to be using for this project. So to start, my primary structure for holding all the plant pots is going to be this 4 inch PVC pipe. Now I'm going to cut this down to about 5 feet.
Now I think 5 feet is a good enough height because it'll still allow me to see over the top of the structure if needed when it's standing upright. Now this 10 foot tube costs roughly $12 and it'll allow me to build two systems if I wanted to. Now the diameter of this 4 inch PVC pipe is 36 centimeters all around which means I can cut about three potholes in each row.
I can even technically cut up to four holes but what I want to do is make sure that I give each pot enough space for the root system to expand without crowding the inner tube and also impacting the flow of water. So first things first I'm going to measure and cut this large four inch PVC pipe down to the five feet that I need for this project. Now for this project I'm also switching out the saw blade, the one that's specifically made for cutting PVC pipe and other plastics. I also decided to make a template that I could use to accurately outline where I should be cutting the potholes for the tower.
Since the 4 inch PVC measures 34 centimeters in diameter around the PVC pipe, this allows me to cut the potholes in the right way. This allows me to comfortably place three to four pots on each row. For my template, I planned for three pots per row.
Now for the template itself, I drew three long lines about 10 centimeters apart and I drew a line for the cutout on each of those lines that measured five centimeters with the three long lines as a center point. I then measured another 10 centimeters down from the first row of three cutout lines to create another staggered row of cutout lines which were also spaced 10 centimeters apart. And then I repeated this for a third row. Now this spacing ensures that there is enough distance between each of the pots for root and plant growth.
Now if you're interested in getting a copy of this template let me know in the comment section below and I'll upload a copy to a location where everyone can access it. Now my recommendation is to use a clear laminate material however during the filming of this video all I had was this blue poster board. So this guide that I made is going to be handy because I plan to make a whole bunch more of these hydroponic tubes. And because I'm using this guide, it ensures that every hydroponic tube that I make is identical to the last one.
So the way I designed this guide is I made the top portion longer. you hit your first slit than the bottom which is a little bit shorter. The reason for that is because when I put it on the tube itself I want to make sure there's enough clearance from the top so that I can put the cap on as well as let the water have enough room to flow down and hit every single pot. So the way I'm going to use this is I'm just going to go along and use my pencil and you go through the slits and trace every slit on the guide.
Trace every slit on the guide all the way around. This gives me a good guide where I can cut my holes using my miter saw. And a pencil is good enough because a pencil can write on these PVC pipes. So I'm just going to go around and draw all my lines using the guide itself.
That'll ensure that the spacing between all of the slits is perfect and uniform. And when I'm done with that, all I have to do is shift it down. and match the next set of lines.
Find the set of lines and then match it. And it'll all line up so that the lines are perfect and then I'll know where to start my next set. So I just got to go around and mark it and it'll be uniform around.
And I do so again, move down until I find my lines again and then mark it as well. Now when I get near the bottom of this tube, I do want to make sure I give enough space because water is going to be collected and fall down here. So I don't want to make these lines all the way down to the bottom. I'd say four sets is good enough to fully maximize the tube and that will give you plenty of holes for the hydroponics garden. So when using a five foot pole you can probably go 11 to 12 rows and make either 33 or 36 pods.
which is a lot. You do want to make sure you keep some distance from the ground because you don't want your plants touching the ground and also you want to make space for you know whatever reservoir you're going to be holding the water in when you stick this tube into it. So for this build I decided to go 11 rows which gives me about 33 pies which should be plenty for what I have to at least start with.
Now as you can see if I bring it closer I have all the markings. all even across the tube itself. So the guide really does help. So next I'm going to take my completely marked PVC tube back to my miter saw and I'm going to cut along all the lines that I made.
Not completely through the pipe itself, but just along the lines. And just deep enough so that it cuts through for the length of the lines that I made. Now you don't necessarily have to use a miter saw, you can use a PVC pipe saw.
But I prefer to use the miter saw because it's much quicker. Okay and when you're done you should have a PVC pipe with a bunch of slits in them that are evenly spaced. Okay so for this next part I'm going to be doing this on my garage floor because I don't want to burn any of the wood that I'm working on or any of the tabletops that I'm working on. So since I've never done this I'm gonna do this on my garage floor.
So what you're gonna need is a heat gun or some kind of heating element that's gonna melt the PVC a little bit and make it a little bit more flexible so you can work with it. So in this case I have a heat gun. Then you'll also need a bottle. So I'm going to use this Teavana bottle because it's about the size of a two inch PVC which is the ring that I'm going to put inside to make sure that I can hold the little pods but this should be adequate for my two inch pods. I've also got a little bowl of cold water with a rag in it so that I could use it to cool down the PVC pipe so it can retain its shape once I've got it formed.
Okay so let's turn on the heat gun. We're just going to focus it right on the PVC pipe itself. So you'll notice the PVC pipe starts to bend a little. Just want to try to avoid burning it. What you're going to do is you're going to stick the bottle in.
And first attempt not that good so as you can see the PVC tore so hopefully it'll get better. And you know as I'm doing this in future builds I'm probably gonna sand this pipe down so it's got a nice clean finish so it doesn't have all this text around it. Just these words around it as well. So cool it down and it's hard.
So once you've got the main 4 inch PVC pipe complete for the pods, the next thing we're going to work on is the water delivery system for this hydroponics tower. So for that we're going to need a half inch PVC pipe and we're going to measure about six feet for this pipe because we want it to be taller than the hydroponic tower itself. So we'll mark the six feet.
Okay, so we're gonna take this to cut. We're gonna prop it up a bit so it hits actually hits the blade. So the way this hydroponics tower works is that we're going to take this compressed coco core tablet and we're going to expand it with water. It should expand to about an inch or a little bit over an inch.
We're going to take the seed that we want to plant and put it inside here and then we're going to take the entire tablet with the seed and place it into one of these plant pods. We're going to place the plant pods in the tower itself and once that's done we're going to take this half inch tube that we cut and we're going to connect it to this standard water pump. Now this water pump is made for both fish tanks and hydroponics and it should provide enough pressure to push water at least 10 feet. And since our hydroponics tower is only five feet, this should be more than enough to add enough pressure to push water through all the way to the top.
And how this works is it's this one half inch tube connected to the pump is going to essentially be in the center of this. And it's a little taller because we have both another attachment and a cap that we're going to put on it. Plus this also needs to hover above a little bit.
Okay and so just to give you an example, let's do a live unboxing here. So this is kind of like a DIY and unboxing video. So this is the pump itself. It's a 24 watt pump. Comes with your instruction manual and registration card.
Comes with a bunch of little... attachments for different sizes and anything but we aren't actually going to use these and then it comes with the pump itself which is not too bad so it's you know your typical front which pulls in all the water and it pumps it up through the top so the way we're going to connect this half inch PVC pipe to this pump we've got this half inch connector with a screw adapter on it which fits perfectly to the top of this pump And then from there you take... the end of your PVC pipe and you just push it into the that itself so it holds it up pretty sturdy it's pretty tight this portion of the pump goes to the reservoir and then this tube goes through the center of the hydroponic tower itself The reason why it's a little higher is because we're going to have some attachments to it. Let me move back a little bit. And at the top the water is just going to spout out.
And we also got this drain tube so we can connect it at the top and it'll go all the way down to keep this thing from flopping around. But basically what happens is the water is going to flow down. It's going to spout through the top and flow down because the pods are exposed on the inside.
The water is just going to continuously keep the coco. core and the seed moist and then the root system grows within the within the tower itself so the way we put the drain in there is we have this female connector for the four inch. We just put this through the top here. And we're gonna drill, we're gonna cut some of these so it'll fit the PVC pipe so it goes all the way down.
It sits inside. Cut another small piece of the four inch PVC pipe which is gonna go on the other end. And then because the drain is in there, we're gonna put this cap on the top so we don't get a lot of debris inside.
but it still spouts water. So as you can see this is going to be pretty tall compared to you when it's done. At the bottom we're going to drill a hole into a reservoir and we're going to place this on there.
So it's always going to be feeding and recirculating the water as it goes through. So from a cost perspective you're saving on water definitely because it's just recycling the water over and over again and the plant only keeps as much water as it needs for it to grow. because the root system is always constantly hanging on the inside of the tower itself.
So that's what it looks like. So we're now going to go and prepare the reservoir so we can support this entire tower. Okay so now that I've got my main hydroponics tower as well as the water feeding tube, the next thing I want to do is add a drain cover to it.
And what this does is it just spreads out the water. Because water is going to spout out through the top of this water feeding tube and just trickle down this entire tube system. This just helps to spread it a little bit more evenly. And what I did was simply take some wire cutters and clip out the center of the drain cover so that I have a hole which I can slide onto the top of the tube, through the top of the tube. all the way down so it looks just like that.
So once all the major components for the hydroponics towers is complete I want to next focus on the water reservoir and base itself. So currently I'm going to use this bucket which I picked up from Lowe's for a few dollars. Now you can use any size bucket you think is adequate but remember the larger the water reservoir the more sturdy the system is. For my build though, I just decided to use this medium-sized bucket because it's got enough surface area to stabilize and support the tower and enough capacity to continuously store and circulate water without needing to constantly refill this.
And as I continue to update and improve the design of this hydroponics tower, I'll probably look for designer or more decorative water reservoir solutions. But for now, this bucket should be good enough. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this bucket and I'm going to drill a hole through the top which will allow me to attach this hydroponics tower to the bucket itself. So what I've gone and done is I've gotten a 4-3-8 hole saw and attached it to my power drill.
But we'll see if we can drill a 4-inch hole in the top of this bucket that we can fit this onto. So I'm not sure if this method is the best method but we're going to try it nonetheless. So we want to make sure we center this perfectly because we want to drill a hole in the center of this bucket so it gets the most support. Across and around all sides.
So it's not perfectly centered, but I think it's good enough for our needs. So what I'm going to do to make this a little bit more secure is I'm going to take this male and female 4 inch PVC adapter and I'm going to connect it to both sides of this lid which will give it a lot more support and make it a little bit more sturdy. thread this through the bottom and it's got screw threads so this that helps a lot too and this will create an airtight connection which i can then support later with some with pvc cement if i wanted to So basically it looks like that. Then I'm going to screw this on the top and that just kind of clamps it down. It makes it really secure.
And again this is only a temporary solution so it doesn't need to look pretty or anything. As I'm perfecting this I'm going to get some... that's a little bit more decorative and looks a lot better and easier to accommodate.
So then you put your lid on it and there you have your water reservoir. And what you do after that is you take your hydroponics tower, Well before we do that we're going to put the pump in so you probably should do that before you put the lid on. You're going to take your lid you're going to feed your water feeding tube through it.
Tube through the system. You're going to want to drill a hole for this power outlet as well. And then allow me to slide the power cord through here.
So Okay, so now that I've got my base set up with the water feeding tube through it and the pump inside, I'm just going to put that on the floor and then I'm going to take the hydroponics tower, the actual tower itself, and I'm going to put this through the top here. cure it on the bottom because it fits right into the four inch hole that I created. And there we go your hydroponics tower.
And I'm probably going to want to reinforce the base a little bit because this is a little bit wobbly and as plants start to grow this is going to become heavy and it's going to lean, start leaning. So what I'll probably do is I'll add a wood base to make it just a little bit more sturdy because the plastic lid is pretty flimsy right now. So once that's done I'm going to take this strain And then this female extender adapter and this four inch PVC that I cut down to about five inches.
I'm going to put this at the top here and then I'm going to take this drain, feed it through the top here, bring that all the way down. as far as I can because what's good about this female adapter is it's got a little ledge inside which will keep the drain steady and it'll keep this water feeding tube from moving around and secure it from the top. Then I'll put this 4 inch PVC that I cut down to 5 feet, 5 inches, put that on the top.
And then I'll take this 4 inch drain lid and attach it to the top. This just keeps the water from spilling over the top if it shoots up at there. It also acts as a reflector for the water so that it can evenly distribute against the water drain itself so that every hole gets covered as the water is falling. down.
So this is a fully closed system and the only way that debris or bugs can get in, which you know probably won't be as much since there's no dirt, is going to be through these potholes themselves. So that's the tower system. And now all I have to do is get some seeds, put them in the coco core, put the coco core and the seeds inside the pods, put the pods in the tower and it should work. So this is the hydroponics system. So let's go ahead and fill it up and see how it works.
Once you've filled all the holes with pods containing the coco core and seeds, it's simply just a matter of checking in and watching your vegetables and plants grow. Now since water is constantly being recycled, you'll probably only need to refill this reservoir every one to two months. Now one thing you'll have to to consider is since you're essentially removing and replacing soil which provides all the nutrients that plants need to survive you'll also need to add a liquid nutrient to the water as a substitute so for this i found this liquid plant food specifically designed for hydroponic garden at Amazon and it costs roughly around $29 which is the same liquid food that the more professional companies are using.
All you need to do is add to your water a small amount of this liquid every couple of weeks. Now for this setup it's essentially about 42 milliliters which is roughly the size of this small cup and you're ready and good to go. So to do this all you have to do is open this up and this is essentially a brand new bottle. Fill the bottle up.
This little cup up all the way to the top and it's this brown color. Remove the pod and add it to the solution or add it to your liquids. And that's it. Through regular recycling of the water it's going to mix with the water so it can feed all of your plants as it drips down from the top.
So now that we've got this all set up we'll check back in about a week to see if there's any progress in growth. Now it's still a bit chilly out, so I'm not sure if that's going to have an impact on the growth of these vegetables. In addition to that, I'll be working on an even better design for a larger 4-tier hydroponic tower that should be more stable and efficient.
I hope to have that complete by next week when we check it out. check back on the progress of this tower. So be sure to stay tuned for a part two follow-up and build on an even better design.
Anyways if you enjoyed this video please go ahead and smash that like button and subscribe. Make sure you also ring that bell icon to get notified when I post the follow-up video and build of the second four-tier version of this hydroponic tower. Please also let me know what you think in the comment section below and if any of you would be interested in eventually purchasing one of these for yourself as I refine and perfect the design. I may set up a storefront website and or patreon. page if there's enough interest because I definitely think the amount being charged by professional manufacturers are just outrageous right now.
I'll also leave details about the build materials and specs in the description section below in case you want to try this on your own as well. Thanks for watching and see you next time.