Everything you Need to Build an Aeroponics System at Home

I’ve included a guide of all of the supplies you need to get started, with info on where to purchase.

Last week, we explored Aeroponics 101 and why this new, innovative growing method is taking off among farmers. Are you wondering what you need to build a system at home? To get started, check out our Home Setup Tour Video below on YouTube.

Tub: Some people will say you can use any tub, but to be safe, you want to get one that is as close to food grade as possible. When shopping for a plastic tote, you will need to look at the bottom of the tote and refer to the number. This is important because you are going to eat the food you grow and you don’t want to leach any harmful chemicals into the water and then subsequently into the food.

Look for either: Number 2 aka High Density Poly ethylene or Number 5 aka Polypropylene

Our tub is a 27 gallon Sterilite brand tub that we purchased at Target. It is a number 5 plastic. It holds about 10 gallons of water in it at any given time.

Another important thing to make sure when you are looking for your tote is that it is opaque. Translucent totes will allow sunlight in, which will cause algae to grow.

Light: We use a 600W Full Spectrum LED light hooked up to your standard outlet timer. We use a stand to help adjust the light and move it up and down as needed. The stand, which we purchased on Amazon, included a smaller light, which you can use for starting the seedlings. You can find the light, outlet timer and stand on Amazon below:

Currently, we are using a reflective shade that you would put on your dashboard in your car to reflect the light onto the plants. There are more professional and better looking alternatives. I have one linked below if you’d like to explore a better option. These options give your system more climate control, increasing humidity and reducing light loss. Depending on what you are growing, some plants may require complete darkness, and a tent can help achieve that.

App for measuring light

Each plant requires different light measurements. Korona is app you can download to measure the amount of light your plants are receiving under your current conditions

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/korona-grow-light-meter/id1450079523

Growing Medium: Our growing medium is a combination of rockwool and clay pebbles. Inside of each of the 12 nets, we have one cube of rockwool which contains our seedling. We then have some of these clay pebbles on top. The clay pebbles are there to help give the pod a little more structure, but also to keep out light from entering the tub and causing algae to grow.

Grow Nets: We use 12 2 inch plastic grow nets; these hold your seedlings and the grow medium

Once we acquired our tote and knew how many plants we would grow, we then had to prepare it for growing. To do so, we had to drill out the circles on top for each of the pods. To do so, you will need a drill and a 2 inch bi metal hole saw, linked below.

Tip: you can drill the holes in reverse for a cleaner cut because the plastic is thin.

Okay, so that is everything we have going on on the outside of the box, now let’s take a look inside.

Manifold and Sprayers: Each tote is different, but to be safe, you will need at least 15 feet of PVC pipe to build what we call the manifold, system of 16 sprayers that delivers nutrient rich water to the roots of every plant. You can purchase PVC at the hardware store, Lowes, Home Depot, etc. There are twelve 180 degree sprayers and four 360 degree sprayers. This spraying system is what makes the entire system aeroponic. For more information on how to build your inner manifold, please refer to the linked video from The Family Plot. We modeled our inner system on theirs, and it worked out really well.

We purchased our sprayer heads from Lowes. You can also purchase them from Amazon below:

Pump: We happened to have a 25 w aquarium pump on hand and repurposed it for this project, but I have linked a submersible water pump below. The pump is needed to move the water around from inside the tub to deliver the nutrients to the roots of your plants.

Filter Bag: On the outside of the pump, we have a fine mesh filter bag that covers the pump to filter out and particles to prevent clogging. We purchased ours on Amazon.

Programmable Digital Timer Switch: We use this to control how often the pump goes off and pushes the water through the manifold. Currently, we have it set to go off every five minutes for twenty seconds. We purchased our timer switch on Amazon.

Nutrients We use these three from General Hydroponics. They make it super easy to mix them in the water by giving you the instructions right on the label for each stage of growth.

TDS Tester: Measures the number of total dissolved solids in the water. This allows us to make sure that the plants are taking up the nutrients in the water. We purchased our tester on Amazon.

PH Test Kit: We use this to regualry test the PH of the water. Optimal grow conditions for our lettuce are between 5.5 and 6.5.

Bucket: food grade 5 gal bucket to transfer water; we got ours at Home Depot. Firehouse Subs also sells their pickle buckets if you’re looking for another place to buy a food safe bucket

Notebook and Pen: This is pretty self explanatory, but these are good for tracking our TDS, our pH levels, etc.