Hydro-Brownstone Project

As the world is coming to radical changes in climate, our acessability to land and healthy soil has been gradually limited. More and more, our civilization has become urbanized, and as we face that the demand of produce has been increasing without the increase of supply of healthy soil and healthy atmosphere inside demographically dense areas. Dealing with this contradiction, hydroponics has been emerging as a serious solution to combat issues such as food deserts and could present as a potential air purifier to the cities. As it can be observed from the data, comparing to last year at the same dates, the air quality has been taking a downturn.

As observed from the data, the air quality has considerably worsened and there are few signs of any improvement as business and industry are attempting to compensate for the COVID-19 crisis. Through these lenses efforts are being made to propagate the knowledge of hydroponics. Supported by the Urban Wild, my project was presented as an outcome of the Intro to AgTech program which introduces our technology to hydroponic agriculture. With this knowledge it is possible to offer agricultural efforts to urban communities, while also being efficient to provide produce to attend increasing demands. The project timeline ranged from July to September, having 3 weeks to actually stablish and implement the design. The main project relied on budget of $500 with $250 for maintainance. The Hydro-Browsntone is able to reach $326 and $65.9 for maintainance before taxes and delivery cost.

For the intent of providing fresh produce for cooking, the selection of the crops were mainly focused in Perennial Herbaceous, which could provide food independent of the season. The two crops selected were Lemon Balm, coming from the mint family, and Rosemary, coming from the Lamiaceae family. Their ideal PH and EC are quite similar as the table suggests:

As the design is running as prototype, herbs are being used as the design is still in open for futher development and additions that can in the future cater to plants that can generate vegetables. However, the space must also be considered as from personal experience there is few space for support, the prototype is intended to work with lighter produce that do not risk crashing the system. As to prevent root rot there should be constant flow of water. A timer for the water pump may be placed in order to keep a constant flow of water with small pauses in between to save energy. The reccomendated sets are of 5 minutes of constant flow of water followed by 15 minutes of pause. Through the agriculture classes of AgTech, a lot of information was given to sustain the hydroponic system. Most importantly, the concept of a plant damping off due to high volumes of water was introduced which prevented inital mistakes when placing seedlings in the system. Furthermore the importance of the ideal EC and PH was also highlighted as the wrong balance will prevent plants from receiving the adequate nutrition.

The constant flow of the water is also a crucial detail as stagnant water can be prone to fungus, which are quite likely to happen when there are nutrients in water. However even with the constant flow of water there will be an eventual build up of nutrients and the system will eventually need to go through a cleaning plan.

As in any agricultural site the needs assessment should be taken. The table below shows a basic assessment taken for the specific growing area:

The challenges were fewer than expected but shouldn't be neglected. The first callenge was to find PVC pipes that would fit the length of the growing space, however none was to be found and the PVC pipes that were bought were too big for the growing area. Not only that, as beginner to assembling NFT systems, it was hard to figure how to stablish the system without any leaks. And lastly the water pump that came with the pipes wasnt poweful enough to bring the water all the way from the floor to the pipes.

Gladly enough, the solutions to all challenges were simple. For the Water Pump I had to raise the container up by placing a sturdy support underneath. For the length of the pipes the PVC were cut to fit into the growing area, and finally with a lot of trials and errors the system could be assembled without any leaks.

As observed by the image above, the design was sucessfully built and does not show yet any sign of malfunction, as time goes by more information will be updated on any further necessity for this build.

This design has a lot of room for development. In the future it would be possible to replace the racks for materials that are more sturdy such as metal, which will enable it to support vegetable growing plants. The sustainability of the construction should also be taken into account and the usage of electricty. In the future I would like to make this build more affordable as with increased demand there can be a cut in costs when materials are ordered in bulk, while likely looking for ways of utilizing more sustainable materials for the design. Furthemore, this design shows to be efficient and reliable and with a few developments it can offer great possibilities.