solar pump help--Lou or anyone?

9 years ago

I've been kind of interested in fooling around with a tower garden and I finally got a very reasonable deal on a second hand one.

The thing is, though, that I don't have an outside outlet in the courtyard where I want to put it, so I was wondering about doing some kind of solar set up rather than having an outlet put in.

The A/C pump that comes with it is a 20 watt, 396 gph pump with a max lift of 6.5 ft. I definitely need something with that lift height or thereabouts, since the tower's about 5 ft tall when it's assembled. TG recommends a 15 minute on/15 off cycle, but there are a lot of variants for that. (The TG works by pumping the nutrient solution to the top of the tower and letting it cascade back down.)

It's my understanding that I would need a panel (20 watt PV, probably), a pump, a charge controller, timer and something like a 7aH battery so it can run at night.

Does that sound right, and can someone suggest a suitable pump? I would definitely need something with an adjustable flow rate and preferably a removable filter for cleaning.

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Comments (2)

loufloralcityz9
9 years ago
I've been thinking on your dilemma before I answered.
The cheapest & quickest way is to buy a heavy duty outdoor extension cord to bring the power out to there. Buy the 10 foot lengths needed of grey PVC electrical conduit pipes at Lowe's then glue and bury the pipes 6 inches deep with the extension cord inside. You can terminate the outlet end of the cord on a short length of pressure treated 2x4 with a bucket slung over it to keep out the weather.

Buying and setting up an off-grid solar system is not easy if you are not familiar with doing that, also we get lots of cloudy & rainy days during the summer so you would have to buy a much bigger system than you are thinking to allow for the little or no power generation days especially on a little solar system. If the plants miss a few pump cycles the roots will dry and they will die very quickly.

Lou
writersblock (9b/10a)
Original Author
9 years ago
Thanks, Lou.
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