Buried in another one of my long wordy threads we talked about delivery of the nutrient to the rail. I wanted to discuss it here again with some new ideas.

We use alot of drip irrigation products, one is drip tape. While the drip would be far too slow for a nft system such as mine, with a foot spacing between emitters there is plenty of room for me to cut straws out.

The reason I am looking at this is I am weary of 1/4 inch delivery that is barely big enough and if any blockage occurs we can loose a whole rail overnight. I was running a double 1/4 setup per rail for a while, but I was constantly chasing a drip or 5. I finally got all the 1/4 lines to seal and now they keep clogging.

So is there something out there that is not 5.00 a valve that I can use to solve this?
I need to move my main above the inlet instead of having the pump push to fill each tube gravity can do the job. I want to be able to increase and decrease the flow in the rail. And the rails must remain moveable/removable.

I like the PVC idea but once I priced all the fittings I just need to find a cheaper solution..

Thanks.