Making Your Indoor Farm
How to Plan your farm
We begin by assuming the room you chose already has electrical outlets throughout, if not you will need an electrician to place outlets at various places around the room were you select after you plan your room layout.
To plan room layout use a large graph paper and draw the room on paper using 1 foot to equal 1 inch on paper then locate the wall that is closest or easies to get water from and also to drain the water outside. If the room has an exterior wall that would be the most ideal and usually the easiest way to get water and place a drain pipe.
Below is an example how my test room is laid out, print and cut out the cabinets, print the graph sheet on 8 1/2" x 11 paper 1" = to 1' as laid out on the graph if your room is larger than 11' x 8' 6" print out several sheets and stick them together to give you the space you require for your room.
Cutout as many cabinets as you need to lay around the room spacing them at least 4" apart no closer, with the correct size cabinets for what you want to grow, since you will be making one at a time and growing with no hurry you may want to change some things around from your initial layout. Place one mark for your drain and one for water on the paper, this way you know that a cabinet can't go there unless you have the small cabinet underneath. You can place the water and drain at whatever height you wish, I placed mine at 48" high, So that the small cabinet can fit underneath since I do not have much room and quite frankly I hate bending down and the height is actually prefect making life easy.
ABOVE: The green quick disconnects is the best way to water and drain your system, a small pump under the water tub inside the cabinets will pump the water to the drain using a hose with one quick disconnect end on each end. Notice I also have a small water meter on the water feed, this allows me to quickly see how much water I added to the tub in gallons. This is important to know when adding the nutrients. This simple design and the water pump is what makes this system unique cutting water spills down to trickles and cutting time spent in the room from several hours to just half hour spent in the room per week. The hose is just long enough to reach every cabinet in the room and the pump is sufficiently powerful enough to pump the water out even at a height of 48" you may also put the hose outside through a window to drain your tub.
BELOW: The water feed to the the house can easily be done with a Y to split where the water goes like the picture below using a flexible hose to attach to the PVC pipe that brings the water into the hydro room. Notice that it has a valve on each side of the Y to direct the water flow, I maintain the valve to the hydro room close until I'm ready to fill my tubs. I also have an alternative feed from a rain water barrel, you do not need a water barrel. I seldom use the water barrel water since my city water is good enough but from time to time I test certain plants with the water because it has no nutrients to start.
To the right is a picture of the water pipe going into the test room and the drain with a valve, the valve keeps bugs from clogging the drain.
