Flood and drain system for $20

I got bored and built a micro flood and drain system for under $20. I'm pretty sure this thing could at least serve as a good place to start plants in and later move to a larger flood tray, but let's not worry about that too much.

The total dimensions are roughly 10"hx15"wx5"d.

$4 - Two 6qt plastic sterilite storage containers
$10 - 30 GPH tabletop fountain pump
$4 - Wire helper shelf
$2 - 1' of 1/2" rubber hose

You could get all this stuff off of the internet, but there's tons of stores that carry it too. Leave the house, it's good for you.

Here's a real crappy drawing, but it gets the idea across.



I turned the pump down about half way to slow the flow otherwise it started pushing the rockwool cubes around inside the flood tray.

Right now I have 14 rockwool cubes sitting in there with a heat mat under the flood tray germinating some spaghetti squash with the lid on to keep it nice and humid in there. Until they will need it I'll only run the pump by hand. When they sprout I'll start adding nutrients to them and see what happens with a timer and a feeding schedule.

Nice! I came here to check some designs and it's pretty similar to mine - maybe a bit bigger (i've just made a 2 stage box from MDF and want to get it as automated as possible), hope it works for you! (and me).

Without risking it getting too complicated (or getting too expensive) there might be a couple of upgrades for when the time comes, i'm experimenting with sponges etc to slow the rate which it drains, and I picked up a digital timer from a bargain bin for £3 / $5... it does minutes instead of clunky 15 min blocks which will be useful - I get a cm depth in about a minute at the moment. Finally, i'm thinking about a basic stirrer to get the nutes mixed (they settle in my container when left). Not sure about this yet, but i can see it being on the same timer eventually!

Anyway, good luck!

I wouldn't worry about any kind of stirrer for the nutrients, with the draining and the pumping there should be enough flow to create some kind of a "mixing current". Like I said, I have a 30 GPH pump that has a built in choke slide to control the flow rate. I had to turn it down about half way otherwise the water level rose too high. Actually that wasn't the reason I turned it down, I turned it down because it was too powerful of a stream, I didn't want any unnecessary splashing going on.