Hydroponic Garden

[Beanyboy57]

Hi All. A friend needs to run 4 x 24v x 22 watt water pumps for 15 minutes each hour to keep her plants watered correctly. Each pump has a separate timer so she could run one pump for 15 minutes, then the next pump and so on. Which means the system would need 24v continuously for the hour I guess. Preferably she would like to run each pump at the same time so that the power was used for 15 minutes in total for the hour and the battery has a chance to recharge for 45 minutes each hour, but any combo would do if I needed to change that aspect as long as each garden was watered for 15 minutes each hour.
Each pump uses slightly less than 1amp so would a battery of 24v x 100amp/hour suffice and if so what size panel would recharge it back to full capacity given an insolation factor of 3.5 during winter? I am hoping to design a system that would last for 4 years before she has to replace the battery.
Cheers
Beanyboy

[J.P.M.]

Two questions I always ask hydroponic gardeners:

1.) How do you know when you've watered enough ?

2.) How/Where do you find a fertilizer that doesn't float ?

[Beanyboy57]

Hi JPM, are these serious questions or are you teasing me?

[Beanyboy57]

Two questions I always ask hydroponic gardeners:

1.) How do you know when you've watered enough ?

2.) How/Where do you find a fertilizer that doesn't float ?

If you are serious then I will answer you.
1) Like any garden if your plants look healthy then you are watering enough if they look unhealthy or droopy then you need to water more. The beauty of hydroponic gardens is that you can water 24 hours a day if you like as the only water used is the water needed by the plant, the rest of the unused water returns to the storage container to be recirculated. Which is obviously much more efficient that watering a plant in soil. I water my hydroponic garden every 30 minutes for 5 minutes.
2) Fertiliser is added to the storage tank in a measured quantity, it then dissolves very slowly over a two or three week period (so yes it does float in suspension). No wastage, no harmful run off in to the environment. The plants take what they need the rest is recirculated. In my case $50 worth of fertiliser last around 12 months.

[Beanyboy57]

My small hydro garden.

[J.P.M.]

Hi JPM, are these serious questions or are you teasing me?

Note the text font. Comic san MS is what's commonly accepted around here for humor or for tongue in cheek wisecracks from posters with too much time on their hands.

I never did hydroponics but I was a serious organic gardener at one time with some of the best self composted raised beds and soil in Western NY state back in the day when I wasn't regaling the neighbors (and pissing off my wife) with my DIY solar shenanigans. Some of the best veggies I've ever tasted, and some of the world's most efficient and well documented DIY solar thermal devices. (At least the ones that didn't catch fire or start a flood.)

[Beanyboy57]

Wow, you seem to really know your stuff! What is a solar thermal device? I am guessing it's something that provides heat.

[J.P.M.]

Wow, you seem to really know your stuff! What is a solar thermal device? I am guessing it's something that provides heat.

Wow, you must be a slow reader !

How much stuff I may know depends on how you define stuff.

You guess correct. A broad term for things that produce heat from the sun. A few off the wall things like bed warmers to help soil stay a bit warmer for seedings I'd early start in the sunspace I designed, or something as easy as (semi)transparent pool cover material to heat soil in early spring and (maybe) kill some bad stuff before planting (it may have delayed the slug wars by a couple of weeks or so, but not much more effect as best as I can guess aside from saving a beer or two), as well as a lot of other non-agrarian applications that may have been more recognizable. I had fun.