Found this on Twitter. Thought you might find it interesting
https://twitter.com/mashable/status/115 ... 20/video/1
NYC Hydroponic Garden
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Re: NYC Hydroponic Garden
Now that was quite interesting Yogi.
I do see a few areas that could use improvement via cheap automation techniques, like her planting the seeds.
You'll notice, although she had a few ill fitting trays, most trays and the cells are uniform, as are the grow blocks.
Rather than putting those seeds in one at at time, a simple vacuum operated single row seed grabber, even one used by hand, would save her hours of work. We had some that picked up all the seeds for a flat at once and dropped them right into the holes.
Another way is to use a perforated board. How this works, since she is putting two per hole, is like this.
The perforated tray is set on the grow blocks offset 1/4 inch so the holes in the tray are not over the holes in the blocks.
The holes in the tray are made so only two seeds would sit in a hole, and the rest are brushed to the end of the tray into a trough. When all the holes are filled, and the excess seeds in the trough, you simply move the tray 1/4 inch so it is over the holes and the seeds drop into the holes in the grow cubes. Fast, efficient, and cheap.
I erected some rooftop greenhouses down in St. Louis City on a few flat topped buildings, and they made great profit for the owners we built them for, all hydroponic of course.
Also, over in Illinois, in a coal mine, we set up growing systems to raise pine trees for reforestation. We used the sun down a shaft, with mirrors to direct the sunlight down each shaft, and smaller mirrors to direct the sunlight down to the plants. This worked out great too, Free Light. Well, except for the initial set-up cost and the materials to build it of course.
The only thing about using sunlight, it had to be concentrated into a beam down the shaft. Think magnifying glass to roast a bug on the sidewalk, hi hi. We had to keep the beam wide enough so each floor and horizontal shaft received it's adequate share of light. Even so, don't put your hand up into the light if you don't want a nasty sunburn fast, hi hi.
Since the forest service paid for everything, I have no idea whether it was profitable or not, but we sure turned out one heck of a lot of fast growing trees.
The trees we produced would grow to the height of a five year old tree in less than a year, which helped prevent them from being eaten by deer and other animals. Then the growth would slow down to normal over the next year or two.
I do see a few areas that could use improvement via cheap automation techniques, like her planting the seeds.
You'll notice, although she had a few ill fitting trays, most trays and the cells are uniform, as are the grow blocks.
Rather than putting those seeds in one at at time, a simple vacuum operated single row seed grabber, even one used by hand, would save her hours of work. We had some that picked up all the seeds for a flat at once and dropped them right into the holes.
Another way is to use a perforated board. How this works, since she is putting two per hole, is like this.
The perforated tray is set on the grow blocks offset 1/4 inch so the holes in the tray are not over the holes in the blocks.
The holes in the tray are made so only two seeds would sit in a hole, and the rest are brushed to the end of the tray into a trough. When all the holes are filled, and the excess seeds in the trough, you simply move the tray 1/4 inch so it is over the holes and the seeds drop into the holes in the grow cubes. Fast, efficient, and cheap.
I erected some rooftop greenhouses down in St. Louis City on a few flat topped buildings, and they made great profit for the owners we built them for, all hydroponic of course.
Also, over in Illinois, in a coal mine, we set up growing systems to raise pine trees for reforestation. We used the sun down a shaft, with mirrors to direct the sunlight down each shaft, and smaller mirrors to direct the sunlight down to the plants. This worked out great too, Free Light. Well, except for the initial set-up cost and the materials to build it of course.
The only thing about using sunlight, it had to be concentrated into a beam down the shaft. Think magnifying glass to roast a bug on the sidewalk, hi hi. We had to keep the beam wide enough so each floor and horizontal shaft received it's adequate share of light. Even so, don't put your hand up into the light if you don't want a nasty sunburn fast, hi hi.
Since the forest service paid for everything, I have no idea whether it was profitable or not, but we sure turned out one heck of a lot of fast growing trees.
The trees we produced would grow to the height of a five year old tree in less than a year, which helped prevent them from being eaten by deer and other animals. Then the growth would slow down to normal over the next year or two.
Re: NYC Hydroponic Garden
Nothing can be better than free sunlight. It is also not a reliable source. LOL I guess reforestation is a big deal, especially now with the increase in wild fires. I never realize how much the state of Illinois got involved with it because most of the state is growing wheat or corn.
Re: NYC Hydroponic Garden
The pine tree operation was run by the federal government, it was just located in Illinois is all, because of abandoned mines just sitting there unused. Farmers still used the land over the mines for farming, and I imagine owned that land as well. But underground belongs to the government, hi hi.
Come to think of it, the corn raised over our head was always popcorn. Signs used to say grown exclusively for Jolly Time, then later a few said Orville Redinbockers (sp), then there were no signs.
The first sun tower was mechanical, but the reflectors meant we didn't have to reset it but 4 times a day.
Later they added automation, but it was still set mechanically, but by timers.
Then they added a sun-tracker and removed the timer box.
This was actually a simple device, sorta like solar panel sensors on the rim of the lens.
If their voltage dropped, the motor would kick in for a second to move the reflectors.
A cloud passing over could cause the array to shift slightly and back again.
But a heavy cloud would block the sun from both sets of sensors so it would just sit there and do nothing.
When the sun did come back out again, the thing may go back and forth a few times looking for the right place to park itself. A heavy overcast would cause it to return to the morning position.
The angle and direction were still mechanical directions while I was there, as the sun rises and sets at different angles depending on the season.
To give you some idea of what it looked like down in the shaft where the ray of sun was shot down. Think about a set of Venetian Blinds mounted at a 30 degree angle top to bottom. Only in our case, the slat groupings were far apart, like each floor of an elevator shaft where the doors are.
Each of these slats were adjusted to reflect the sunlight from the vertical shaft down each horizontal shaft where we raised the trees.
We had something similar on the ceiling going down the horizontal shafts to direct the sunlight downward to the plants, these slats were not only much narrower, but slightly curved to distribute the light evenly over each growing bed.
Technically it was a very simple low cost set-up that required no maintenance to speak of.
Except for one major problem. Shining sunlight through mine shafts causes moss and mold to grow rapidly. And you can't use bleach or chlorine as the fumes would kill the plants and the workers.
For this reason, the walls were covered with a white plastic pebble sheets, similar to a bathtub surround.
The ceilings had a polished aluminum arch sorta like the roof inside a Quonset hut but not that steep of a curve.
This allowed dripping water to go down outside the white plastic panels into drain tiles.
The floors were like poured concrete, but not exactly concrete. Don't know what they were for sure, but you could dent them if you hit them hard enough with a sledgehammer.
Maybe if I said they were like a cement like foam, more like whipped cream than Styrofoam in texture, but hardened like concrete. Water could run through it slowly, but stayed on top if we were washing the floors down, which was rare.
Come to think of it, the corn raised over our head was always popcorn. Signs used to say grown exclusively for Jolly Time, then later a few said Orville Redinbockers (sp), then there were no signs.
The first sun tower was mechanical, but the reflectors meant we didn't have to reset it but 4 times a day.
Later they added automation, but it was still set mechanically, but by timers.
Then they added a sun-tracker and removed the timer box.
This was actually a simple device, sorta like solar panel sensors on the rim of the lens.
If their voltage dropped, the motor would kick in for a second to move the reflectors.
A cloud passing over could cause the array to shift slightly and back again.
But a heavy cloud would block the sun from both sets of sensors so it would just sit there and do nothing.
When the sun did come back out again, the thing may go back and forth a few times looking for the right place to park itself. A heavy overcast would cause it to return to the morning position.
The angle and direction were still mechanical directions while I was there, as the sun rises and sets at different angles depending on the season.
To give you some idea of what it looked like down in the shaft where the ray of sun was shot down. Think about a set of Venetian Blinds mounted at a 30 degree angle top to bottom. Only in our case, the slat groupings were far apart, like each floor of an elevator shaft where the doors are.
Each of these slats were adjusted to reflect the sunlight from the vertical shaft down each horizontal shaft where we raised the trees.
We had something similar on the ceiling going down the horizontal shafts to direct the sunlight downward to the plants, these slats were not only much narrower, but slightly curved to distribute the light evenly over each growing bed.
Technically it was a very simple low cost set-up that required no maintenance to speak of.
Except for one major problem. Shining sunlight through mine shafts causes moss and mold to grow rapidly. And you can't use bleach or chlorine as the fumes would kill the plants and the workers.
For this reason, the walls were covered with a white plastic pebble sheets, similar to a bathtub surround.
The ceilings had a polished aluminum arch sorta like the roof inside a Quonset hut but not that steep of a curve.
This allowed dripping water to go down outside the white plastic panels into drain tiles.
The floors were like poured concrete, but not exactly concrete. Don't know what they were for sure, but you could dent them if you hit them hard enough with a sledgehammer.
Maybe if I said they were like a cement like foam, more like whipped cream than Styrofoam in texture, but hardened like concrete. Water could run through it slowly, but stayed on top if we were washing the floors down, which was rare.
Re: NYC Hydroponic Garden
Your description of giving light the shaft is quite interesting. I can imagine it all being technically possible, but the bending of light several times before it gets to it's target would seem like an engineering nightmare. Apparently it's not. I think of ant farms when I try to picture what you are talking about. LOL
Re: NYC Hydroponic Garden
In the simplest form, like a satellite dish that has to follow a non-stationary satellite. The reflectors follow the sun and are angled such they the beam from the reflectors is striking a lens.
Now the lens is like using a magnifying glass to fry a bug. It condenses the beam of light into a narrow stream that is pointed straight down the vertical mine shaft.
A mirror at a 45 degree angle will change the direction of the vertical beam of light to a horizontal beam of light.
Most people think the sun is a lot brighter than it really is. It is only around 5000 to 10000 footcandles, aka the right amount for vegetation to grow properly.
When you use a magnifying glass to condense a beam of light, it can reach well over 100,000 footcandles, enough to set a twig on fire.
Now, if you need 10,000 footcandles for the plants, and condense a ray of sun to 100,000 footcandles, it can be split down to 10,000 footcandles ten times, theoretically. But there is loss in the refraction and reflection.
The horizontal beam flowing through the shaft was maintained up around 20,000 footcandles, so when you reflect it down to the plants, using a slightly curved mirror, you end up with around 10,000 footcandles across the entire growing bed.
No artificial light is as good as full-spectrum sunlight, which is what the plants have lived on for billions of years.
Oh, and it's free!
Now the lens is like using a magnifying glass to fry a bug. It condenses the beam of light into a narrow stream that is pointed straight down the vertical mine shaft.
A mirror at a 45 degree angle will change the direction of the vertical beam of light to a horizontal beam of light.
Most people think the sun is a lot brighter than it really is. It is only around 5000 to 10000 footcandles, aka the right amount for vegetation to grow properly.
When you use a magnifying glass to condense a beam of light, it can reach well over 100,000 footcandles, enough to set a twig on fire.
Now, if you need 10,000 footcandles for the plants, and condense a ray of sun to 100,000 footcandles, it can be split down to 10,000 footcandles ten times, theoretically. But there is loss in the refraction and reflection.
The horizontal beam flowing through the shaft was maintained up around 20,000 footcandles, so when you reflect it down to the plants, using a slightly curved mirror, you end up with around 10,000 footcandles across the entire growing bed.
No artificial light is as good as full-spectrum sunlight, which is what the plants have lived on for billions of years.
Oh, and it's free!
Re: NYC Hydroponic Garden
What you describe makes sense. The only variable is the sunlight itself being reduced by weather conditions. The underground plants must have been in the dark quite often. I know about tracking mechanisms. Earthbound telescopes with equatorial mounts are driven by motors that track the rotation of the earth. The better ones are typically used to track light from a distant star that occupies a fraction of a degree of arc. Keeping THAT dead center has got to be a challenge and a half. Then, too, I've seen photographs of galaxies that are 13 billion light years away from earth. What kind of technology is amplifying that? It's all very surreal. So what you were doing with ant farm light tunnels was a no-brainer by comparison.
Re: NYC Hydroponic Garden
Plants go through periods of no sunlight when it is overcast, raining, and of course at night time.
So technically the plants in the tunnels were getting the same amount of light as the plants growing outside.
Maybe a little more than the plants outside due to the reflectors condensing a lot of light onto the lens and shooting it down the vertical mine shaft.
Yes it was a simple and efficient system! Well, except for the sensors they added to track the sun, but in a way, even those were simple. Probably nothing more than solar cells holding mechanical relays open.
So technically the plants in the tunnels were getting the same amount of light as the plants growing outside.
Maybe a little more than the plants outside due to the reflectors condensing a lot of light onto the lens and shooting it down the vertical mine shaft.
Yes it was a simple and efficient system! Well, except for the sensors they added to track the sun, but in a way, even those were simple. Probably nothing more than solar cells holding mechanical relays open.