Hello. What a great forum! We have been steadily becoming more and more interested in advancing our techniques of indoor growing vegetables and plants with aeroponcs! Last year we built a D I Y System of our own from the irrigation store consisting of a high-pressure pump. After many failed attempts after a year of trying, we finally got the hang of it and things are producing nicely. We do have other soil gardens that we are planning to convert to aeroponics. The ability to not have to use dirt and the constant watering makes this no contest. Our other aeroponic Systems are currently running at feeding intervals of 45 seconds on, and five minutes off. The reason for this is that the temperature of the nutrient solution in the tank, is cooled with the use of a reservoir cooler. As the feed solution travels through the feed lines towards the room, and then is distributed within the spaghetti lines to each plant, the stagnant water in the line that is not being moved between feeds becomes warm. We have set a 45 second feed time in order to push enough nutrients solution from the cool tank into the buckets. I have been reading online that this is not true aeropincs, and that we should only be spraying for about three seconds, or just enough to lightly damp in the root zone. I really love this concept but I cannot wrap my head around the fluid that will be in the lines. The fluid waiting in the lines will be come quite warm, as warm as the room temperature. Even though they are covered with insulation, the temperature within the lines will still rise before it is delivered to the plants. I have searched high and low for solutions to this problem, without any real luck. My question is how do commercial growers keep the reservoir temperature cool within the line, before it gets to the plan if the feeding interval is so small and does not allow larger volumes of water to flow through the lines from the tank? Any help would be greatly appreciated. What we have done in the past is put a third monitor into the root zone it's self to see what the temperature was. If the temperature was too high, we would increase the feeding time to allow the cooler water to cool the root zone. The room temperature is perfect. I thought about reducing the length of line into the room, even putting the tank in the room, but I still prefer keeping the tank of nutrient solution outside of the room in a cooler location. Of course to do this it requires a longer feeding line which means more stagnant water within the lines that is bound to heat up before it reaches the plants
Why are you trying to cool the feed solution? I can't think of any advantage, unless the room temperature is too high for the plants being grown; but you state that the room temperature is perfect.
The nutrient temperature needs to be cold enough to prevent pathogens from growing in and destroying the crop from root rot. Generally the root zone should be kept a lot cooler than the room it's self where the plants are actually growing.
