My aeroponic orchid wall

[ALToronto]

This is an experiment. I've had aeroponics on my mind ever since visiting Walt Disney World oh - about 20 years ago, and taking the extended tour of the Epcot Center greenhouses. But I didn't want plastic pipes or the need for a wet floor. I wanted to create a self-contained setup that could be placed in a living room.

The elements I borrowed from Wally World are the pipe-shaped structure and holes in the pipe wall through which the plant roots are placed. Also a misting system inside the pipe, but mine with a reservoir at the bottom to catch the drips and recirculate the fertilizer solution. At Epcot, the water drips on the tile floor and drains away.

My 'pipe' is made from a cementitious composite, one with a much lower pH than regular cement. It's also treated with lithium silicate, which drops pH even further. There is a cast drip edge on the inside, just above a sliding stainless steel reservoir. The face wall of the pipe measures 48" (120 cm) tall by 30" (75 cm) wide, the sides are 5" (13 cm) deep on the outside, and the thickness of the material is 1/2" (13 mm). So the cross-section is a long narrow rectangle.

The first photo is the structure in the form, right after it was poured. The photo doesn't show the two layers of 2" styrofoam buried inside, which created the empty space in the structure. The pink circles are the blockouts for the holes (I've had to enlarge most of them to 3" from 2"). The tree branch is for decoration only, I don't plan to mount orchids on it.

The second photo is the empty wall in my living room. The shelf unit below is the bottom support - I think it looks nicer than brackets.

The third photo is the inside view, looking up from the bottom.

The fourth photo is the just-populated wall, with catt, encyclia and epidendrum seedlings. At that time, I was not yet recirculating the water, so the inlet tube for the misting system is in the bottle of distilled water, and the reservoir was just the catch basin. More in the next post.

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