My muse must have clubbed me over the head, but good, while I slept last night.
When I woke up this Morning, I was hell-bent and motivated to just build a hydroponic system using whatever bits I could find on hand, and upgrade to “better parts” once I’ve got it running, and I can see first hand the best way to set it up/lay it out/understand how it wants to work before investing any money into the build.

After a quick trip to the kitchen to get a pot of wake up juice brewing, I went to the lab and started putting aside anything that looked like it might be useful.
By the time I was finished scavenging, this is what I had to work with…

4x Window boxes (3 with drainage holes)
1x Aquarium pump
1x Large juice jug (retired)
1x Arduino (with collection of sensors)
1x wifi module for arduino
1x Tube silicone aquarium caulk (expired)
12x Plastic starter pots
1 Roll plastic mesh
2x Packs irrigation line
Large bag of ProMix Soilless growing medium
selection of fertilizers to experiment with for growing solution.

The first thing I decided to do was test out the old pump. I wanted to know sooner than later if I was going to need to order a replacement.

Happily, it worked… the piping that came with the pump on the other hand wasn’t great. The only thing in the package that would connect the the pump was an L joint, and the rest of the pieces didn’t seem very interested in connecting to that elbow, so I knew I was going to need to get creative with my irrigation. Happily, I didn’t need to get THAT creative. I had a feeling like I was going to have to 3D print some kind of adaptor, until I realized that I could just stuff 3 of my irrigation lines into the output from the pump. Hooray for simple solutions!

It leaked like a sonofagun when I turned it on, but water was running thorough all 3 of those irrigation lines. A little bit of that (expired) silicone sealant and I should be fine… providing its still usable after all this time. I’ll worry about that, later, after I look at those window boxes, and see how hard it will be to seal up the drainage holes.

I don’t know what was used to make those drainage holes in the window boxes, but they sure aren’t pretty! The good news is that the way the holes are rough and tapered, I think I should be able to just squeeze out a little of the silicone and manually apply/spread it using popsicle sticks and get a really good seal. Should.