Okay, I am going to try and be as detailed as possible here so you can give me accurate feedback on my idea.

I am a fairly novice hydroponics grower, I have quite a bit of "real dirt" gardening, but I am now in a climate where I can only grow things for 4 months of the year, which I find horribly depressing.

Sooo... I have decided to start growing things indoors. I have put a lot of thought into this and I would just like to see if people think it would work.

I plan on building a "cabinet" to grow my crops in. the bottom 2 feet of the unit will be "the guts" of the operations. I am thinking 6 feet long, 2 feet deep, 2 feet tall. I plan on having 3 tanks down there (basically 10 gallon plastic tanks.. kinda like these http://www.pplmotorhomes.com/parts/rv-pumps-water/small-plastic-water-tank.htm), air pumps to provide more oxygen to the water, and the water pumps themselves to move the water to where I want it.

So all the "workings" are in the cabinet below, and all the tanks will have shutoffs so I can pull them out, dump them, clean them, or just adjust the mixture. Then above that there would be 3 more units basically the same size as the bottom unit, my first "Growing chamber" or whatever you want to call it, Each unit would be "removable" if I need to move them, or reconfiguring the setup. Eventually I want to have a entire cabinet to run lots of "chambers" but for now I starting with just one. So, basically 8 feet tall (and yes I know that means I will have to use a ladder to access the top unit, but I rent and space is a bit of a premium, but I will have enough room for this in the garage)

In each "chamber" there would be 3 rows of growing tubes, my idea was to use 2" pvc pipe, and have a "T" fitting every 6 inches (10 per row) so 30 slots per chamber. Each row would be fed off the same line (one line coming up from the "guts chamber" and split to 3 lines, one per tube,on one side) On the opposite side would be the outlet for each tube, a piece of rubber hose about 3/4 of the way up the pipe to control the level of the fluid. Basically the tube fills up until it falls into the outflow tube and back into the appropriate storage tank.

After reading through some of the posts here I am wondering if maybe I could get away with using 1" or 1.5" pvc instead to cut costs, my concern with that was that I wouldn't get enough fluid moving through the system and the roots would more easily clog up the system.

I also plan on having a home built temperature regulator in the unit so that I can control the climate in the boxes easily, and allow me to more tightly control my experiments. I was going to use T5 lighting in each chamber, a 4-tube fixture for each unit.

I am going to run the setup off of my solar panel/battery unit I built, which can charge up to full in 2 hours and one charge should run the electronics for 2 days without recharging. So no power costs.

So fluid will move, slowly, through the system 24 hours a day, as well as having a bubbler in the bottom of each storage tank to facilitate both airating the fluid as well as keeping to moving to avoid settling.

I also plan on having each unit open up on all 4 sides for easy access to the interior and to gather the fruits of my labor.

I plan on growing a variety of lettuces in the first chamber (we eat alot of lettuce in our family and I want to get it going where we have enough to eat every week out of the unit, and with it's fairly fast growth rate it should be pretty easy, plus they all use similar nutrients I think). The second unit I want to try to turn into a "perpetual" strawberry patch. I met a guy a while back who had a similar deal where he was harvesting strawberries every day for almost 2.5 years straight, after he got them established well, until the plants died. The third unit haven't decided yet.

At some point, if this works, I want to make some larger units for tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, zucchini, all kinds of stuff. But I want the whole setup to be as modular as possible to maximize my yields, and plus make it look really nice so my wife wouldn't complain all the time. I am obsessed with growing as much of our own food as possible... and we don't use the garage for anything else.

Also I know that this may sound overly complicated and I know I could get away with cheaper and simpler ways, but I am doing this to keep me busy, not to do it quick-n-dirty if that makes sense.

I would love any input you folks might have.

Thanks alot!