Hi Ladies, I just watched one of the "CREATE" shows on PBS or Create channel not sure what it is. The little hippy gal (lol that's what I call her...a young thing with almost a hippy style). She made her rain chain out of 1/4 inch copper tubing. She wrapped it around a 2 inch (inside dia.) plastic pvc tubing. Then she took her dremel with a mini saw blade attachment and cut through down the line of ringlets on the pvc tube. Then took each ringlet and bent it a bit and strung them. She then explained how to attach it to the gutter, with some copper pipe hook she bent, it was not too clear. One of her finished pics showed the end of it going into a tub of water, and while it was raining the splashing water bounced around a couple of glass floatation balls (ribbed glass though and dark colored..maybe was not glass? but looked cool). So just thought I would jump on here and tell you about that. Also while trying to find this thread again I noticed there was some posts about rain chains in the Japanese Gardens forum if you wanted more info.

Cindy, the magazines are going out in the mail tomorrow. I also wanted to say how much I enjoyed looking at the pictures of your flowers. I don't think you "need" any How-To advice. You are already doing wonderfully well! Thanks, Susie

Hello kennybellew, I understand why you designed it the way you did, but personalty I think the bottom tote is completely unnecessary. It has been my experience that if I wanted to move a water culture system it takes no time at all to disconnect the air line from the pump to move the reservoir. Then moving the air pump separately is so easy to do, there's simply no need (or even desire) to move both together. Also when you move it, it will be to heavy to do without removing (at least most) of the water first anyway, as well as probably the lid with the plants if they are larger than lettuce plants. So adding the cumbersome bottom tote just adds to the problem trying to move it all at once. Trying to move the whole thing mid grow at once will likely need two people to do effectively. Also with only supports at the sides, the weight of the upper tote full of water will likely eventuality bow out the bottom without a center support. And with the two 2x4's sitting up on edge like that, they will likely fall over to the flat side when you move it. Unless your very careful moving it, and don't allow any water to slosh as you do (taking two people to do) unless you remove the water first. Laying down the 2x4's on the flat side, and stacking them would be much better support (but I would still want a center support). Then there's the issue with the air pump. First the whole idea is to aerate the water with fresh air. The one small air hole you made to get the electrical cord through the bottom tote, may or may not be enough to allow enough outside fresh air to circulate to the air pump. If it dosen't then you will reduce the air bubbles you get, and eventually burn out the air pump. I wouldn't connect the pumps two air output lines, but rather use two lines and air stones for a more even distribution of the air bubbles. Lastly the salts in the nutrient solution will eventually/shortly clog the one way check valve, reducing and even completely stopping air from getting to the air stones. You can completely eliminate the need for the check valve in the first place if you keep/set the air pump about a foot or so above the water line in the reservoir. Then even when the power shuts off the water wont be able to get back to the air pump, and there wont be a check valve to clog.

When we first moved to Colorado from NY in 1990 we purchased a 1200 4 bedroom 2 bath house. We had 3 kids and since it was our first house together we had no gauge for how big was big. To us, since we were just starting out 1200 felt huge! Once we moved in though we realized for 5 people it was tight. One of the problems though was the layout of the house, 3 or 2 bedrooms and more living space would have probably worked out much better. So we moved into a larger house about 10 years ago which is 1850. I always wanted a formal dining room and den, so now it is just 3 of us (we have a 7 year old son, and the older kids are grown and have homes of their own now) and to be honest it feels "huge". I actually got rid of our dining room set and we never use that space. The extra living room area never really gets used much either. We have a rental that is 850-900 (2 bedroom, 1 bath) that eventually i want to move into. My husband thinks our current house is perfect for us, i would eventually like to downsize to our rental. Maybe he is right but for me, cleaning this house is a lot of work. Sometimes i feel like moving from our smaller house to begin with was a mistake. In retrospect, while it was a bit cramped, our smaller home was cozy and had a really wonderful backyard with a covered patio that i missed once we moved. While I do love our current home sometimes it just feels way too big for 3 people.