Ebb & Flow - (Flood and Drain) System

Flood and Drain (Ebb and Flow) systems are popular with hydroponic growers for many reasons. Besides how easy they are to build, you can use almost any materials you have to build them with, so you don't need to spend much money to grow plants hydroponically.

Also, they can be built to fit in any space you might have (indoors or outdoors), and there is no limit to the ways to design them for that space. Plants grow very well in flood and drain systems. It works by simply flooding the plants' root system with nutrient solution. Only periodically rather than continuously.

How a hydroponic flood and drain system operates is simple. The main part of the system holds the containers the plants are growing in. It can be just one plant or many plants/containers in a series. A timer turns on the pump, and water (nutrient solution) is pumped through tubing from the reservoir up into the main part of the system using a submersible fountain/pond pump. The nutrient solution continues to fill (flood) the system until it reaches the height of the preset overflow tube so that it soaks the plants' roots.

The overflow tube should be set to about 2 inches below the top of the growing media. When the water filling/flooding the system reaches the overflow tube height, it drains back down to the reservoir where it recirculates back through the system again. The overflow tube sets the water level height in the flood and drain system, as well as makes sure the water (nutrient solution) doesn't spill out the top of the system while the pump is on. When the pump shuts off, the water siphons back down into the reservoir through the pump (draining the system).