Nutrient salts will bugger the ultrasonic works with time.

Black piping and reservoir will reduce algae growth and is a good idea.

Here's an interesting site. They use a fog generator with an internal fan to blow the fog into the root tray. The photos of the root balls are impressive. One thing that could make this system better is to "close the loop" i.e. have a way to recover the condensate back to the resovoir.

http://www.greenair.com/fogger-2004.htm

You know I see a lot of people knock the ultrasonic growing method, but I have seen pictures of plants growing very well and fast with ultrasonic foggers in them! You just have to soak the pieazo plate in viniger once every week or two. ALso, with the big systems you can buy replacement plates cheap: http://www.mainlandmart.com/foggers.html

Based on university research this type of growing makes plants grow faster and more healthy, but the fruit size is smaller and more nemours than a NFT hydroponics setup (with airation of the nutrient). So all in all you get faster growth and about the same weight in fruit. Germination is as much as a week faster for some rare flowers used in the test!

The link below shows a brand new commercial ultrasonic garden that you can buy now. Though you can buid one for under $60...

Here is a link that might be useful: New ultrasonic aeroponic garden

Just an added note.. Here is a cheap place to get untrasonic misters! http://www.mainlandmart.com/foggers.html

With these and a tote you can make a cloner or starter with a hundred plant sites easy.. Add a $19 cycle time and food and your done! No pumps, very little assembly.

The best disk type is teflon coted which cleans easy!
like here:http://www.futuregarden.com/cgi-bin/shop/70-1049.html

If I can just find a source for replacement teflon disk I can use the cheaper units from mainlandmart..

I bought a 10 fogger unit which easly fogs in 20 feet of 6 inch pvc pipe using a small computer fan. I will post pictures when I can. I payed less for the 10 head unit than the 3 head unit on futuregarden! A three head unit would have workd for my 20 feet of pipe, I'm shure!

This spring I will be testing aeroponics in 2 forms:
1) spray lines inside of pipe
2) ultrasonic foggers

I will take pictures of the progress and post results of each because I think its time to prove or disprove all the downtalk of ultrasonic fogging.

Well, I have built 3 hybrid fogger systems, and can say if you are around all the time (*to debug the initial problems), they rock, but the learning curve is steep. Some things to consider:

1) the piezos will need to be cleaned regularly
2) the piezos will burn your fingers and/or the roots if it comes into contact
3) the fan, rather than the piezo, makes the sound. If the piezo goes out, you would never know.
4) u need poly gaskets around the base of the plant to hold in the humidity
5) in case of failure, you have minutes instead of hours/days to correct the problem

If you are cool with all of that, rock on ;)

Ok, The results are in...

Using a 10 head fogger worked great to start 72 pepper plants!

However, the growth of fog only peppers was much lower than spray, NFT, and bubbler. Its also a pain to keep the system sealed so nutrient is not wasted to the air. To my supprise the bubbler system has out performed every type of hydroponic system I have! I tried nft, fog, bubbler, autopot and EEB.

Best Growth in order:
1) bubbler, 18 pounds peppers from 6 plants
2) AeroSpring Sprayer ~3 pounds peppers from 1 plant.
3) eeb, 10 pounds peppers from 10 plants
4) NFT, 6 pounds peppers from 8 plants
5) auto pot 6 pounds peppers from 10 plants, had to flush out salts every fill or plants became sick.
6) Foggger, 5 pounds peppers from 10 plants. However, it did provide seedlings; super fast germination!

Here is a link that might be useful:

Has anybody ever used a ultrasonic fogger to cool plants/greenhouse? I live in a tropical zone and the leafy lettuce gets too hot. Aside from using shade and nozzle misters, I'm hoping the fog would do both. Though I'm not sure how big of an area and how many ultrasonic heads I would need to give sufficent results. Any suggestions? Thanks.

The only question I would have about the ultrasonic fogging method is: does the nutrients travel in the fog as well as it does in standing water? I would think the salts would weigh the fog down or maybe not even make it up into the fog at all. Any thoughts?