This is a little tutorial on building a simple ACT brewer, I won’t go in details on what ACT is as I will assume you know about it already. If not, then head to my blog post:
Expand your vermicompost reach with aerated compost tea.
So for this project, I will be using a 20L bucket as the brewing container. The effective volume would be around 16L as I don’t want to fill the bucket completely. Let’s do some math. According to Microbe Organics’s research, I need a pump delivering 0.08 CFM per gallon of water. 16 litres is about 4.22 gallons, 4.22 * 0.08 = 0.3376 CFM which is about 9.5 Lpm. I have an aquarium pump that claims to deliver 20 Lpm so it should be all good.
First I need an air diffuser, I could use those air stones but they get clogged up very quick and leads to anaerobic spots. So let’s make one out of PVC pipes.
Material needed for the air diffuser:
- 1m section of 15mm PVC pipe
- 4x 15mm PVC caps
- 1x 15mm 5-way PVC fitting
- 1x 15mm female faucet coupling
- 1x 15mm male irrigation coupling
From the pipe, I will cut four 9cm sections and put a cap on each of them. I will then form the base of the diffuser with the 5-way fitting. The remaining pipe is connected to the central plug. I then use a drill with a 1.5mm bit to make 5 holes at the bottom and 5 at the top of each 9cm PVC sections.
At the end of the longest pipe I will make an adapter for connecting a flexible tube that will go to the pump. For this I will fit the PVC coupling to the end of the pipe, then add the PVC faucet coupling and the irrigation coupling.
On the photos, the rubberband is just an attempt to reduce air leak but it was not needed and it makes it look nice...
I then connect the flexible tube to the diffuser and to the pump.
A quick test reveals that the diffuser is working as expected. A lot of small bubbles are aerating the water.
Now I just drilled a hole big enough for the 15mm pipe to go through. In my case, the hole fitted perfectly and held the pipe in place. If you drill a larger hole, you would want to use a rubber band on the pipe so that when it aerates the water, the bubbles won’t push it up off bottom.
Here is the final product:
The pipe extending above the bucket prevents watering to flow back into the pump and damaging it. So I can don’t have to elevate the pump when in use.
Check out my other design for an Airlift Vortext AACT brewer.
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