IKEA Labs open source Grow Room

[Roger Feeley]

IKEA has released open source plans for a Grow Room (http://www.designboom.com/design/ikea-space10-the-growroom-flat-pack-spherical-garden-02-20-2017/)which is a spherical garden they claim will grow quite a bit of food.

Could someone tell me how big a CNC router you would have to have to cut out one of these things?

[Adam Herman]

NEAT.

looks like you would be best with a 4 foot x 8 foot capacity as it uses sheets of ply.

I would love to build this for my backyard. for outdoor use would coating the parts in epoxy and painting with awlgrip or similar work?

[Roger Feeley]

I thought it was neat too.

My first thought about the plywood is that I've never seen plywood NOT deteriorate outside. There are some grades that last longer but this looks like you would be lucky to get two seasons out of it.

My other thought was that it should rotate. Or maybe you put the shade tolerant plants on the north side.

[William Adams]

Why not make it out of HDPE? Or PVC lumber?

For the curious, plans are at: https://github.com/space10-community/the-growroom

[Bob Falk]

I would glue up boards of Black Locust and then CNC. The wood would last decades....not sure about the glue.

[Matt McCoy]

Why not make it out of HDPE? Or PVC lumber?

For the curious, plans are at: https://github.com/space10-community/the-growroom

13 sheets of HDPE or PVC would make this a really pricey project. Also, not sure if it's available in 18mm. I would consider marine-grade plywood or MDO and apply an exterior finish.

[Art Mann]

The claim that an appreciable amount of food can be grown with this contraption is absolutely laughable. Anyone who has ever grown a garden that actually contributes to a family food budget knows how much growing space it takes and how large vegetable plants like squash and tomatoes can get. I would say this setup is only worth building if you want to have a fresh herb garden and you don't care how much they cost. I agree with what has already been said that the life of such a frame would be measured in months rather than years. I guess these people don't have any idea what moist earth will do to cheap pine plywood. Fiberglass/epoxy laminated marine grade fir plywood would prolong the life by a few years but 3/4 inch sells for around $70 a sheet and shipping is expensive if you aren't near some place that sells it. Also, the thing will create too much shade and would require artificial lighting to get any kind of growth. You might get by with $2000 in materials and it would be rotted away long before you could produce even a fraction of that amount in food.

This project was designed by someone who has never grown anything in any kind of quantity.

To answer the original question, it would be easy enough to cut it out on a modest 4X8 CNC router.