Self Watering Pot/Planter (Parametric)

Introduction

The design was inspired by all kind of different self watering pots I found, trying to combine them into the best solution possible. A special mention goes to  Prusament for their “PLA Recycled Self-watering Pot” design. That's where the PET bottle idea came from (quite obviously).

It uses cotton cords (ø 5 mm in my case) to suck up the water from the base below, which is refilled by the PET bottle reservoir, and that makes it very easy to keep track of the water level.

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Additional parts needed

• 1 x (0.5l) PET bottle (The STL files work fine for bottles with a diameter up to ~70 mm)
• Cotton cord (ø ~5 mm)

Customization

You will find the Fusion 360 file in the files section. It uses parameters to easily adjust it to your needs (width, depth, height, bottle diameter, …). 

Printing

Wall thickness

As most sections of the prints are relatively thin walls, it's important to set the wall thickness correctly. E.g. 1.6mm is not optimal for a 0.4 mm nozzle (more informations about it here). The roughly correct wall thickness for a 0.4 mm nozzle and a layer height of 0.3 mm would be 1.55 mm (depends on your exact slicer settings), which results three (not 4!) perimeters. 1.6 mm would result in four perimeters, makes the walls thicker than they should be, the parts will very likely not fit together properly and look ugly too.

Depending on the size of the pot and material you may want to increase the wall thickness from 1.55 to 1.975 mm to get one more perimeter. Recognized during testing that the walls tend to warp when they are not thick enough. Above roughly 125 x 125 x 125 it could make sense to increase the wall thickness to be on the safe side.

Layer height

The Base and Pot are best printed with a layer height of 0.3 mm, the Adapter with a layer height of 0.2 mm (use the provided 3mf files).

The Gasket is not really needed, as physics prevents it from leaking.

Material

I used PLA and PETG for my test prints, but PLA worked best so far. If you plan to put it into full sunlight or warmer surfaces, PLA is probably not a good choice (ASA could be a good alternative due to its UV resistance). With lighter colors I had no problems yet. E.g. Extrudr provides a PLA which can resist higher temperatures too. Please share your experiences with different materials in the comments section.

Let's put it together

Prepare the pot

For the default 125 x 125 mm pot two 25-30 cm pieces of cord should be fine.

Put them through the holes like this:

I made some knots at the ends of the cords to keep them in place:

Optional (but recommended): Add some wood chips which provides a good base and prevents the soil from falling into the base:

Finally fill it up with soil:

Prepare the bottle

Just fill the PET bottle with water and screw on the adapter.

Let it flow

Slide in the bottle. If you turn the bottle upside down, it shouldn't spill (too much…). Physics FTW 😎

If the water doesn't start to flow into the base by itself, just squeeze it a little bit to kickstart it (doesn't need much).

This should fill up the base to around 8 mm:

Place the pot on top of the base and you're ready to plant your “little happy tree”: