My sample basic farm (grow house) setup

[ScarletFox]

I apologise in advance, this is an image-heavy post.

You don't need 2 dozen wind turbines or 40 water pumps!

Location of farm

The best places to set up a farm is either on the start/side of a river or on a freshwater lake. 

On the sea side beach requires the use of an electric purifier which takes a lot more resources, time and effort to set up, to ensure a constant source of freshwater.

A combination of large and small water catchers can be used, but you would need a large amount of both, as well as timers, or basically sitting and watching them and turning the power on and off so you don't run out of water. 

Size of farm

I tend to do either a 16- or 20- or 25-planter layout for my farm. For this tutorial, I'll use a 25 planter layout.

I start by putting down 7×7 foundations, with a single door and the TC next to the door. This allows for 25 large planter beds and spaces around the edges. The walls are generally 1 or 1.5 high (depending on my mood, I guess).

Layout diagram (key/legend below)

Diagram key/legend

You can see here I have built this one in stone and wood:

The lights are placed in the centre above of the roof squares and the sprinklers are in the corners (see layout diagram and key/legend).

The sprinklers can also be placed on the low walls (where I place heaters for automatic night time heating). As you can see below there are unused sprinklers on the ceiling. Either placement works well.

For my purposes I find one sprinkler in each corner works well. There may be a lot more efficient ways of doing this, however, this works for me.

Power

Now, I struggle with electricity in Rust, so I try to keep things pretty simple for myself. I know there are better ways of doing things, but they tend to involve overly complex circuits which lead to me wanting to rage quit (LOL  ). 

I refuse to use wind turbines as they lag me out in game. Wind turbines and spotlights are pretty evil for lag, especially if you have rubbish internet.

I sometimes get lazy and only use a test generator from the RustEZ store, depends on how busy I get in real life. Usually though, I use solar panels. Generally I try to keep my circuits separate, so I don't get too confused. 

• For the lights, I use 8 solar panels, and 2 large rechargeable batteries. I use this to power 49 lights.
• For the watering system, I use 8 solar panels, and 2 large rechargeable batteries.
• For the automatic night heating, I use 2 solar panels, and 1 large rechargeable battery.

Automatic night heating circuit

2 solar panels, one faces East, the other West.  Leave the branch set to 2:

Lights

I use a very simple 24/7 power circuit. The top branch is set to 2 and the bottom branch I set to 99: 

Watering system

Note: There are no on/off timers for the watering, I really struggle with setting those up. 

The watering system uses the simple 24/7 circuit. I add a switch and extra branches to divide the power to power the water pumps and the fluid switch & pumps.

This circuit below shows the watering system circuit. The numbered Branches after the power switch are changed to:

• (#1) = 45
• (#2)  = 20
• (#3)  = 20
• (#4)  = 8
• (#5)  = 8
• (#6)  = 8
• (#7)  = 8

The green wires coming out of Branches (#4), (#5), (#6), (#7) power the Water Pumps outside.

The yellow wires coming out of Branches (#4), (#5), (#6), (#7) power the Fluid Switch & Pump inside.

The red hoses go up from the water pumps to the water barrels on the roof.

The hoses then go from the water barrels inside to the Fluid Switch & Pumps, then onto the sprinklers. When you connect power to the Fluid Switch & Pumps make sure you connect the wire to the Power input, not the Toggle input.

I hope this make sense. I tried to keep it as simple and basic as possible.

Rustrician circuit diagram & link

Rustrician circuit link: https://www.rustrician.io/?circuit=8e0a868d41159ccc0911819121b007d3

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Edited August 7, 2022 by ScarletFox
Removed extraneous images. Added Rustrician circuit link and diagrams.

[Tahaw]

Looks great @ScarletFox.

Couple of points to cut down on a bit of power usage.

• Suggest making the planter boxes 6x6
• Lights light up 2 planter boxes. Put them between two and halve the number of lights (18 in total)
• Heaters go three wide one deep, so 6x6 would only need 12 in total to heat the plants

For water

• Its better to double up sprinkler over corner of 4 planters than put one at each corner (18 for 36 planters)

This is all my opinion based on past experience. Happy for people to disagree or have a different way of doing it.

Tahaw

 

[Cartmon]

Nice setup, I thought I'd throw mine up as well, I've been using this for a couple wipes now and it only needs 1 pump for the water to all 24 planters. 

Tried to somewhat match your icons just to make it easier to understand. Lights are on the roof between 4 planters and sprinklers are on the floor between 4 planters each. It gets a bit dark in here at night with so few lights but it all runs off 1 large battery and 1 pump.

[aNoNiM]

It's nice to put everything with graphics, but it's very inefficient power consumption and water

I can do 24 planters with 8 ceiling lights and like cartmon showed  way less sprinklers

[ScarletFox]

LOL I love how I show a simple set up to get started and learn from and people just have to tear it down without any proactive or positive feedback. So negative.
I'm glad you can do '24 planters with 8 ceiling lights' aNoNiM. Good for you. 

I'm not good at rust electronics or farming. I just did that to also show that a person doesn't need 15 wind turbines to power 20 lights and nothing else in their base.

[ScarletFox]

Going to try this now, will post pics to see how it goes after I build it.

I added a second pump as I have 36 beds (to allow for the extra 3 sprinklers). Works really, really well!
I also went with one wall high, rather than 1.5 walls as I usually do.
You are right its really dark in there at night! I added some of the industrial lights around the edges so I can see to plant (I was missing some of the plant spots lol). The industrial lights are very low lag.

Before the industrial lights:

After adding the industrial lights (and fixing heater connections lol):

All in all a great setup, will be using again 

On 9/10/2022 at 11:48 PM, Cartmon said:

Nice setup, I thought I'd throw mine up as well, I've been using this for a couple wipes now and it only needs 1 pump for the water to all 24 planters. 

Tried to somewhat match your icons just to make it easier to understand. Lights are on the roof between 4 planters and sprinklers are on the floor between 4 planters each. It gets a bit dark in here at night with so few lights but it all runs off 1 large battery and 1 pump.

 

Edited November 12, 2022 by ScarletFox
Adding extra information

[ZOMB]

On 11/7/2022 at 7:04 PM, ScarletFox said:

LOL I love how I show a simple set up to get started and learn from and people just have to tear it down without any proactive or positive feedback. So negative.
I'm glad you can do '24 planters with 8 ceiling lights' aNoNiM. Good for you. 

I'm not good at rust electronics or farming. I just did that to also show that a person doesn't need 15 wind turbines to power 20 lights and nothing else in their base.

Your farming concept is great Scarlet! Very much to the point and simple! Love it!