Light Stand for Seed Starting

Thanks to this site, I found a cheap and easy way to build a light stand for my seed starts. It took less than ten minutes to finish (except for the fact that one of the elbows I grabbed was the wrong angle and I had to exchange it at Lowe's...d'oh!) and costs about $7 (assuming you have access to a PVC pipe cutter or a saw already).

I began by gathering the materials:

• 10 feet (1” internal diameter, ID) PVC pipe (I only needed to use 8 feet of the pipe)
• 2 L-shaped PVC connectors (1” ID)
• 2 T-shaped PVC connectors (1” ID)
• 4 PVC endcaps (1” ID)

• hacksaw (or pvc pipe cutter)
• tape measure
• marker

I used 2 5' pipes for this job (so they would fit in my car), and ended the project with an extra 2' of pipe (since I chose to make the 24" version instead of the 48" one). I was able to borrow a pvc pipe cutter from a relative, so that reduced the cost and made the project go faster.

I went ahead and marked the pipe into sections that I would be cutting, like so...

...and used the pvc pipe cutter to cut the sections out into separate pieces.

Now, the fun part: connect all the parts! And just like that, in a matter of minutes and with a little pocket change, I had a truly lovely little light stand for my soon-to-be seed starts!

A stand similar to this with a light fixture tends to cost $50 or more (usually not including a bulb for the light fixture). I plan to use one or two clamp lights (~$14 for both) with fluorescent bulbs ($7 for 2), bringing my project cost close to $30. Not bad! Now I just need to figure out a creative way to raise and lower the clamp lights on the frame. Shouldn't be too difficult to make it work.