What kind of area are you working with? You may be suprised to find that you can easily grow 36 plants using hydroponics in a 5 x 5 area (that's what I'm doing). If money is no object it really comes down to the quality of water you want to provide your plants... I use Reverse Osmosis and it takes approximately 1.5 hours to make 5 gallons water. So unless you want to forgo RO and use reguar ol water and risk lower yeilds or even illness, you need to consider the water situation. storage, production, etc.