The water is pumped from the tank in the bottom cabinet and flows through each level's reservoir. The Rise has far and away the biggest capacity of any non-DIY indoor garden I’ve seen and would be more than enough to keep a large family in nightly salads for months. For reference, all of the other indoor gardening systems were room temperature, in the mid-70s. Once the plants were grown, the temperature came down to something warmer than “normal” but more reasonable: 83 degrees Fahrenheit. In fact, the tomatoes I did grow in the Rise were notably bigger and better tasting than the ones grown in other systems.