Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Except the primary producer wouldn't have used potable water.

possibly, but since we're talking about recycling and treating urine, and moving water from one river system to another i think that the fact that ANY water is being used in such a fashion is the point, don't you?

Huh? Why not? The water we irrigate with is drinkable.

Nova

No.



Most of your food will be trucked in from elsewhere and will be untreated.

Ok, so open channel and flood irigation methods (both methods are used to produce our veggies) using "non potable" river water is cool with you, ok.

But anyway, i'm not going to get into a pissing match over this one.

VG, i was simply trying to highlight my opinion that water usage is more than acceptable in an AP system even wit our water issue.

Have fun

Steve

So what's your point njh.... just how much of the food currently produced or any agricultural production throughout history is or has been produced using "potable" water??????



Yep almost definitely tru for the first part, probably not for the second...

most of our food has been "treated" with a variety of subtances, mostly in-organic (fertilisers, pesticides etc) or un-natural (irradology, genetic manipulation).....

So again njh... what's your point .... surely it follows that there is both great merit and "wholesomeness", let alone possibly greater healthiness from growing food via an AP system....

that lessening the food "milage" costs and reduction of water/Kg production costs must also surely be beneficial???

Can't see what you're critiscing or why njh

In saying 'untreated' in that sentence NJH means untreated water.

I agree that one should not feel bad about using town water in their AP system - I don't. I will soon have tanks from which my AP water will come from, but not all have that luxury - and that is fine in my view.

njh, i am sure nova is talking from the perspective of actually being a primary producer.

Yeah, I probably should have been clearer on that one. This all depends on the definition of potable really...

Can we split this discussion off from this topic? I feel it is worth discussing.

Nova

I think that aquaponics is going to use but a sniff of water compared to traditional irrigation. But there is a huge resource use when using potable water for agriculture of whatever form. Think of all the fluorine, alum, chlorine, plumbing, tanks etc used in its production.

Compare with the horrible water used from the murray-darling. If we were using stinky salty polluted water for our aquaponics then the argument would be clear, but until then the jury is out.

Don't go making claims you can't support with evidence, particularly when others are trying to do the right thing and confirm that they aren't going to do something unethical/illegal.



Don't put words in my mouth. I never said that. It is always sensible to use the lowest grade resource that is suitable for a given task. Flood irrigation is easy to maintain, but inefficient in the use of water. subsurface drip irrigation uses less water, but at a large cost in fossil fuel (to make the plastic, cart it and bury it). We can have a discussion on this topic if you wish (and don't insist on escalating everything).



I wasn't criticising (goes back and checks), nope, I don't see any critiscim. I do see me stating a different opinion, and I do see lots of people jumping to conclusions.

I was just pointing out (innocently and without malice, I thought) that we need to consider more than just amounts of water.

I'm always troubled by the pay-offs in trying to conserve resources. If one resource is obviously much more valuable, it makes sense to conserve that one. Here's one I pondered for a while, and then gave up. To cook dinner, I need to boil a pot of water. Does it make better sense to run the water only long enough to draw cold water to fill the pot, then heat it on the stove, or does it make sense to run the water to waste longer and bring hot water up from the water heater in the basement? What if I cook with gas or electric? Heat the water in the basement with gas or electric? What if the water heater is on-demand as opposed to using a tank? In my case, I cook with gas, and the hot water heater is on-demand, using gas too. I finally decided to just fill my pot with cold water.

The water heater will be considerably more efficient - think how much hot air comes off the pot. If you heated the water with the flame on as low as possible you'd probably be ahead.

But if I heat with the water heater, I waste more water getting the heated water to come up out of the basement. So I have to decide what's more valuable--gas or water. See? And then there's the question of the value of my time, and which method takes longer until I can drop the pasta in.

You could put that water aside and use it for something else.

Yes well when one replies with a vague "no" to a rather specific question then they leave themselves open to having words put in their mouth. Can't have your cake and eat it too, bud.







Exactly which claims are you talking about, NJH? Let me know and i'd be more than happy to provide evidence for and of the statements in my post, from my water usage in my system right through to flood irrigation still being used.



So what exactly was it that i was doing that was unethical, NJH? Considering that VG was saying she was concerned about water usage and i was saying not to worry, i can only assume that my water usage in AP is unethical. But god forbid that i put words into your mouth.



Yes, that you were, unfortunatly a brand new member asked a simple question, i gave a simple answer comparing the LEGAL usage of water for dirt garden to AP, and somehow we arrive at THIS point.

NJH, you nit pick things. This is GOOD sometimes, sometimes NOT.

Steveo over and definatly OUT on this one.