Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Les, it's white styrofoam with a very lightwieght thin mylar-type foil (not metal).

Thanks for that DD

......but the moon is waning

So I pulled the tomatoes and replaced them with four green bean seeds. I trimmed the one tomato plant and the rest fell over. I don't think I'll put in tomatoes with the rest of the plants again - they should be in a separate bucket or something else to let them spread like they want to.

The plants in the back are some kind of mystery. I had thought I planted Thai basil but these aren't them. They are some kind of brasicca, they look like cabbage leaves or broccoli. I pulled them and put broccoli seeds there. I also pulled out some of the lettuce and fed that to the fish.

There is still a leak near the drain. I put a paper towel there yesterday and it is wet today. I pulled out the insulation pillow and found two more dead fish. That makes four jumpers and they were all smaller, which means they were from awhile ago. The leak appears to be where the drain pipe fits into the fitting on the outside, which is the best place for it to leak, rather than from the fitting which is siliconed as much as possible.

I have lost a total of five since getting the batch from Janet's Jungle.

The tubing from the pumps (1/2") has been getting slower and slower, to where the siphons were having trouble kicking in. I think GF said something about pinching the tubing to clear it from time to time; I went in there with a vengeance and pinched the tubing and slid all the way up from the pump to the garden hoses and voila the flow is like new again. It has been so good this week that right after this one of the siphons had trouble stopping. One week later and all four are going great. I looked in the tank tonight with the flashlight and there is no solid waste anywhere on the bottom of the tank. The one end is where the solids would accumulate, and now that the circulation is much better things are not piling up nearly as badly. The sump even looks like it has less solids in it.

I am trying to plan a greenhouse project, not sure yet what the budget will be, but it will have to be sturdy enough for Winter or I won't even bother building a structure. I was googling Art Nouveau-style glasshouses today - I think the turn of the century stuff with the spindly iron and glass is an awesome style. Maybe PVC can bend that way? The current favorite style is a custom shed roof, with the door at the garage side of the end wall. Poly (or plastic depending on budget) would be on the roof and S wall, and the W end wall and garage side wall would be solid. The E end wall would also be poly. The other style would be a barn roof with one side poly, then the top of the other roof half white poly and the bottom of that roof half opaque. Two walls solid on that too. I like wood better than other materials because we get stray hurricanes coming up the caost from time to time. A couple weeks ago was a Nor'easter that put the fear of Mother Nature in me, greenhouse contruction-wise.

I'd like to lay out plants as rectangular big grow beds with lettuce and low herbs, then small pepper plants and green beans, etc. Then strawberry towers, when maybe some dwarf citrus trees and tomatoes bushes, then somewhere some climbing vines (cantalopes, etc) in the back. The current plan would be something like 10' x 16' (3 x 4.8m). I can't go too wide because the yard doesn't drain well and water puddles up when it rains.

I would be concerned about having part of the roof sloping down towards the house. The rain will drain off right against the foundation. Not good if you don't want a swimming pool in the basement. What about more of a shed construction with the greenhouse roof continuing the slope of the house roof? Construction would also be cheaper if you took advantage of the existing wall--that eliminates an entire wall of glass. For that matter, build it entirely into the corner, and re-use 2 walls of the house. The house will block enough light in those directions that it's probably not worth putting glass there anyway.

Hi Janet:

Yeah, I am planning on the garage wall and the "nook" wall to not be glazed, for insulation reasons and for cost. The roof would have a gutter on it to collect rain and snow. This is next to the garage so I'm not very worried about it. I am also not sure about what the regs are for an attached versus unattached, but I am betting the attached regulations are much stricter, plus I am not too comfortable yet with attaching it. The nook has a window right there and I'm not comfortable yet with blocking it either. The next step would be to mock up the AP layout to see what the constraints are there. I am planning on a wamr sump and a larger cold sump, and the concentric PVC heat exchanger going around the perimeter, and the beds and towers and buckets, and vines, etc. I would love for the whole thing to look like a solid green mass of leaves from the outside.

The garage roof is right there and if I ever got into solar heating and pv experiments then that surface would be available too. The house and garage shelters this area from the N and W winds as well as can be expected around here. We can get some big winds sometimes - the neighbors have had shingles and garage doors blown off before.

DD. I'm tend to be with Janet regarding the small roof slanted downward.... plus if you could just run it up to the slope of the main roof and build it onto the back wall as Janet suggested, then I would suggest that you would be able to utilise the thermal mass of the existing walls which would slowly release heat into the GH overnight rather than just wasting it into space.

PS.... this would also prevent any snow build up and weight pressure on the GH... just slide right off.... so to speak.... I'd be a little concerned as to snow build up in the interesecting area between small GH roof and side of garage.

Hi Rup:

Thanks for the critique. One of the things I am thinking about as well is to have enough vertical space inside the GH to fit more plants in there. If I constrain the max roof height to the garage eave it will be pretty short at the low end of the roof (I think it is like 8' at the garage eave) and the slope will have to be pretty shallow. I think it would look nice if the GH has the same slope as the house and the garage which is what this mockup has (40 degrees). The wife handles the snow removal duties for the most part - I'll make sure to run any designs by her too!

At one point I was excited about removing the garage wall and putting plant shelves half-in and half-out of the garage during the Winter, but I don't own a chainsaw so that didn't happen.

The garage is stone-cold in the Winter; there won't be any heat gain from it but it would help with heat loss to have the GH attached/sheltered.

I am planning on the back and W walls being _very_ well insulated and with either random stones held together with wire mesh all along the back wall or maybe square pavers lining the back wall, to gain heat during the day and release it at night. Either way the back wall is going to be well insulated. The little section of roof and the end walls too will be insulated, and during the Winter I would use an layer of film on the inside of the glazing to seal up everything better. I would also insulate under and around the perimeter of the foundation.

If you had the wall up against the nook, but didn't block off the window, instead have it as a viewing window into your greenhouse. You could watch your plants grow from inside the house

Containers of water will hold around 4 times as much heat as any masonary. So if your going to the effort of putting something on the north wall (south wall for us in OZ) make it some sort of stackable water container.

This guy uses old honey tins

http://survivalplus.com/foods/page0009.htm

I'm not sure that is true. Masonry is about 3 times as dense and holds about half as much heat per pound (as water) so that would seem to indicate that masonry can hold about 1.5 times as much heat per cubic foot. However, water is easier to deal with in many ways.

My calcs:

Specific heat capacity of water 4190J/KG/K
Specific heat capacity of 1:2:4 (cement: sand : crushed rock) concrete 880J/KG/K

Density of water 1kg/L
Density of concrete 2.4Kg/L

Therefore specific heat capcity of concrete by volume is 880J/Kg/K x 2.4Kg/L = 2112J/L/K

Which means I was very wrong

But that ems was also wrong. Of course it is more than possible I'm wrong again which me make me doubly wrong

I got the figures out of a building materials handbook that a freind of mine has. Sorry but I don't have the reference.

And if you are in fact doubly wrong, you are then right, since two wrongs make a right! Negatives cancel out.
....Scratches his head..... LOL
So the GH will be hard up against the garage and the nook of the house DD?

No not yet, I am not sure I want it to be attached.