Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

A little bit of spillage when the 21 month old daughter decided to ride her brother's 4 wheeler around-Distracted Dad should be my login name. But still, it fills over 20 gallons from 0:08 to 3:53.And, you can see a little bit of splashing out the top of the tee.

ok, so we learned something here... the larger pipe was too big, and reduced flow, and the airstones were restricting air flow. So, that fits what the calculator was telling us, there is an optimum pipe diameter for each target flow.

So, now up to 320 gph, that's like 1200 Lph, which would be enough for an IBC, right?

I would like to see it with a 1" pipe, instead of the 1 1/4",, or even 2 1" pipes, but I'm not going to be pushy. You've made some excellent progress! So, that's 1200Lph for 5 watts! That's 240 Lph per watt!!!!

Congratulations, you are almost at the performance of an axial flow for only 1/10th the cost!

cracking effort

there you go, Jimbo, a 33% increase in flow. Change that T to a Y, and you might gain a bit more. I can't really tell, but it doesn't look like you've flared out the exit pipe. If you go from 1 1/4" to 2" or 3", you may gain a little bit more flow.

What other tests will you be doing? Any ideas on improving the flow a bit more?

Very good work, here. You have done a great service to those of us limited by energy.

ok, BW, now we are waiting for some data from the powerhead camp!

yeah yeah

I cut my barrel in half then went to bed for two days. Does that count

and this...

1000F really wont do it.

at around 1000F you get clay that might not reconstitute to that wet slippery stuff, but only if you kept it at that temp for ever, and even after I doubt it. It would definitely not hold together in a grow bed, but you might be able to get the consistency of a breakfast cereal if you fired it at that temperature for a week. There is some talk of super cooled liquids like glass showing signs of movement (melting) at room temperature which might indicate a lower temperature is possible if held for a VERY long time (hundreds of years), but it looks more like the reality is, the glass in the chapel was just made so that it was thicker at the bottom.

Vitrification is even possible at lower temperatures but perhaps over thousands of years.

For anything like a practical aquaponics application you need at least the temperature of bright glowing (cherry red) metal in a fire to make anything in your backyard.

But on the upside, that is very easy to achieve, You could fire a single clay ball over a tea light candle with a bit of ceramic fibre isolation, or a few hundred litres in a pit full of burning wood.

Neat! I would think tiny bubbles would be more efficient than large ones, but then there would be issues with keeping tiny holes open in a real system. So the bubbles are large now without the air stone, right? Kind of like a geyser pump?

Yea Dave, tiny bubbles are supposed to be more effective, but the airstones were so restrictive that I lost a lot of volume. The water at the top of the tee is gushing a little more now than it was with the stones so I guess the bubbles are joining on the way up to get some slugs of air similar to a geyser.
Vela, that pipe running over to the buckets is a 2" pipe slipped over the outside of the 1 1/4" tee. "Y" tees were available in 1 1/2" but not 1 1/4" I'll keep my eyes open for one, though.
BW, my temps came from a few different pottery websites I was wandering around late last night. I may not have caught everything, but I am leaning towards building a wood-fired kiln in the yard to do some experimenting.

if you are going to try to make your own hytroton..

Try this..

I rotating drum in a very hot box.. you must cook them for hours as the drum rotates..
It's to rotation of the drum which gives you the nice round shape.. I'm not sure if they add anything else to the clay mix to get he air/lightness in the balls..

Juergen..

Psst great work on the none airstone lift..
I wonder what I could achieve in my system with no stones to impede air flow..

Ask Bullwinkle about making anything clay related. And read his posts on the subject.
He is the resident expert at all things fired clay.

Fantastic effort and results there Jimbo. Top stuff mate.

Yep... they dump the clay balls into water... and that's what "expands" the air within the clay... giving the "lightness"... and myriad of bacterial real estate holes...

Oh, and by the way... the clay is fired to around 1200C....

Thanks Rupert.. I knew it was hot but not how hot..

Now if someone can tell us how they make expanded shale.. That info would be nice..

Juergen

Bw, have you ever done anything like a wood-fired kiln? I was thinking of arranging 2 metal drums-one laying on its side to be the burn chamber and one standing on end on top of it to be the clay chamber-and packing the local(my backyard) clay around both, after slaking and screening and some drying to help retain the heat.
The drums would be welded together with some venting in between for the heat and maybe arrange some removable screens/shelving in the vertical one.
I know I won't be able to create an exact replica of hydroton, but would be happy with a porous clay ball that won't fall apart.


Secondly, I was trying a little plastic welding with some scraps of the cut-off IBC top. As I heated it with the heat gun to melt the 2 pieces together on a seam, the plastic went more transparent than translucent. Do any of you experienced types around here know if I have altered the chemical makeup so that it is now a hazardous compound, or have I weakened it beyond use (I'll know more about that once it cools)? It would be nice to make a window in the side of an IBC just by heating it up.

Never mind the transparent/translucent thing. It goes back to its original color once it cools.