Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Just PM'd Daniel....

found these and others including tees, crosses etc on the "wetearth" site....

anyone used them? .... reckon they might do the job??

http://www.wetearth.com.au/Product/Prod ... bCatID=175

surely you'd be able to create a seal with the barrell and a fulcrim effect?

Thanks again Rupe,
looks like it could work will have a look around at some places down here for it, then i can play before i buy (postage for the one swivel adaptor is $18, ouch)

Googeling i found a swivel adaptor, but it was copper and for gas

went shopping today, and spent $1.70 (could have spent alot more on stuff for my next project ap ).....

bought (from hardwarestore not wet earth):
http://www.wetearth.com.au/Product/Prod ... ductID=846
and
http://www.wetearth.com.au/Product/Prod ... ubCatID=26

the male and female treaded ends go together with abit of plumbers tape, and you get a non leaking pivoting (only needs to rotate through 90 degrees) joiner.
Have watched it work perfectly tree times, off to work shortly, but will check it tomorrow morning, and hope there's no problems overnight while it goes about its buisness

do you Guys and Gals thing that the threaded pivot connector thingo should last for a while, or do you think it will wear out?

if i can find these locally i will give them ago, otherwise i will wait till i have some other stuff i want to get from wetearth....

While i was at work, i was thinking what if it stopped working or started leaking, so when i got home at 12:15 turned off the pump because it was raining and didn't want to go check it then.

This morning

it needs to stay at a small angle, so once the water level reaches a certain height it tips. I had a stack of terracotta pots doing that job, sometime during the 9ish hours it was running these pots moved and the arm was totaly vertical and hence didn't tip....result lost 300+ litres of water

stick with it.

i guess in most ap battles some innocent water is spilled........

hopefully i can use the tread to stop it reaching a totally vertical position, or at least modify the fittings and add a 'stop' position

for a temporary fix (whilst still in WIPM) turn the bricks 90 degrees and have the ends pushing up against the tank so that they can't be moved - if not long enough, use a chunk of 4b2

Used 3 cinder blocks, a brick and a length of 4b2. Its still just a temp fix, but even in this wind it shouldn't be going anywhere

it likes low flows (the lower the better), and starts and stops nicely with the low flows. I think with larger diamater pipe (and hence greater drain flow) it will be able to accomidate much greater flows (will find out soon..). Has been running without a problem for about 24 hours now (fills and drains prob 5 times an hour atm) and the swivel fittings are still leak free

because flout is a trademark of rissy plastics (http://www.rissyplastics.com/flout/) am thinking of calling it the "fulcrum flooder" although im open to suggestions........

Another malfunction, this one costing me over 1000L of water

I guess its a good thing, that while i have been working on it i have been using one 2000L tank for the fish (level stays same) and the other for a temporary sump (now only 5 cm deep)

The problem, we don't live in an ideal world. If i remember correctly from physics a weight 1 unit away from the fulcrum can be counterballanced by a weight half of the other weight but twice the distance away from the fulcrum on the other end of the lever. But this is in an isolated system, with no other forces acting.......

the top bottle when full up to the drain hole weights approx 250g, and the bottom counterweight weighs approx 500g. Due to having the balances and distances walking such a fine line, im guessing the barometric pressure, coupled with the fact that the bottom counterweight got abit wet caused the top water bottle to not be heavy enough to counter the bottom weight........THE REAL CAUSE of the malfunction, i didn't think in the first place, the bottom counter weight only has to cause the lever to tip once the top bottle has drained and the flow has decreased to that going into the gb. So my prototype is soon to tilt its last time. Im on to version 2, where the weight ratio will be something like 6:1 rather than 1:2 (and hence exponentially more reliable, and able to cut out at a greater input flow)

Well thats the end of this rather long post

When Alexander Bell was asked if he considered the 900 odd previous experiments to be failures.....

He replied that each one had put him that much closer to success and perfection.....

Stick with it Daniel

hey mate keep at it, my system had big problems with flow and i changed things round all the time till i was half happy.... when i move i'll get the joy of that again

I can't give up now, where would the fun in that be
Im just glad its winter, because if it was summer, i would probably be forced to top up with tap water
Im planning on making these a feature of my system.......(with the filling bottles, animal heads that "dip down to drink" )

Besides you need a failure for a reference point so you can identif a success

Interesting story, I always heard that Thomas Edison had said this. Now for history folks to find the truth.