Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Started the new system, suspect this will be slow.
Has to be cheap and use a lot of recycled material. Will be using Chift Pist , with either 1 or 2 Sump tanks or sump tank and header.
The FT is currently the only fixed item in the current design aside from the new shadehouse, pic’s attached show the reason for this. Started out life as a solar greenhouse, became a scruffy shadehouse, overgrown. Will up walls to 75cms and base curved, sort of like inside of boat, hopefully average 1 meter in depth.
Intend to compact, run over a cement slurry then ferrocement a 1 ½ shell on the inside.
Spoil from the FT and the other site works will raise ground level on both sides and rear of FT. At the moment sump/sumps will sit at the front of the FT, lower level, and be bermed with earth filled compacted tyres.
As usual I stuffed it up, pic 1 should be at end.

Far out, a bit of a change looking good and sounds like a winner!

Yay for digging

Thanks Ivan, will give it a go .
OBO The only advantage of digging is it makes the beer taste better Yay for digging
Latest pics
First is the hole, FT, just about done, bricklaying next. Second is the other shadehouse, now cleared. Son suggested I leave the structure (under the big shadehouse) for a sort of relaxing area ie Put a beer fridge in the garage, cut a hole in the wall and allow it to open outwards, table and a few chairs, sounds good to me. Last pic is from the corner of the proposed new shadehouse, basically all the area in the pic.
An since this is my thread, link to a song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9q1S8qsw-g

shaping up to be a sexy system

Hi Sleepe

Niiice hole



Are you going to lay bricks on top of the existing bricks to achieve the 1m hight?
Is there any footings under the existing brickwork?



The spoil/earth on the outside will create pressure inward on the tank, as will the water pushing out.
When the tank is full of water the pressure will be balanced. If the tank is ever empty by accident, or for maintenance reasons will it be structural enough to hold up the earth on the outside?


Leon

depends if its clay like here! LOL. i recon if i took my ibc outta the ground i'd have a 1000L dam in my backyard..............

Keep it going Sleepe, you have almost surpassed Steve's efforts in less than a month

Hi Leon

The 'soil' we have here is coffee rock and clay, compacted it goes pretty solid (its also a pig to dig). The walls are on 4" footings and they will be built up another three courses with a capping to get the hight/depth. I think at double brick they should have no problem holding back the soil. The water will be held by a ferrocement 'liner' about 1 1/2" thick and the curvature at the bottom is to avoid corners and displace the thrust upwards. Should also have the benefit of allowing any solids to move to the bottom centre where I will have the pick up pipe.
Thats the theory anyway will only get to test it when I am finished
Lots of earthworks to finish and the main structure to do next

No worries Sleepe.

I was just a little concerned that a little movement on the brickwork may cause cracking/leaking of the ferrocement in the future.

I like the idea of curving the bottom edges.

Leon

Things are proceeding slowly (well almost not at all).
Attached proposed design schematic (still crap at drawing). I know most are not going to like this

Bugger How do I fix this "The image must be at least 0 pixels wide, 0 pixels high and at most 800 pixels wide and 600 pixels high. The submitted image is 800 pixels wide and 646 pixels high."

if the image is a jpg, then you could use the windows power tools image re-sizer to simply re-size it to 800 by 600

I did TC but it didn't

Windows "resizer" isn't restricted to jpg files... will work with almost any format...

Thanks Rupe but I had to end up messing about in MS Paint, Image attributes.