Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

i have a less well lit area in my green house that gets less than 4 hours sun per say, has anyone tried using mirrors to reflect light into a darker corner to make it more useful?

Think TimC... or Gemmel... was trying something along those lines Timmy

Timmy

Cheaper option would be to paint as many surfaces as you can with flat white paint.
If youv'e got to go with 'mirrors' reflective mylar is about the best you get for efficiency.

+ 1 for the mylar. For a less costly source of mylar than the hydroponics shops, look in the camping section of the big box department store. The mylar emergency blankets cost very little and at least one side of them is usually really reflective.

Mylar will be more efficient than mirrors since the light has to pass through the glass twice when reflecting off a mirror.

nice tip on the mylar - i wasn't planning on using actual glass mirrors obviously for cost reasons.
the reflective paint won't really work for my situation since i want to angle the reflection into a corner. i think the best solution here is to built a frame and stretch the mylar over it.
now i just need to find a spot for them that's out of the way and doesn't piss the neighbours off.
any idea what kind of effect this will have on the plants growth? obviously reflected sun light isn't as good as direct light.
it's an area up against a fence facing east so it ends up only getting 3 hours of so of sun in winter, making it no good for the winter veggies i want to grow

Have you actually tried growing things there Timmy? Quite often plants will grow in these areas because of diffused light and its usually daylight hours ie length that is important. If you painted the fence flat white it may suffice (bummer in summer though ). If there is not enough light the plants will be leggy or overly green and prone to insect attack.
Think mylar is over 90% reflective.

i haven't put anything in yet, but the kind of veggies i want to grow want full sun for 8 hours a day. painting the fence white won't really help because the sun sits behind the fence most of the day shading the bed, and there is also a big lemon tree in the neighbors yard shading it a little to. the plan is to hang the mirrors on the shed wall thats opposite the bed and reflect the light onto the patch.

Will look out for the glowing back yard next time I am in Gosnells

I've tried a couple of things.

Some "panda" plastic stuff from they local hydro shop:


And some of this mylar style reflective "foil" stuck to white plastic stuff (the same as real estate signs):


According to the hyrdo guy, the panda stuff is about as good as the highly reflective stuff, but because the highly refliectve one was stiff I was able to angle it to put more sun on the veg. You could just build a frame and staple the reflective material to it. Mylar is floppy, so will need to be supported.

how well did it work?

White poly would be easy to keep clean, hose it down once a week. White paint is probably the cheapest option and not far behind the rest performance wise.
Mylar and mirrors are expensive and reflect the heat as well as light. These might scorch your plants on a very bright day

every time i read the topic title i have an urge to add "smoke and" to the start of it LOL

Both worked reasonably well. The high reflective stuff was slightly better, but seemed to reflect a lot more heat than the white stuff, so will be no good come spring/summer. It really does heat it up a fair bit more too, but I read somewhere on here that plants are fine even at 60 degrees, just so long as they have enough water...