Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

http://www.verticalfarm.com/designs.php

These designs don't really do it for me, a lot don't take sun position into consideration (they appear to assume tons of electric lighting which is dumb). They also don't seem to give AP the position it deserves. The wind and solar power positioning could be better probably.

I was looking at the New Alchemy Institute's bioshelter designs last night, those are a good starting point but not "vertical farms".

http://www.vsb.cape.com/~nature/greence ... nline.html

(Working for a CAD software company, I'm itching to turn on architects to the possibilities for integrated AP for homes and buildings)

Arcosanti could be another inspiration, but dated. I used to read Omni magazine when I was a kid, and these designs have an early 80's futuristic Omni-magazine style to them.
http://www.arcosanti.org/project/projec ... /main.html

Maybe rather than huge vertical farms people should be planning for distributed BYAP systems on balconies and rooftops?

Vertical farming will have to happen at some point as there simply won`t be enough flat area to support the population

Artificial lighting may be viable for some projects, especially AP based ones with fast growing warm water fish in cooler parts of the world.
Heavily insulated building with no lossy glazing.
Cram the maximum amount of plants into the space, less shading issues.
A 12 month growing season, "free" heat from the lighting to heat the tanks and the growing space.
It might just balance out over the year from a productivity point of view?

Reading one of the vertical farming papers, about hydroponics, the non-plant or water delivery or support structure should be minimized. Some of the hydroponics pictures showed a lot of framing and/or a lot of unused space vertically. If I had to fit as many plants in a lit space as possible things would reduce as much as possible to nothing but plants and water and air. The support for the plants should also be the water delivery and it should be minimal to not block the light. None of the buildings appeared to be glazed for the sun tracking across the sky, more like a conventional skyscraper with glazing on all sides.

Maybe if a city were located in a geothermal area the fish could be in a subterranean warm zone.

It is interesting to consider that the design changes depending on where you're allowed to cheat. It would be a simple thing to cram a bunch of plants inside a box if you were allowed a huge electric bill for lighting, cooling, robots for moving them around and harvesting, wasted water, etc. The opposite end would be very little production for a unit of area, kind of like having a single neglected tree on a patch of grass. If it were not fed or watered that would be cheap to maintain but wouldn't produce a lot of food in a certain amount of time. Do you use carbon footprint as the limiting criteria, water use, electricity or fossil fuels used, etc.?

I think a good "building" would be like a kind of seed potato; the grow out would be done on distributed roofs, lots, parks, patios, and balconies around the city. The "vertical farm" would supply fingerlings and seedlings for the city, as well as the materials for people to build their local growout systems. It would also be an educational center for people to learn how to build and manage their growout systems. The vertical farm would be a hub for a citywide farming program, not just a centralized island.

DD - I have been working with designers for a while now(retro fitout solar
passive) and they are only just getting the message about
positionality/thermal mass etc.

It is fine to have a building with all the 'do hickies' but if the sun
doesn't figure, well, what is the point??Duh!
Also ppl winge about the small amount of power solar PV produce,
but if I had a 2k system it would cover 85% of my power bill, plus the fossilfuel savings. (private power bill is about $1.90 a day)...and I have pumps that run 24/7 and a pressure pump for water delivery to the house.

Agreed My house is not as large as the Mcmansions we see.
But FF power costs will rise and the sun will still be there to give us warmth in winter and passive aircon in the summer,
provided we get the design right!
Add to solar passive design criteria and positionality and a huge reduction in power consumption would ocur by default.

Most will say I am OTT but I don't think so.

BYAP could easily be brought to the middle of the house,
and as we polinate things by hand a bit, it would also reduce
the exposure to lots of pests.
I have not finished my design for our new house but have many
parts of the BYAP system incorporated for solar passive principles.
Can't wait to show the world a thing or 2, but have to.
The 'P' word is constantly in my mind!

DD - I recently down loaded SKTUP Pro demo and trial package but don't
think I will purchase the whole package for $495 but man it is a good
system if only to see in 3D how things work(sun/shadows etc).

I can see myself using sketchup a LOT in the future, and would love to be part of a team to lead the way...

PS Sketchup and CAD are quite compatible, got any spare CAD programs
hanging around DD??
Cheers for the rant!
C1

Hey C1, Sketchup free version should be plenty, there aren't a lot of extra features that would be useful to the average person in the Pro version.

This time of year we're glad our house has a lot of windows in the back and that the back faces SW, on sunny days we turn off the furnace and just set it on fan and distribute all the solar heat throughout the rest of the house. The back of the house gets very warm on sunny days this time of year.

Yeh, true, about Pro but there are a few I have found, and a few make things easier.

So were you just lucky DD with your house or was it designed that way??

We seem to have more issue with heat gain than heat loss in Aussie, so solar passive heat convection draws cool air in, if you have it to spare that is...
That is why I have (and will have more) heaps of greenary in the south and lots of concrete (polished of course) for thermal mass storage/release.

Your house is SW we need NNE to take advantage of the early morning warmth in winter and reduced heat late arvo in summer! IMHO

Our lot was oriented that way and it was a little compromise to aim the house for the view rather than a pure S exposure. I was paying attention to the siting for passive solar though and we made sure to have lots of glass on the back side. It helps that our lot is open; it would be harder to get any gains on an existing house if the lot wasn't sunny to start with.

At a minimum these vertical farms should have more glass on the one side than the other. I was looking at the vertical farm design PDF and there are a hell of a lot of girders getting in the way of the sun on the way to the plants.

While we are OT, I might as well chime in about our house.
It was built of rammed earth in the '80s, using doors and windows from St John of God Hospital in Subiaco (Perth) when it was renovated back then.
Direct North solar orientation, wide northern eaves and quarry times on the floor where a fully glazed wall allows winter sun to enter the house. The roof is corrugated iron, but they only used reflective foil under the roof, not insulation above the ceiling, hence our heating in winter, was spent heating the roof space and in summer, the heat radiated in from the ceiling. We added ceiling insulation to R7.5

A Previous Owner had roofed the area which was there to provide winter solar heating, so one of my jobs this year, is to replace the corrugated iron with polycarbonate sheeting.

A Solar Hot Water service is used and additional heating of the house is by wood fired heaters. A "Heat Form" fireplace is installed in the Lounge. While not as efficient as the box style heater in the Family area, it is much more efficient than a brick fireplace.

My AP system is in the rear and we have recently added a large patio roof to provide shelter from the rain and winds.

The roof was supposed to be 50% clear polycarbonate, 50% corrugated iron, but the supplier said that I did not specify it (not on contract) and their standard was "smoked" (also not on contract) I have since replaced some sheets with clear sheets to allow more light to the plants.

Tony

Have you seen this site on the web
http://www.agriculturegaia.com/lang-pref/en/?lang=en
He says that he has invented a special vertical growing unit.

Apparently Gaia loves PVC:
http://www.agriculturegaia.com/wp-conte ... g_0823.jpg

Growing houses out of ficus trees, yum:

http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/11/20/vid ... terreform/

In fact the gaia guy is trying a version in bamboo with japanese researchers, problem is to do T and elbows...

To have the framework made from grown products would be awesome. Reminds me of research on self-replicating machines. Maybe a multi-year plan to grow the framework bigger and bigger. You could grow some bamboo, then shut off the tap and let it dry out as a non-living component thereafter.

Self-replicating open-source rapid prototyping machine:
http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome

An AP system could be the energy core for that ficus house. Maybe an AP system could grow the house faster?

http://www.calfeedesign.com/bamboo.htm
fullon race bikes made from bamboo with hemp fibre joints...amazing!!
very similar to a lot of high end carbon fibre construction...no reason it couldn't be done for this gaia stuff as well.

...also, from cyclingnews.com:



Sorry to drag it off-topic, just thought it was cool.