Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Edited by CL

Edited by CL

Cool, i'll be watching it closely.
Good luck with this adventure

Edited by CL

Hi CL
Nice work, and its recycled materials.. you don`t hang around
How big is it going to be diameter/height?
It may be a little flat-topped where the tubing meets the top hub but it shouldn`t hurt much.
As far as the structural integrity goes, it will probably depend on how identical the curved hoops are to balance/cancel out the forces.
They`ll have to be fairly close or they could push the top hub off centre.

One major flaw....the "toes" are covered

Like the work and following with interest CL

Edited by CL

back to inventing again eh.

20 ft diameter - yet thats a large dome.

African round houses often used a metal pinnacle to hold it all together.

Thats works out to about 251ft of tube for the main hoops plus the lengths for the horizontal bracing hoops.
Actually to carry on the recycling theme you could try to find a couple of trampoline frames of the correct diameter on freecycle for those...waste not, want not You`ll have to play around with the door height to see which sizes you need.

Certainly is a lot of tube. Would be heaps less for a simple hoop house - but not as impressive hey

Edited by CL

Nice work and great idea Charlie... I'll also be watching with interest.

You might as well go for a big `un.. it`ll be more impressive.
The 12ft`er will only be 6ft high so you`ll need to add the cost of a 2ft riser wall

You could do this by using a slightly larger diameter 2' riser pipe into which the curved loops sit and are pinned?

Go Man Go!

If you make a rotating header bucket in the center you could flood each sector of the floor in sequence, maybe not requiring a sump if the floor is a trickle filter (not as efficient) instead of flood and drain. See my plans for Hex's dome, which he ignored :

http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/vie ... 000#113000

Also, maybe while you're building a dome why not build two - one covered and insulated to house the fish and another one joined for the plants. In the cold weather you could close off the plant one and just use the fish one. Kind of like Apollo 13 when they used the lunar lander as a life raft, or something... (Maybe too much coffee this morning)