Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Brownouts/ Blackouts
The ultimate solution
Here's what I have done to alleviate all daytime power outages.
I make my own
This solar to grid array on the roof produces average 6 kilowatt hours per day, thats enough to run 2 computers in the office, fridge. pond pump, airpump and still send some electrons back into the grid. Not worried about night time cos I dont use the pond pump during the night
Sure its a bit xxy to set up, but with the price of electricity set to rise considerably, and legislation soon to force up the cost of green electricity, I figure that long term I'm on the right track
cheers
Rodney

Gemmell I wouldn't leave it exposed outside but it wouldn't be too hard to make a weatherproof enclosure out of say half a 20 litre plastic drum or the like.
I have mine off the floor of the shed and under a bench- too keep out of the sun and also to ensure the air intake doesn't get dirty as it is on the bottom of the unit. The pic of the unit in operation shows only one outlet- I now have 2 big air bubblers.

Farout thats a monster

Alternatively - what kind of effect will having a long air tube have? I could have the air pump in my shed and the airstone in the tank, but they're about 2m apart.

I imagine I'll lose a LOT of air pressure due to friction on the pipe and that it won't be worth doing, but I thought I'd ask anyway.

Nah - no probs there. I've got a 13mm (or whatever the size under 19mm is) hooked up to mine - less friction problems then

Sweet, so a 2 or 3m air hose is an option (depending on pricing) so long as I up the diameter. Also probably don't need that much airation, it's just for backup.

Don't even think the diameter is an issue. I have about 5 metres of normal size silicon air pump hose running from my shed to an aoutside tank. Didn't seem to present too many issues.

Do you have a link where you got that pump and price

F&F
current e-bay lot - this outfit seem to have one on ebay almost all the time.
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Microcomputerise ... m153.l1262
Mine came from the same mob- cost $80 plus freight.

"So there is enuf power for a couple of lights to be on and the tv thats it"

your TV uses less power than your pump ? thats a small TV ..

how noisy is the unit? I am about to purchase one on ebay today.

the unit makes a gentle sort of hum- however I wouldn't want it in the house. It is much bigger than normal aquarium air pumps and so the noise is higher. I can hear it clearly when I am about 10 meters away from it and just hear it when about 20 meters away.
In an earlier life I used to put big aquarium airpumps in padded boxes to lower the noise level- you could try that if it was too loud.

Jim,

thanks, I will see how it goes and put it in the garage if its too noisy (about 5m away). Maybe some silicon feet will reduce any vibration noise.

do you have airstones connected? What size?

oh yeah what size tubing? Might try and get it all at the same time.

At the moment I have 2 really long leaky pipe type airstones- about 600mm long each.
I have them attached to the pump via some tubing I had on hand. Slightly bigger than normal aquarium stuff- ID perhaps 5mm??
And about 2 meters long for each one. I found that the amount of air pumped was low if the airstones were on the bottom of the tank. So I just hang them in the water so that they are sort of vertical. Get quite vigorous airflow and water movement this way.
At the moment I am not running the airpump as I think all that cold air being pumped through the water is cooling the water down.
This is gut feeling at the moment as I only turned it off a couple of days ago- none the less the water temp is now about 1 degree higher than it was last week and the ambient temps have not increased.
My fish are really small so I don't think a water pump failure (my main reason for adding an airpump) would cause any real problem at this stage.