Cyara's dream CHIFT PIST system

Cyara

Hi Doug! Took a while to answer you cos you gave me so much to think about!

greenedo wrote:

Quick question - Is each GB feeding directly into the corresponding GB below?

No. The flow is from the top flush tank to 5 GBs consecutively... draining into first Fish Pond.... which drains onto 5 GBs consecutively below... which drains into next lower Fish Pond.... and so on downhill until last Fish Pond drains into big GB for trees... and finally into sump below.

Quote:

If so, you may have an issue since each GB will use a portion of the water, and you may end up with rather uneven drain times. In other words, Let's say that a bed takes 1000l of water to initiate the autosiphon, flout, or whatever.
The first bed in the series would fill over 10-15 minutes (for the sake of argument), then drain 950l in 2-3 minutes.

The second bed would receive that 950l of water, but would not have the 1000l necessary until the next cycle of the autosiphon or flout. It would have a full bed of water for a good portion of the time, then the next cycle of the GB above would start the siphon/flout early on, (during the quick inrush of water from above), and the bed would be left with a few hundred liters of water in it.

The third bed may have a similar fate, and so forth.

Yes. That would then definitely be a problem from GB to GB and to be avoided.

But even though my flow is not like this, your point does surface a concern I still have......

Even though filling consecutively, each GB is positioned where piping will reach one before another.... so the same sort of problem could surface....no matter how hard I try to minimise the differing distances..... perhaps in practice too small to really make a difference.... that I don't know yet.....but I am thinking that enough water has to be released quickly enough from the starting Top "Flush" Tank - which gets the flood and drain cycle going - to ensure that all GBs cycle correctly.

Would love to just know how I could position my flout on a ledge at EXACTLY the right level to release EXACTLY the right amount at great speed to each of the 5 GBs below so that every GB cycles properly and together....Need an adjustable flout level!... impossible once built... :compress:

Simultaneous cycling of each unit of 5 GBs is a pipe-dream I think. Unless I can actually join all 5 of the GBs at some point low down - maybe just plumbed together with a thick PVC pipe somewhere.....so that effectively is one large GB in the way it fills but built to look like 5 for ease of planting etc.... Hmmmm.... :roll:

(Better have a maintenance point too to check no debris stopping inter-GB flow) And then one siphon out... probably have to be pretty large exit pipe to maximise speed and oxygen pull through. It isn't so important for filling up to be fast is it? I don't mean excessivley slow but just slow... I could then pipe water into all 5 GBs but use only one siphon out... :roll:

Would this siphon properly? Would it jam? Maybe the joins need to be much more... like actually built together at some point one to another.... and then all pooling to a common flout... :?:

I am thinking of physically measuring the EXACT amount of water that flows through a GB with my kind of media and not just working on guestimates of 40%. My flush tank will be deeper than what the system needs and with this exact knowledge I could more easily position the flout at a raised level to flush enough in one go... going to need to tweak this... have a way of raising or lowering the flout level..... impossible once built!.... doing a lot of pondering on this challenge.... :roll:

..... This initial flow is important to get right ... A flout might not be what I use up there with all this guessing and tweaking I would need to do.... might rethink this part of the design.

Quote:

There are a few options for dealing with this:
1- Have the first set of GBs slightly larger, and each successive tier be slightly smaller. Thus, when the top GB empties its 950l (if 50l went to plants, etc.) the second bed could be triggered at approximately 940l the third in a series be triggered by 900l, and the last by 850l. The top growbed would constantly have some water in it, but each successive bed would have a quick flood (similar to a dump tank) followed by a quick drain. (numbers are pulled from the air for illustration purposes, the actual consumption on each level would probably be much lower)
2- Have the tanks in between the tiers for equalization, but they would need enough capacity to deal with the dumping of the GB above.
3- Feed each tier of GBs from the top tank, and let it void to the sump - I think that would defeat a lot of the benefits of your design.

I had worked on a tiered design a while back and had seen this as an issue. The quick flood, slow drain takes care of this, but the CHIFT-PIST plan doesn't lend itself to the concept of water consumption on each level. I think that a slight decrease in GB size on each successive level would keep too much water from pooling in the bed between cycles.

Like your thinking. Nice solution if I had the GBs in sequence. Instead I have whole AP units in sequence .... just hard to see when i have the design all linked up in a pic.

Quote:

Also, you seem to have given up on the rope pump, since most rope pumps pull vertically. I think that this is because most wells are vertical. Here's a link where a rope pump was 10-20 degrees off vertical.
http://www.drh-norway.org/Articel.asp?NewsID=29
But there shouldn't be a problem running nearly horizontal as you would be. If you don't like that, you could go with an Archimedes screw.

I have not yet given up on the rope pump.... or any alternate pumping ideas yet. Still looking closely at all options. My first concern is to get the basic flow of the AP design right because I have become MEGA-impatient to get building..

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Either of these could be run with an electric motor, a windmill or your bicycle.

Absolutely! I want to use alternate energy in some way and probably will end up using a hybrid of ideas. I really like the rope pumps simplicity because it looks like it can be taught to the poorest of the poor and by attaching it to a bicycle you can speed up delivery to a community. I might personally use a mix of ideas... still churning some over...

Quote:

One other thing that you got me thinking about: You wanted to have a bit of a buffer for your system HGC had several options for that. I had an idea that may be of some use:

Set up an SRO (if that's the verdict for the drain formerly known as a venturi drain) and an additional lower tap that just goes into the top tank at the lowest permissible water point. You can have a third overflow at your highest permissible point, so that as your windmill pump was running at normal volume, you would transfer your water from your sump to the top tank at the same rate that it runs out and cycles your GBs normally. If you don't have wind, your trickle tap would flood the GBs more slowly, but keep them from drying out completely. And if you have hurricane force winds, you don't pump your sump completely dry or overflow your top tank.

-Doug

I have been told locally that for me to rely on windpower alone would not be wise. So again I am looking to solar power ..... that is one thing we have here in abundance!....and even finding a way to use my river power which is endless. I expect to be playing with ideas for a while yet. I love Wally Minto's wonder wheel. Slow yes... but inexonerably get s the job done.... would love to find the perfect application for it... love the spiral wheel (coil pump) and will use that to get water from the river up to a first stage. Love the rope pumps simplicity and adaptibility. Will be looking into solar with the new photo voltaic cells now being produced... all fascinating stuff!!! :cheers:

Thanks for you inputs Doug. You surfaced something that was troubling me but that I still had not properly wrapped my mind around... gave me leverage to open it up more fully.

hygicell

no flaming was intended, Chelle
and I apologize to OBO and to you if my post came over as if it were

I am a very naive person:
I believe in everybody's good nature
even when confronted with reality (which has often cost me dearly) I have a tendency to think: surely this person's intentions were good.

so I have to constantly remind myself: frank, don't be naive!
This has allowed me to develop a nose for what I call booby traps

the whole Geyser pumps site reeks of insincerity:
all through the site they promote their pump as being efficient
not only for special circumstances, but for all applications
such a claim can only obtain validity if you mention power consumption to start with
then you still have to prove the efficiency with pump charts and efficiency charts
the geyser people don't.

your apparently entousiastic reaction:

Cyara wrote:

... The use of accumulated air in the geyser pump below is definitely the answer. And air lifts water! :cheers:

Thanks OBO.

made me feel I had to intervene: Geyser pumps are not the answer except for pumping mud.

please don't question my goodwill

speaking of intentions:
I'm sure it was not intentionally,
but your quote of what is represented by you to be my quote:

Cyara wrote:

I will find your original posting earlier... here it is.

hygicell wrote:

A company called Bowjon mounts small air compressors on windmills and runs the compressed air down into water wells. When the air bubbles out at the right depth, into the right diameter of pipe, it makes a pretty good water pump, and there are no moving parts to mention except for the air compressor! I like this idea, and as I am working on a cable tool rig for drilling my own water wells, I hope to actually get this setup going. Someone even gave me an original Bowjon compressor and the literature, although it seems like any air compressor would work.

is actually a quote of a quote of a quote
and not something I claimed but somebody else
who, even better, just like me questions the efficiency of pumping water with air
and, like me, suggests that wind power can be put to other, better uses
one of them being direct pumping
another one heating
heating was the subject of my post

Quote:

Disagreement is great and a lot of fun when there is goodwill. I learn lots when people disagree with me!

I couldn't agree more :geek:

frank

hygicell

Cyara wrote:

Would love to just know how I could position my flout on a ledge at EXACTLY the right level to release EXACTLY the right amount at great speed to each of the 5 GBs below so that every GB cycles properly and together....Need an adjustable flout level!... impossible once built...

a flout can easily be made adjustable, Chelle.
just constrain the height to which it is allowed to float
and it will be forced under water, fill up and start to siphon

guess this news makes you really happy?

:cheers:

I would not connect five growbeds to one siphon
that would cause a tsunami in your fish tanks

frank

Outbackozzie

Multiple siphons will aerate more than one single big one too.

Sparkchaser

Quote:

Would love to just know how I could position my flout on a ledge at EXACTLY the right level to release EXACTLY the right amount at great speed to each of the 5 GBs below so that every GB cycles properly and together....Need an adjustable flout level!... impossible once built...

Flouts are easy to set if they are located outside of the grow bed. Place the Flout in a bucket or tub, so it has enough room to operate. Connect the tub to the GB via hose or flexible piping, could be a from a bottom drain in the grow bed. Raise and lower the Flout Tub up or down to raise or lower the water level in the grow bed. The Flout Tub will be flat bottomed so it will be easy to stack blocks and add or remove shims under it. A six inch Draw Down Flout could give you a 5"(or 4" or 3") rise and fall of the water level in the grow bed if the tub height is adjusted. And as the tub is connected via flexible hose, the tub can be located away from the grow bed where you have extra room. So what do you think....

Cyara

hygicell wrote:

no flaming was intended, Chelle
and I apologize to OBO and to you if my post came over as if it were

No probs Frank. Just thought OBO wasn't getting fairly treated. My enthusiasm you speak of was for the concept of lifting water with a large air bubble and that it was being effectively used somewhere... is all. Find such things fascinating. Didn't speak of using it myself. Really neat to see specific uses of simple mechanics effectively in operation.

Below is the full context of the quote of the quote. You seemed to be recommending what was quoted... is the reason I brought your attitude into question.

hygicell wrote:

you absolutely want to use all nature resources to the best advantage, don't you, Chelle?
and apparently you're not the only one

As I have already pointed out, using wind and water power to produce electricity is a waste if you are going to re-transform electricity into motion

that makes direct pumping with wind/water energy much more interesting

well, here's another idea that I have come up with years ago that should make your heads spin
somebody has spelled it out on the net:

"Other Uses For Wind Power (frank's note: could be water power as well):

Remember that every time you convert energy from one form to another, there is a bit of loss. Belt drives, chain drives, gears, inverters, and the like all have losses in the range of 10-15%. You can tell that interposing many of these intermediate steps between the prop and the end use of the energy will greatly reduce the useful power you get out. Although it's tempting to just create electricity, store it, and use it to do everything, sometimes it's not practical.

Most of the time that energy storage is mentioned, what's being referred to is the storage of electricity. It's important to think of what other uses you might come up with for the power though. I myself plan to run my electric hot water heater with a windmill. This is an ideal use, since over the course of a day, there is usually enough wind to heat the water up, hopefully by shower time! Since the heater has 2 elements, I can leave one connected to the utility power and turn it on when necessary; the second element is available to us. The point is that here we have a useful storage medium. Since my water heater costs me $35 per month or so to run, I figure it would be a real benefit to run it with wind power when possible, which is most of the time around here.

Old-style windmills use wind power directly to pump water up out of the ground; a rod moves up and down and pulls the water up directly. This is a fairly direct use of the wind power and is pretty efficient. I myself have the idea of using wind power to mechanically agitate a large tank of water; this should result in the heating of the water directly, without any intervening steps. In all of my searches of the internet, I've only seen this mentioned in one other place, probably because it would be difficult to agitate a pressurized tank. I've been thinking of elevating a tank somewhat and agitating that with a prop mounted above it -- maybe!

A company called Bowjon mounts small air compressors on windmills and runs the compressed air down into water wells. When the air bubbles out at the right depth, into the right diameter of pipe, it makes a pretty good water pump, and there are no moving parts to mention except for the air compressor! I like this idea, and as I am working on a cable tool rig for drilling my own water wells, I hope to actually get this setup going. Someone even gave me an original Bowjon compressor and the literature, although it seems like any air compressor would work. ...............

Cyara

hygicell wrote:

Cyara wrote:

Would love to just know how I could position my flout on a ledge at EXACTLY the right level to release EXACTLY the right amount at great speed to each of the 5 GBs below so that every GB cycles properly and together....Need an adjustable flout level!... impossible once built...

a flout can easily be made adjustable, Chelle.
just constrain the height to which it is allowed to float
and it will be forced under water, fill up and start to siphon

guess this news makes you really happy?

:cheers:

I would not connect five growbeds to one siphon
that would cause a tsunami in your fish tanks

frank

Hee! Hee! Be the first Fish Pond Tsunami I ever heard of!

By increasing the LENGTH of the flout!!!! O wow. Of course! It is also the length of the flout that determines how much exits ... not just the size of the tank. Just didn't even think to factor that in! There is my play to tweak the system once built to best guesstimate possible! Thanks Frank!

I truly am thrilled! :cheers:

Cyara

Sparkchaser wrote:

Quote:

Would love to just know how I could position my flout on a ledge at EXACTLY the right level to release EXACTLY the right amount at great speed to each of the 5 GBs below so that every GB cycles properly and together....Need an adjustable flout level!... impossible once built...

Flouts are easy to set if they are located outside of the grow bed. Place the Flout in a bucket or tub, so it has enough room to operate. Connect the tub to the GB via hose or flexible piping, could be a from a bottom drain in the grow bed. Raise and lower the Flout Tub up or down to raise or lower the water level in the grow bed. The Flout Tub will be flat bottomed so it will be easy to stack blocks and add or remove shims under it. A six inch Draw Down Flout could give you a 5"(or 4" or 3") rise and fall of the water level in the grow bed if the tub height is adjusted. And as the tub is connected via flexible hose, the tub can be located away from the grow bed where you have extra room. So what do you think....

Now isn't that an interesting idea.....easy access and it just fills as the GB is filling cos interconnected by a base pipe and at desired height it fattens and empties.

But I have a question: Won't it just empty only the tub it is lying in and have to be refilled many times to empty the GB.... Would this staggered exit of water in such a large GB not leave me open to the bed entering the next filling stage before it has completely emptied? I suppose it depends how fast I get the water back up to the top..... Hmmmm. :roll:

I must think about this. I also need to understand how many times the plants need water to be cycled through per day. Do you know?

I can't use this for my Top Flush Tank though cos want flooding to happen in one smooth action.

Sparkchaser

Just make sure the water inflow to the tub is larger than the outflow through the Flout. If you have a 1" Flout, the feed the tub with a 2" flex hose or maybe 3, 1" hoses from the grow bed. Just in case one plugs up for some reason. Once the flow rate is right, the Flout will drain the whole bed and reset every time.

Cyara

hygicell wrote:

I would not connect five growbeds to one siphon
that would cause a tsunami in your fish tanks

Surely the pipe size would determine how much water entered the Fish Pond at any one time? But I guess you are assuming I would use a big exit pipe that I said I wanted.... and probably would need to or take too long to empty.

If I used a very big pipe for rapid draining into and out of the flout ... but then maybe split the water delivery into many smaller pipes....maybe 3 .... before it enters the Pond at different places....no bends... just long gentle curves that will not slow water delivery and interfere with the flout action. What do you think?

Build in a slight gradient down too to help each pipe to empty properly.... I must think about this. Welcome to show me if impractical...

Outbackozzie wrote:

Multiple siphons will aerate more than one single big one too.

Valid point. Perhaps have the multiple pipe divisions coming off the one siphon to each exit over a splash plate before entering the Pond. Steve once mentioned that and I thought it a neat idea.

I really like the idea of one siphon cos keeps me from the more problematic challenge of ensuring that each bed gets adequate water each flood-and-drain cycle to fill enough to engage the siphon and drain. I think that could drive me NUTS!!! :compress:

.... cos not just one AP unit but all the way up the hill! :shock:

Not experienced enough to "see" the exponential effects.... just got a gut feel it would be TROUBLE!!!!

Outbackozzie

As long as you have a drain hole incorporated into the siphons standpipe, they will drain between cycles anyway.

As frank says - Design more splashing into the system from the start, make water run over curves, and split it up as much as possible to expose as much moving water to air as possible.

Cyara

Sparkchaser wrote:

Just make sure the water inflow to the tub is larger than the outflow through the Flout. If you have a 1" Flout, the feed the tub with a 2" flex hose or maybe 3, 1" hoses from the grow bed. Just in case one plugs up for some reason. Once the flow rate is right, the Flout will drain the whole bed and reset every time.

I see.... just keep the horizontal-opened-flout flooded with water entering more rapidly than exiting and it will stay down until the whole bed emptied. Then this could work with all 5 beds joined to exit through one big external flout don't you think?

I would really like to do it this way if I can be sure to avoid the tsunami!

Had another idea.... use a triple flout or even quadruple flout... joined..... like in pic below...... to exit the water to different points of the Fish pond. That should help.

Isn't exiting all the beds together considered a good idea? Cos then SLO (Solids Lifting Overflow) - still wondering what happened on that poll - will fill the next GBs more effectively surely. More water flow to lift solids......

hygicell

Cyara wrote:

By increasing the LENGTH of the flout!!!!

increasing/shortening the length of the flout's flexible part is one way to do it,
but you must then dismount it

I suggest you simply constrain the height to which it is allowed to float with an adjustable stop
this will make it adjustable on site anytime you want

hope you get the idea

frank

TCLynx

A quick note about your worm bin chicken cages. (If you already have info on this then don't mind me but I just need to mention it in case.) I worry that chicken manure might be too "hot" for dropping directly as the primary input into a worm bin. I don't want you to have all your worms leave because they don't like the environment. Since chicken manure is generally too hot to use directly in the garden without composting, it makes me fear the idea of putting in directly into worm bins too. (Bunny berries can be used directly around your plants without composting and we know worms like em.)

You might want to test a small worm bin with chickens roosting over it overnight for a while before you build the big ones for your system.

I have a slight worry about using vermicompost or worm juice from a bed that has chicken manure in it due to the whole salmonella issue here in the USA not so long ago. Chicken manure is best aged/composted. And yet, you must weigh your own risks and there are many people out there using chickens over the AP systems so who knows what is really dangerous and what isn't. I'm comfortable with pee ponics where others would never do such a thing.

Cyara

hygicell wrote:

I suggest you simply constrain the height to which it is allowed to float with an adjustable stop
this will make it adjustable on site anytime you want

Goodness! Pure simplicity! Adjustable stopper set at preferred height.... and extremely easy to tweak the system. Thank you very much Frank. :cheers:

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Cyara's dream CHIFT PIST system

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