Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Thanks Frank! Much appreciated. Will see how I do....

can i ask how you'll get to the plants in the middle of the grow beds? will the cover lift ether side?

Yes, the GB's are on the sides (500mm wide) The tunnel cover (whether it be plastic of shade cloth) will roll up like a tent flap in order to work on the plants.

If one REALLY has to get to the other side of the GB I suppose you could just wade into the pond and work from there.

Cheers

Do you have cold joints Synapto.... or did you do the pond walls all in one pour?

Unfortunately when you are carrying concrete to site in buckets on shoulders it's impossible to get a single pour. As far as my joints being "cold" I'm not sure, they get a little stiff in mid-winter though.

Is how I will have to do it too ..... bucket by bucket....so glad to hear! Someone said I HAVE to do it in one pour or the "cold joints" will always leak. If this is how you did it then is good enough for me too! I am just going to seal well afterwards.

Hahahaha I know what you mean Synapto

Continuous is best... but not always possible

Sorry, I've been out hiking, canoeing, exploring glaciers, climbing mountains, watching avalanches etc... Just got back last night, but was too tired

As frank said, it's relatively simple, however sketchup does force you to think much differently to most other modeling programs.
Sketchup is a modeler using lines ad surfaces, despite it looking like it does, it in fact has no solids.

To make the half-pipe, i did it as frank said.
To make the hoops, I used 40mm circles then 'follow me' along a half circle. (I cheated and gave this pipe 0mm wall thickness, but who's gonna look?)
The shadecloth or Clear PVC cover is 'painted' with 'Safety glass' (it looked the best)
It is a half circle, with another 2mm offset. these were joined and extruded, just like the half pipe growbeds.
It is important to paint both sides, as it is not treated as a solid.

But there are 'Many ways to skin a cat, so long as you start with a sharp knife at the A**hole'
All you have to remember, is that if all the lines are there, sketchup will create a plane. the plane cannot exist without lines, but the lines can exist with out the plane.
If you draw 4 lines, connected in a rectangle, and a plane does not appear, then unfortunately you have one point off in some weird location. You can fix this by moving or redrawing the line in the correct plane, or drawing another line diagonally from corner to corner. It is impossible to create a triangle that is not a plane. So this will create two triangles, and draw a plane with a slight bend in the middle.
Either planes or lines can be selected and manipulated, but there are no solids, so this make some addition and subtraction extrusions behave strangely.
Please remember that sketchup is still in its 'beta' release, meaning it's not perfect, and unpredictable results can occur, especially when using the 'follow me' tool.

Did that answer all your questions?

hmmm site wont let me upload the skp file anybody who wants it, please pm me.

Thanks KP. Will my questions on SketchUp ever be all answered?

Only if you keep asking them