Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

OMG. I'm shocked, can't imagine how you must be feeling.

New thread- "How not to smoke a trout"

Such is life ,my thoughts now turn to rebuilding the system.
I really needed to clean out the beds at least now I'll have too.
The goldies are still kicking in the sump so I might try to keep a couple of beds operational instead of cycling anew.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!

That really stinks

I hope that does not $et you back to much.

Must be painful.

If you are considering rebuilding your system with solar/battery backup, do consider circuit protection throughout the entire circuit. Not sure if you have had a fuse for your battery originally, but lead acid batteries will keep discharging and the current provided can be huge. The fuse must be sized smaller than the current rating of the cables you used, so in any case if there is a failure somewhere, the blown fuse will take out the batteries and discharging stops before the cables start melting and burning up.

There is actually more current drawn in a DC system than an AC system. So to power the same AC equipment using DC (via inverter) you will need higher current, hence bigger cables, not sure about the actual sizing but, I think 10sqmm or 16sqmm cable is not uncommon for DC systems. Check AS/NZS 3008 for cable sizing.

Freak soz Lungy, bigger and better eh?

Dang

Onward and upward. I agree that keeping a couple beds going with the goldfish is probably a good idea unless you have been having issues with the system. Will definitely help to get cycled back up if a couple beds are already up.

So despite the tragedy........ I'm interested to see what you come up with for the re-build, there are always tweeks and improvements that we all wish we could make.

Sigh, hang in there.

Thanks for the concern folks but it will take more than a pesky fire to hold me back.
I decided that the water in the sump has been contaminated by burning plastics etc so going to clean everything out and start afresh.
Thinking that the dog had something to do with somehow shorting the batteries out as I was in the shed 30 mins beforehand and checked the stats on the lcd readout of the solar reg and everything was fine and dandy.
There was no mains power failure at the time so no current was being drawn to power the 12v air pump which was the only device connected and correctly fused etc.
It beats me but the result was fast and catastrophic.
Another possibility is that I had some secondhand UPS stored in the shed that spontaneously combusted but unlikely as they would have had no charge in them at all.

Crikey Lungy!

* /me heads out to shed to check batteries *

Holy Crap lungy, can't say what hasn't been said already, will wait for the new beginnings

Hi Lungy,

Just looking back at your old pics on your batteries, looks like your battery was rather "exposed". Was your fuse installed as close to the battery as possible?

Anyway, that's history, but I was also considering going down the path of 12V car battery backup as well. I think it was from another thread where some prominent members convinced me of using a 12V battery via inverter to power AC equipment on lost of AC power. But my point is that in my search, I came across something from Supercheapautos latest catalogue, page 9 of WA catalogue. It appears to be a battery box with an integrated circuit breaker. I have not seen the product myself but it seems like a box where you can pop the battery into it and connect the terminals internally to its built-in circuit breaker. If my understanding of the applications of this box (by looking at its photo) is correct, if the outside terminals short, the internal circuit breaker will trip.

As I may not have time to check out this battery box this weekend, I think those already using 12V battery backup might want to take a look if you don't really have circuit protection. Just trying to help.

What could have caused such a big fire though?? I have blown up 150AH batteries before, and there is not really a huge amount of heat created....not enough to burn a shed down anyway. They just sort of explode and spray acid everywhere. Even the flammable gasses that are formed would sort of explode in a flash, not really a big fire...unless there was other readily flammable stuff really close by.

I wouldn't have a clue what caused it but I am sorry to see such a nice system ruined.
Hope you come back better than ever.

I suppose another explanation is I had some visitor to the backyard as I have had some other occurrences before and they can be vindictive little so and so's.