Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Looks very flash mate, that post count is getting up there - the addiction really has a hold you eh

Don't worry to much about the house, it will never be finished, I finally hooked up the second tap in the ensuite that has been sitting in the basin for two years the other week - took the whole of five minutes Really need to pull my finger out and finish grouting the tiles and flushing the gyprock in that room too

mate are you planing on running your pump 24/7? I have been looking for 12volt timers and as best i can find there is only 1 type, just woundered what your plan is as im not sure what to do?

Oh Cr@p, do you also have grouting to do too!!!!!!!!!!! That's just hilarious!!!

Mike, I'm not sleepin at night ya bugger!! Last night was 0245 when I last looked at my watch, was up gettin munchkins to school at 0700. I just wanna get Silvers in my FT, I can get hold of as many as I want (he's got 9,000 ready to go) but just concerned about the temp and the little blighters feeding in such cold water - water temp drops to 13 and up to 16-17 through the day. Each arvo I am chucking a 'pool blanket' on the FT (two fold up car sun-visor's) and had a tank heater in there for longer than the electricity bill will like, but it hasn't made much difference and I feel it's too late for trout up here???

Bentaz, we are very low tech with the whole AP, so our system is just continuous flow, and leaving the bilge pump on 24/7 suits us. I have to make sure the battery we get will be good enough to have enough charge in it to run through the night with no recharge - any thoughts on that?

I know it makes the water colder (especially using gravel as GB media) but what do you do? Will definitely be looking at trout for the next cycle of cooler months. The boss is hell keen on Barra - after reading Veggie Boy's Barra experiment, I'm split about 'em

Sig
Im also new to AP and trying to stay as low tech as possible, I want to run a timer say 15 on 45 off to save on the power, the timer I found is $50 on Ebay, I'll post a link to it tonight from home (stupid work computers have most stuff blocked).

I bought a 50 A/H sealed battery for $170 from battery world.

If you dont already have one coming I would strongly recomend you get a solar regulator, it will protect your battery from being drained and extend its life for a lot longer!

So Bentaz, am I right in assuming a 50 a/h batt can run 50 amps of gear per hour? as long as it is being charged?

I think I'll be doing a bit of research....

Yes a 50 A/H battery will run 50 amps for 1 hour or one 1 amp for 50 hours when fully charged, however you should not drain more than 30% out of your battery if you want it to live a long time, which is where the regulator comes in, it will protect the battery from being sucked dry and also overcharged, both of which will kill it.

Did a bit of solar power research

Apparently, running this bloody bilge pump 24/7 is supposed to require something like 32 20w panels and a bank of 8 friggin batteries surely that can't be right??? Each batt is priced at close to $1K, got disinterested/un-enthusiastic and didn't look at anything else.

That's gotta be wrong, hey?

what wattage is the pump sig, maybe better off buying a Tornado pump, what Litreage do you have, my Tornado pumps 12,000 litre per hour draws about 175wts my 4500lph pump about 135wts

I'm not big on maths but I cant see it being that big!
Maybe you should look at running the pump only during the day and on a timmer, I will be using a $50 timer to flood 8 times a day with slow drains.
I think the $50 timer and a rejig of your drainage could save $$$ big time, don't give up on the solar mate!!!

The pump is rated as 12V, 5A so from what I've learned that equates to 60W and it's reported to pump 4200lph. The FT is 1500L so at the reported 4200lph is should pump the whole tank almost 3 times an hour if on 24/7???

So you could only run it for a third of the time then and still turn the tank over once an hour!!

I'm ok with maths, but I used an online calculator to get a 'system setup' thing from a solar retailer, so who knows how the calculator is setup - more than likely in their favour???

Well I think maybe we can configure the drainage a bit better to flood the beds, heck knows the pump should be able to handle it, then drain over a bit of time, allowing the pump to switch off during the drain cycle obviously, this will cut back on power useage by 75% if we use 15 on 45 off. If the pump is better than that maybe we could do 10 on and 50 off? cutting the power useage down to 1/6th of 24/7 or effectively running the pump for only 4 hours in a 24 hour period,

If we wanted to go further maybe we could switch off cycling for say 6 hours at night, maybe 2200 to 0400. That would in effect mean the pump was only drawing power for 3 hours a day??? but would 6 hours be too long for ammonia to build up, but then thinking it would be when the water temp is the coldest, so that should balance it out a bit? making last feed at 1700 would also mean excretion is done well before the pump is switched off???

What are any thoughts??

Sig you may not be getting 4200lph as allow for head height and pipe length, more like 3000lph but still good turnover, at 60wts about $7-00 per month to run 24/7, but probably don't need 24/7, I have 5500lts and pump 10,000lph so run 40 mins on, 1 hr off 24/7, you would be better at at least 1hr on, 1hr off, best to average turning water over once an hour, you can get digital timers with 20 on off settings per day for around $15.00, they are on Ebay or I got a spare Arlec one from Coles for $17, have worked fine for 18 months

4200lph with a 60 watt pump sounds great, are you sure it's 60 ?, the pond pumps a few use here are, like my 4500lph pump uses 130 watts and they are meant to be the best on energy, 60 watts wouldn't need the amount of panels you're talking, but the batteries are expensive, we have looked at it a few years ago, looking at $20,000 every 10 years for batteries plus original set up, but on batteries alone $2,000 a year, we use around $1,600 a year on mains power, so doesn't make sense, no doubt a greenie will have a different view, but $400 is 10 cartons of beer, I would rather the beer

So with solar in mind - we went in to see a 'solar power' shop in town...

Just for the bilge pump we are looking at 2x40w panels (he had one on display for $990.00, but it was a 20W panel) and also a deep cycle huge mother battery, didn't get a price from him, but saw similar prices from the online guys. So if I use the $1,00 price tag for the battery (from online guys) and for easy maths, use a $1,000 price tag for each panel (though I know it will be more $'s) that's $3,000 to set it up to power the pump without needing any grid power as backup - we get water movement (lets say 2 FT an hour, or stuff it lets say it turns the FT over once an hour, just to be sure) the water dumping back into the FT gives aeration, the plants get a good old soaking with all the good stuff and the fishies get to grow nice and big - all with no electricity Sounds good yeah...

BUT at 1.2kwh of power a day, to run the pump from the grid, it costs 17.772 cents a day to run 24/7. using $3,000 as solar setup costs this would mean break even point is at 16,880 days of use on solar as compared to spending that $3,000 on the grid. So that is a whopping 46.25 years (not accounting for the 10-12 leap years in that period)
Over 40 DanG years before the solar system breaks even with the cost of electricity...

I might have become addicted to something like sawmilling in that time and have nothing to do with AP????

Crikey Moses - that's just wrong, I know there is a moral side of it with using renewable energy, blah blah blah, but really just to run a little DanG pump??? how does anyone actually run their home!!! Our house uses over 40Kwh a day!!! so that would mean our whole 500sqm of roof would need to be three layers deep in bloody solar panels - go figure


On the plus side our 5w solar panel arrived today, just in time for us to realise it won't even run an electric fence on the property