Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi all!

I am living in Switzerland now and am in the process of building my first aquaponics system. We are approaching spring up here but even so I have been look into how it might be possible to heat a year round aquaponics system.

One idea that looks promising is biomass heating. The basic idea is put a compost heap in an insulated container to trap the heat, provide ideal conditions for breakdown and harvest the heat with water pipes in the same container.

Here are some links:

The build it solar website has a list of three types of biomass heaters. http://www.builditsolar.com/Experimental/MbSoft.htm

These all come from the same anther site, however he give a good brief description.

My favorite build candidate right now for heating a year round aquaponics system is the the rotating drum.http://mb-soft.com/public3/globalzl.html

Anyone tried this? Anyone got any comments as to whether this would work and how you might use this with an aquaponics system? I guess my biggest question is regulation of system temps with a system like this.

Greetings,

Frederick

Interesting plans there Frederick, lots of detail... I have no experience with biomass heaters, but the number one point when trying to keep temperatures up, is having decent insulation. Make sure that your greenhouse is well designed, other wise all the heating in the world isn't going to make much difference.

The Speraneos managed to keep Tilapia year round without any heating even when there was a foot of snow outside. Careful orientation, double skinned greenhouse, careful design and layout of tanks etc...

Has anybody seen any quantifiable figures on BTU's x amount of compost produces? I've seen plenty in intensity in degrees temperature.

while i was in the states a few months ago for furlough i saw this concept being used at "Growing Power" in Milwaukee with Will Allen. It works great. They just had heaps of compost around the green house and on all four courners in the green house. It gets well below zero in Milwaukee and kept the plants and fish at a nice temp. I live in Botswana, Africa now and wish the concept could be reversed for cooling effects in this climate.

I've been following the progress of http://onestraw.wordpress.com/ for a while now as this covers the same concept. Makes for really interesting reading.

Hi DragonC,

thanks for that link, great reading.

I have seen another site similar but have lost the link. They used the straw bales and mulch to make a composting floor in their hothouse over winter, seemed to work well.

God bless, froggo.

The fish tank will provide some good passive radiant heat. You can utilize some of the methods that Geodesic dome greenhouses implore. Maybe even build a geodesic greenhouse - if you are looking to build a new one since they are more efficient at retaining heat than traditional designs.

One thing you can do is put some reflective material on the north wall and place the fish tank underneath it (the north wall). The material will reflect extra sunlight onto the fish tank to help with heat.

Another thing you can do is use the warm air near the tank and draw it to your growbeds using ventilation ducting and fans.