Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

mrbill
Yes, a external Bell Siphon for two or more grow beds adapt the stand pipe size for the total amount of media needing to drain, 1" and 1 1/4" work well, i need to try 1 1/2" on the outside GB, to see if i can speed up the drain time when i add some more tubs of media to it

m3tal
there is 1/2 of a 4" black perforated waste drain pipe across the bottom of each barrel or tub. And on the outside GB's tubs, i made sure to put clean outs on each one, so the roots can be extracted from the 1/2 drain pipe under the media.

I also put black lava rock 4" to 5" deep in each barrel or tub, just enough to cover over the 1/2 drain pipe, then added gravel

Plastic welding on the cheap... heat gun, patience.
Not too bad for the first one.

Maybe not so much on the patience. need to work on that.


So, I reckon it can be done. Good luck. Give it a rip and see what happens.

Any chance of getting some pic's of that with a light source....can't really see it all that well

I'll be back home in a week or so and see what I can do.

Yo Erich, finally made it back home. Cleaned up my plastic welding job (a hole in a 300 Gallon tank) and took a couple of pics. Ran about 75 gallons of water into the tank to test the weld. Seems to have worked.

So the next project, in keeping in line with this thread, is to see if I can join 2 halves of blue barrels together to make a long one. Seems I was too rambunctious with my sawzall and too many projects in my head at once.
Anyone else had any experience with plastic welding? Erich, how's it going for you?

lets try that again
The weld inside the tank
The weld on the bottom of the tank
The tank with some water inside to test

There we go. Now we can move on to the next project.

recently had a leak in the petrol tank of my car
1993 saab with a plastic tank - not sure what type of plastic
after trying fillers etc without success I finally fixed it using
a soldering iron. Weller 100w gun with a flat tip.
it took a few tries and I had to get a bit aggro with it as at
first I was just smoothing out the surface.
has been 2 months since then and all is OK

I think this method would work OK for blue barrels

Trev