Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I put PVC on my cornflakes in the morning...

You buying Chinese milk Charlie...

I'm definitely not out to be alarmist over it, not by a long shot. One of the main differences that I see with what AP'ers do with the piping is the relentless running of water through it, and the end product of consumable goods by way of plants & fish.



One of the local plumbing places here more or less told me that they wouldn't consider using PVC/PVC-U within AP, they said to try and make Poly work somehow. Definitely not as user friendly as straight up PVC but yeah, food for thought anyway.

Wet Earth can do true food grade suction hoses & fittings. The investment is more of course, and whilst I don't want to go too overboard on the whole PVC debate, I definitely think it is worth doing a bit of research on and making your own decision on how much risk you take on for you and your family.

As for selling Aquaponic kits with PVC as the staple pipework, again I guess it's how much risk they are willing to take on and I'm sure EB has done some research of his own and come to his own conclusions.

I found this on the manufacturers website. I have used all pressure pipe in my system (i didnt for the media guard but i bought 100mm pressure pipe which i will be replacing it with).

I think for piece of mind and when costs are a factor pressure pipe is probably the way to go.

I've lots of comments like this one but no actual information on adverse health effects of rigid pvc. Europe has banned pvc for reticulated water and drainage systems as have California and New York but I think this is for environmental reasons rather than health reasons.

I'd love some good info on this but as I've said it doesn't seem to be around.

That's because information is hard to find and contradictory. We based our decisions to use PVC pipe on the fact that it's been used in reticulation of ground grown vegetable crops for decades. Most current hydroponic NFT is PVC gutters, and commercial AP systems in the US have been using PVC pipe.

I'm more concerned about BPA's from plastic water bottles and food containers.

eventually and unfortunately we all have to die of something be it old age on the toilet or playing chicken with a train. Spending excessive amounts of time trying to avoid items in life that will negatively affect our bodies in some way is quite frankly, impossible.

Actually i think the stress from trying might actually kill you first

Dont get me wrong im all for avoiding the obvious but i often wonder if people worry a little too much.

Yep, I agree....we can get too pedantic about "unsafe" products.
In our houses alone, unless we have opted for a very strict organic lifestyle, there will be cleaning chemicals, noxious gases from carpets, paint, insect sprays as well as electromagnetic radiation from appliances as well as phones. That smell you get in cars after they've been left in the sun is all the many types of plastics breaking down....and I'm sure they're not food grade.
Our food we need every day is loaded with all sorts of chemicals that are acceptable , I like that theory, acceptable levels !!
So unless you are self sufficient in food, you're ingesting harmful chemicals every day.
I live in a maccadamia growing area, maccas are one of the most heavily sprayed crops of all, hard to believe being a hard nut.
There is only so much we can avoid, modern life means we have to accept some of these risks.

I'm with you guys, avoid the obvious, but I dont stress out over avoiding every single chemical. You still need to enjoy life

Yes avoid the obvious and since decent info on the dangers of rigid pvc is not obvious we should not worry too much. However if any one could show us some good info on the adverse healths effects of rigid pvc then it would become a really obvious and easy thing to avoid at least in part.

I sell a lot of PVC for commercial use in signage, display and fabrication; although this doesn't make me any sort of expert. I am not aware of any direct health reason not to use rigid PVC in an aquaponic system (although I acknowledge that it is contentious), so long as it is not recycled (in which case it could include all sorts of nasties), or heated.

That said, we are moving away from PVC wherever we can because it is unsustainable and toxic to manufacture. Finding alternatives in our industries has been problematic, but new printing processes are improving the situation (e.g direct to substrate printing means that an extra step of printing onto self-adhesive PVC is removed from the process).

http://www.buildinggreen.com/auth/artic ... e-Out-PVC/

Note the section on plumbing pipes. It would be unfair to paint PVC plumbing pipe with the same brush as PVC across all industries.

At the start we used DWV (drain waste vent) pipe for a little while in all our drain plumbing. There were reports that DWV pipe may contain lead or other not so nice substances so we swapped the DWV for straight PVC pressure pipe throughout.

Yeah I heard that too EB but on checking i've found that it doesn't nor does storm water pipe. The only reasons I've found for not using PVC are based on the manufacturing and disposal process. What seems to be happening is that people who have legitimate concerns over the pollution caused by the manufacture and disposal of pvc are then missrepresenting this as adverse health effects from using rigid pvc in potable water/food situations.