BullwinkleII's system

TCLynx

for foliar feeding with the seaweed extract, just follow the instructions on the bottle for how much to dilute it.

Yes eco rose would be a good thing to use for pH adjustment alternating with the calcium carbonate (egg shells) or if you have hard water, you might not even need to bother with the shell grit or egg shells since you may be getting enough calcium from your water and just need to use the eco rose for pH adjustment and potassium supplementation.

BullwinkleII

Oh. eco rose is meant to used that way, thus the instructions.

I'm used to everyone's solutions involving using things like bath tubs in ways that the manufacturer never intended

My egg shells are in a sieve so I can pull them out at will.

And Adelaide's water is very hard, and deliciously flavoured with chlorine and fluoride.

iammr.bill

Look out, the man has started a graph. Good on ya.

I for one would like to watch over winter months to see how the FT acts as thermal mass compared to the outside temps

Mostly because I haven't had my system through our winter months yet. GO BW Data-Logger!

BNDYBEAR

I too am keen to keep an eye on this graph, it may give a lot of info reletive to my future system. I am just discovering the wonders of Greenhouse's.

bythebrook

BullwinkleII wrote:

that's a graph of the temp over a 12 hour period from 11 am to 11 pm in my little glass house

Remember I'm in the southern hemisphere, so I'm in winter in what you might describe as a Mediterranean climate.

The bits that I find interesting are...

The lag 'tween the concrete and the water (caused I think by the fact that the peak temp is caused by

1. radiant heat by the hothouse roof being in the sun longer than the concrete floor,

2. the fact that inside (solid lines) the hothouse is much more even, and less up and down than outside (dotted lines).

3. that it seems that the hotter stuff is the quicker it looses heat, and the colder it gets the less it looses heat. I get the feeling that everything is going to even out as far as how much heat loss there is, the colder it gets. Hot = crazy, cold = stable.

4. thick stuff like concrete, and water, seems much more stable than does air, and water in thin tubes.

5. I cant remember what 5 was.

6. I think my solar collector is working. The peak water temperature ses to coincide witht the point at which the top of the hothouse temps (inside air, and solar) meet the water temp, and that is later than the peak concrete temp. This tells me that my heater is working, because the water temp would otherwise peak when the hothouse temp peaked. The solar collector seems to manage to scrape heat out of the hothouse until the last minute when the hothouse cools to the same temp as the water, and becomes a drain rather than a gain.

Yes, the rate of heat transfer is directly proportional to the temperature difference, as you said in point 3.

It's not the thickness of material, as you wrote in point 4. it's because some materials have high thermal mass, that is, it takes a lot of energy to raise their temperature, and they also release a lot of heat as they cool. Concrete, brick, tiles, stone etc have high thermal mass. The "thicker" it is just makes more of it. This is the principle behind passive solar design.
Your hydroponics system will also lose heat through radiation overnight. This is why it is important to keep the system covered, either directly or in a greenhouse / shadehouse. Radiation losses overnight explains why frost only occurs in open areas and not under large trees.
Hope this helps. The full heat transfer course took me six months, let me know if you want the edited highlights.

BullwinkleII

bythebrook wrote:

[stuff deleted] The full heat transfer course took me six months, let me know if you want the edited highlights.

Offering me access to information, equates to you just asking for extra work.

I'd love to see anything on this stuff I can get my hands on.

BullwinkleII

here's a full waking day's temperature readings

Attachment:

120 things in 20 years - Solar hot water - Aquaponics - Hot house Temperature graph.jpg [ 173.96 KiB | Viewed 3374 times ]

What's a good temperature in a hot house for plants? It's easy enough to shift heat out of the air and into storage, but I'm not sure how much heat to take.

I was thinking 22c air temp, and anything over that and I start to shift it down to ground level and into storage.

Does that sound about right? Or do plants such as tomatoes want it hotter?

scotty435

TCLynx wrote:

for foliar feeding with the seaweed extract, just follow the instructions on the bottle for how much to dilute it.

+1 on the instructions TCL. BW, I just figure if you spray the solution on the leaves you bypass the pH issue in the growbed and maybe the plants can use it then.

Sorry I didn't see your question earlier BW, I was fixing the dishwasher. Had to put in some new parts, could have used your ingenuity but then it might have looked like something other than a dishwasher :thumbright:

BullwinkleII

BullwinkleII

scotty435 wrote:

TCLynx wrote:

for foliar feeding with the seaweed extract, just follow the instructions on the bottle for how much to dilute it.

+1 on the instructions TCL. BW, I just figure if you spray the solution on the leaves you bypass the pH issue in the growbed and maybe the plants can use it then.

Sorry I didn't see your question earlier BW, I was fixing the dishwasher. Had to put in some new parts, could have used your ingenuity but then it might have looked like something other than a dishwasher :thumbright:

I fixed a clothes dryer once. My basic method was to remove all the bits that didn't work, and that didn't look nice.

Does that count.

I fixed the thing all the way into a fish cam porthole

I still have that somewhere, I'll pull it out and float it again to get some more video.

Clothes dryer - the poor man's under water camera

BullwinkleII

I just figured out to put bigger images and animations in here

Here's my duckweed auto feeder that doses a percentage of the remaining duckweed every time the pump comes on.

The further to the right you place the water inlet, the greater the amount of duckweed will be delivered.

I figured this would be a PVC gutter and it would be connected to your duckweed growing tank off to the right

BullwinkleII

bythebrook wrote:

[stuff deleted]
It's not the thickness of material, as you wrote in point 4. it's because some materials have high thermal mass, that is, it takes a lot of energy to raise their temperature, and they also release a lot of heat as they cool. Concrete, brick, tiles, stone etc have high thermal mass. The "thicker" it is just makes more of it. [stuff deleted]

that's just the way I talk after dark

I may just as often as not used crunchy, sinky or even dense, instead of thick. My english is so poor, that I'm famous for once making reference to unloading the ingredients of the back of a van.

I'm also famous (if being retweeted once can be considered fame) for the following statement regarding heat.

"There's really no such thing as cold.

Unlike politics, just because it can make you miserable, numb, or even dead, cold doesn't actually exist."

I also wrote this about colour and heat exchange.

"For 10 years or so, from when I was about 5 years old, we had a black and white cat. Once, when it had been lying in the sun for a few hours one hot summer's day, I remember patting it. It tore strips of flesh off my arms. It was a starving stray when we took it in and it simply hated humans."

Do you know anything about phase change materials and/or thermosiphons?

TCLynx

I might need to make a duckweed feeder for my ducks!!!!!! They love the stuff.

BullwinkleII

no doubt that's where it gets its name

BullwinkleII

I got some eco rose.

and I think I've been getting eco rose and se sol mixed up in my head when you have been talking about spraying directly onto the leaves.

How does the eco rose behave regarding pH?

Does it instantly change the pH, or does it act more like shell grit over time?

I hate adding stuff to my little system. Salting is so scary for me. I always think I'm going to kill everything and tun my little system into a wasteland

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BullwinkleII's system

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