Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

This is the overall garden area. Future AP at the top of the picture, to the left is a future patio area with an existing outdoor chimney (it has historical value), with all the existing dirt raised beds in the middle, and the existing wooden raised beds at the bottom.
The tiny compass rose at the bottom right shows True North. Need to make another, more clear compass.

Sketchup is alot of fun.

Good luck sleeping Mr. Bill. Visions of retaining walls dancing in your head.

Select each part of the pipe (control-click to add each part)
Make the whole thing a group (edit menu I think)
Then select the single group click "move" that will give you the rotation pointers.

Using a combined drain as a NFT might have some problems. When beds are draining (especially if several drain at the same time, it is possible for even a fairly large gravity drain to fill with water and even back up a little bit, if you go drilling holes in the top and sticking plant baskets down into the pipe, I see a good chance for overflowing water out those holes, especially as plants grow roots and start to reduce the flow through your pipe.

Now here is an option that might work for you. What if you just had your regular drain big enough to handle all the grow beds draining, now add another pipe in front of it for your NFT. You will loose the far mushroom space, put a tank there and have the end bed or two drain into that tank Have an overflow to the main drain but then have a smaller feed with a valve from the bottom of that tank feed your NFT run that will be helping block the view of the drain pipe. That way you can have a tank of clean water feed a regular nft run without need to worry about the main drain blocking or overflowing out the plant holes. The only question is, will the tank under the grow beds be big enough or have enough water to supply a constant flow through the NFT pipe? Will that nft pipe be too long for the oxygen supply to hold out for the plants? Or will it heat/chill the water too much? That is a kinda long run.

A pic and a couple of crappy videos. Please turn your volume DOWN. The tractor needs a new hydraulic filter.

Didn't sleep well last night. Had too many ideas running around in my head. Have to get them down on paper/electronic media/forum - or a combination of the three.

Would like to put the exhaust pipe of a rocket heater underneath the fish tank area to assist with heating in the winter. If the 6" stovepipe is looped around from the heater/burn hole to the end of the proposed tank area and back, I'm wondering if the heat would be enough to make a difference. Piping would be covered in clay cob and vermiculite for insulation purposes. The tanks would actually sit on top of concrete blocks where they would not be putting pressure on the buried stovepipe.

Then there is the idea of using (another) rocket heater as a bench warming area to start seeds. And have a nice warm area to sit in the winter whilst cooking in my pizza oven.

Ideas start, form, shape, take root, then I can't sleep. AP insomnia. Time to start work for the day. Thank God for coffee... maybe I can grow my own

I've started counting AP systems to help me fall to sleep when I have AP insomnia.

I tried that TCL.... but I ended up outside in the middle of the night with a torch... trying to figure out how to lay out a new system...

lmao - been there, just last night actually

or inside in the middle of the night trying to help others lay out their systems by posting on the forum

Don't bend your bucket !

What is your tractor ?

Paid for, seriously overwhelmed, no longer under warranty, two wheel drive, 8 year old New Holland TC30 with all the safety switches bypassed (read: wiring ripped out) due to Mr Bill beating the hell out of it and doing way too much with the wrong sized tractor.

Told the wife I wouldn't try to knock down trees if the thing couldn't handle it. Didn't say anything about working 4 hours digging around the roots in all directions, then pushing the tree over roots and all.

Tires have been patched so many times the front inner tubes look like the Beverly Hillbillys tires on their jalopy.

It's been rolled, with me on it. That wasn't fun. Don't recommend it. I let it set for a couple of days, and it cranked right up.

I love it and wouldn't be without one on the farm.

Ahh, I grew up with Ford tractors on the farm (Ford/New Holland)
I thought it looked similar.... And its blue

Safety switches are overrated, they just make life harder We had to have the "start in neutral only" switches bypassed cause they all failed.

Using a single ripper tine and cutting the roots off close the the tree on all sides could be quicker too... just a thought.

Hopefully one day I will have some land and a tractor (again)