Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

To handle plumbing through the bulkhead of the FT, I'm going to try a pair of toilet flanges with rubber "wax ring" gaskets. The pipe that usually points down from the toilet will be pointing away from each other on this pair. 3" pipe by the way. Then I can pipe in from the GBs and also pipe around wherever I want inside the FT. Thinking of clamping the return to the airlift to brace them a little more.

We used to bisque fire (a pre firing to get the gasses that cause the glaze to bloat as the gasses escape) at around 900c and fired our final firing to around 1100c. During a product development of a bird feeder I put a bisqued bird feeder out into the weather to see how the birds used it, and forgot about it. After around 6 months if was showing signs of water damage. You might expect the same product fired at 1100c to show the same damage after literally a thousand years or so.

You see the same damage after a year or so on a cheap import terracotta pot, and I presume that's what's happening to non-brand name hydroton

toilet flanges should work. interesting on the 1" test, I guess 1 1/4" is the right size!

whats the max head height achieved with the airlift

I never tested for a max head as I will have my system working at the 2" height I was testing at.
I did a couple of times while it was running lift the whole contraption up to about 6" head with unmeasured but still decent flow. This of course means the submergence of the air was shallower.
I'll see what I can do with that. I still want to try the "step airlift" that Bullwinkle and I were pondering back and forth at one point. But, I think that was a different thread.

yeah, it seems like you have too much air for a 1" pipe. So, the thing to do would be to put on only 2 air hoses on a 1" airlift, and measure that flow. Splitting the flow into several smaller airlifts will have a greater flow, until your reach the point that dividing the air flow doesn't produce enough to pump the water.

Look at these numbers:
from: http://www.koiquest.co.uk/forum/viewtop ... f=3&t=8923


As you can see, they reach a peak of 12,000Lph with 8 airlifts, all running off the same 35 watt air pump. Instead of putting all that air into one pipe, they made the pipe smaller and divided the flow. With the 4 air hoses you have, you could try this as well, see if going down to 1" or 3/4" with reduced air flow gives you an increase in flow.

Hi, everyone!
Hope this isn't counted as hijacking the thread...
We copied Jimbo's design and did some testing today. Same air pump, played around with 1" and 1 1/4" air lifters.

I was pretty apprehensive when the big moment of switching on the airpump arrived. I plugged it in AND...



nothing.


So disappointing! There was barely ANY air coming out of our air pump! Was it faulty???

Then I realised that the 5 watss it was drawing is too small to trigger our inverter to start up!! After putting on a lightbulb, BINGO!! We had FLOW!

After some playing around, we were able to fill a 10 litre bucket in 40 odd seconds using all four air outlets into the one 1" airlift. The 1" pipes and joiners fit a lot more snugly together than our 1 1/4" ones, so we are putting our efforts into 1" lifters.
We went to pick up some more supplies and tomorrow we are checking what happens with two 1" airlifts, 2 air outlets into each one.

We will be able to reduce our head a bit which makes a huge difference. I am thinking that we will be able to use one 5 watt air pump for a 1000litre FT system!
I'll give more updates when I have something more to report.

Great to hear, Blythe. Hijack away, it doesn't bother me because ideas and testing are what we all want. Especially excited to hear its running on solar!
My build is in a slow progression right now because my old employer has wanted some help recently.
Picked up a couple loads of nice thick pavers today for a good price (1/2 of the Lowe's price for a far superior product-leftovers from a landscaper-I love craigslist) and need to level a spot for them. Then I can start framing to support the growbeds.
Itching to get some water flowing and food growing.

yeah, I think the air flow is too much for all 4 tubes in a 1" setup.

Try some various combos:
2 x 1" with 2 tubes in each
2x 3/4" with 2 tubes in each
4X 3/4" with 1 tube in each
4X 1/2" with 1 tube in each

also, make sure you bell those inlets and outlets, like Jimbo did. That helps a lot.

What sort of head do you have?

We have joined everything up and it's all holding water, no leaks, yay! We currently have 1 1000litreFT IBC and two 500litre GBs. We spent today washing gravel (badly) before we had to go to work, so the GBs are half full of (dirtyish) gravel ad we will be putting river pebbles on top.

Velacreations, I would LOVE to try all those experiments, but we have already spent our budget on the supplies we have bought. At this point in time, we just want something that will work and get us started in aquaponics. I hope to do it in the future.

We took photos along the way, will post some tomorrow.

Blythe, go ahead and start your own system thread to document and post your pics and make sure to post a link on this one to it. It sounds like you're doing exactly the same as me, so I definitely want to watch!

Jimbo, how's your system going? Any developments?

Just thinking about this..
I think that what might be happening is that you are finding the ideal ration between the air flow and the water/pipe diameter. Using just one pipe is inefficient and wasting air..
This might have something to do with bubble size, if the bubbles are too big then surface area is smaller and its wasted. When you add extra stones or whatever, you are effectively making more smaller bubbles and utilising the extra surface area and number of bubbles.

I wonder if you could get good results with a large diameter pipe but with a very fine diffuser...
Have you tried this? I guess that will have the problem of the ratio of pipe diameter to pipe length... Just thinking aloud

No new developments here, V. I'm working on site prep. Going to set a 12x12 paver patio to build the system on and will have room to setup another one in an identical footprint on the other side of the patio with a walkway in between and build a greenhouse around them before we get to winter this year.
Knocked some dirt down today to level out before I set the pavers. And grabbed some 4x4 lumber to build a frame for the growbeds to sit on. Then I can set the tanks, plumb them up and source some media.