Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

+1 good use of space and clean design, I think the blurry rendering may be the focal length being set either too close or far. I needed to use the neighbor's mattock to make the hole edges straight.

The good news is the hardest diging is over, and the 6 mil plastic has been successful at keeping the ibc from caving so far... My soil is mostly clay. I was able to pull myself out of the hole without any caving in on the sides, so I figured it wouldnt take much.

Q: How do you ensure rain in San Diego?
A: Take a week off from work to work on a project outside.

Hopefully, the rain will be done before tomorrow, because I am really tired of bad timing. Normally I don't let the weather stop me, but I really do not want to dig in the rain.

I have taken about half of the dirt pile to the dump. My god it is a lot of extra dirt. I'm not one to back down easily, so I probably would not have given this next bit of advice much heed, but if you plan to burry something, plan ahead for where to put the dirt, and be prepared for a lot of work. If it was not such a small space, I would have rented a bobcat or something. And a dump truck for taking the dirt to a landfill.

I looove the sketch up, looks so real....your system is going to look so pretty and add had a heap of value to your home....congrats.

looking forward seeing the results from your hard labor

What a morale boost it is to have the pile of dirt out. I will be posting pics soon. If I were to go back in time, I would have borrowed my brothers truck, I affectionately call it the Beast, and loaded the dirt into it as I went along. That is what I am doing now with the rain collection barrel hole. What a difference it makes! Put dirt into wheel barrow, roll it up onto the truck, dump, repeat.

Almost done with the rain catchment system. The hole that the barrels go in is dug. I finished digging in the rain However, I was driven to get as much done as I could. I also washed the 55 gal drums that will hold the water and installed the uniseals. I brought the drums into my living room to drill the holes, as I did not want to get electrocuted by drilling in the rain. Luckily we have tile floors, so it was an easy cleanup. If I can muster the energy I will post those pics.

Here come the pics. Some of these are from last December, but I was too exhausted to post them. Plus I was kind of upset at the tone of some of the posts on my thread. Nothing is quite as demoralizing as having just spent the day doing some hard labor, only to have people tell you that the world is going to end because someone somewhere once had a problem by doing what you did. By the way my IBC has NOT caved in... guess that 6 mill plastic did it's job. Enough ranting, some pics
Like I have mentioned before, plan for the dirt. When you are burring something, you are probibly only digging out enough to fit what you are burring, so expect to have to take some dirt to the landfill. I have made three trips.

I am drilling for the toilet fill valves.

The holes need to be clean and smooth

I have installed the two fill valves at two heights. The higher one is for the rainwater system, and the lower is for city water. Obviously I would like rain water to be the sole source of water, but the city water fill valve is a nice backup.

It fits!!!

Here is the access hole,the hole size was determined by the plastic pallet. I cut out the hole in the pallet based on the size of the opening on the bottom of it. I measured to make sure that the pump could fit through it.

I traced out the hole pattern on the IBC and cut out three sides of it.

The fourth side was left uncut to act as a hinge.

Then I put plastic on and around the IBC. It seems to be doing it's job. Under the plastic you may notice a Hardie Board backer to keep the dirt out of the pallet, as I will be using the pallet to pass plumbing through. I have walked on it quite a bit, and it's strength is quite sufficient to hold what is needed. Plus, it wont rot out.

I am now up to this weeks progress. My progress pretty much had stalled from last December to last Tuesday. One can imagine how happy I was with this next pic.

I almost decided to forgo the rainwater catchment system, but my morale had quite improved once the oppressive mountain of dirt was gone.I decided to attach the piping to the flexible tubing attached to the toilet fill valves before the hole was over ran with dirt from the next round of digging.

After a bit more digging, the barrels are test fitted in the ground.

The barrels were pulled out to be cleaned and drilled for the uniseals. I know, people don't like to use uniseals under ground, but I really don't care what other people like, as I could not figure out how to put a bulkhead fitting on a sealed barrel.

Then it started to rain. I was determined to keep working through it.

Clay gets quite slick when wet.

I then dug out a trench for the plumbing.

I think I can start a new style, Clay platform shoes. I finished up the evening with gluing up some of the fittings that will go along the bottom of the barrels. It was too dark and wet to try to fit the plumbing into the barrels and the hole. That is first up for tomorrow. Then to bury it all. I picked up more Hardie Board backer to act as support above the barrels. I will attach it to 2x4s chocked into the sides of the trench. The barrels support my weight, but I want to distribute the load some.

The bottoms of the rain barrels are plumbed. I am currently filling them with water to make sure everything holds together. I have already tested the float, but it is nice to check that also.

Three of the bungs leaked. I could not tighten them up enough. I was going to drain them, and pull them up to try to really tighten them up, but the draining process was taking too long. Then I remembered that we sell stuff called stay float that keeps boats from sinking. Then I remembered that it is just repackaged toilet wax. So a quick jaunt to the orange box store, a buck fifty later, I had my solution. I worked it into the leaky bungs, and problem solved!