Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hats off to our friends down under. This is a great site packed with information.

Our foray into AP got started about two weeks ago when we watched the movie Forks over Knives. In it we saw an urban ag fellow who is running an operation in our own state of Wisconsin. He talked about his AP and that got me running with the ball of studying the subject. I eventually found this site and have been reading and reading and reading posts from everyone. Whew!

We are very excited about growing fish and vegetables. We currently have several gardens in our yard in town. We even have a garden across the road at the neighbors and share produce with him. My wife and daughter love gardening. We also want to be a blessing to others by encouraging them to garden and maybe even AP one day.

So here is where we are at:

- On the south end of our home, I have an area that is 12' wide (oh, sorry, 3.6 meters, BTW, we in the states had tried to convert to the metric system; however, it just hasn't taken. I am going to use this project for our family to learn metric in a practical way. Forgive me if I write something in the traditional.) We have about 1.8 (6 feet) meters of depth. Therefore, I can make a greenhouse that is 3.6m wide x 1.8m deep x 3.6m tall.
- I did download Google Sketchup but don't know if I want to bother learning it. Doesn't look to hard, but I drew up our plan in a couple minutes on paper.
- I found a guy on Craiglist (that is a great tool) who had tons of IBCs. Sells 'em for $50. They are used and he gets them when he buys veg oil for biodiesel.
- My plan right now is to cut one IBC in half, bury both halves 30cm, place 5 half blue barrels over top of them for growing beds. I believe I could also add another row of 5 barrels above. I have the head room and this greenhouse will have full sun exposure year round.

I am going to try uploading a picture of the end of the house and my crude plan.

I would welcome input and look forward to getting to know some of you folks.

Thanks and God Bless

Here is a crude sketch of what I am think of doing

Here is a picture of the end of our house. The greenhouse will be attached to the house as a 'lean'.

when you get the lean-to up, take out the window and make it a door.... easy access and lots of heat into the house in the winter...

jT

Hi and welcome,
The mother in law and partner lives in WI, Appleton. They love the idea of AP and think it's to cold in the winter for it.
I hope you prove them wrong.

welcome to the forum anchor

I will jump in here before somebody else does.

Down load the IBC of Aquaponics from BYAPs website. It shows how to use your cheap IBCs and will save you re-inventing the wheel. Good luck getting through all the information on this forum, my head exploded after 2 weeks and now I am taking it in a lot slower.

Oh and welcome.

Hey DecalsbyJT:
I had kind of thought about access through the window especially in the winter time, so we will see. I am not sure I want to put a door in its place. The greenhouse may not be a permanent structure on the house. This is a trial run for a free standing big greenhouse in the yard.

Thanks for the thought.

JeffJL:

I actually started by reading the IBC document. I got the to forum later. Thanks for the heads up.

Lyndon:

If nothing else, we can extend the growing season. However, I will add heat by way of radiant heat from my woodstove if necessary. Also, your mother in law lives a fair bit further north then we do. We are in S. Wisconsin. the climate is more moderate. Only once in a while does it get to say 5-10 below zero F. That is -20 to -23 c.

What do you folks use for Greenhouse cover material?

Has anyone ever looked at Woven poly from http://www.northerngreenhouse.com/ordering/index.htm

Their clear woven poly is 11mil and around 40cents a sq ft. May only be helpful for USA and Canada folks.

Pulled out the shrubs over the weekend and began digging.

We are putting up a greenhouse in which will go our AP. Want to dig the IBC down below the floor level to make more room for GBs.

Shrubs are gone.

We are taking another stab at Sketchup. I downloaded it on the kids computer and set my youngest son to the task of learning it. Maybe he can figure it out quicker than me.

My son made a valiant attempt at cleaning the Veg oil out of our IBC.

He then said, "dad, maybe we should post a question asking how others cleaned out their IBCs."

I did that and a number of folks offered good suggestions. Thanks,