Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I always use 3/4" pipe for pressure, and then something larger for drain. If you're concerned about pressure loss then use bigger pipe. Everything gets more expensive with the larger diameters.

Dave:

Cool. That helps. I just needed some confirmation on the feed being smaller than the drain.

One of the pumps I looked at has a 1" outlet. I could then use 1" feed and 2" drain.

Thanks

The next problem I am struggling with is what I will call the grow bed stack. Given my limited width in the greenhouse (only 7' or 2.5m), I have chosen to maximize vertical height which I have a lot of. For this reason, I dropped the FT and ST in the ground.

We are also trying to maximize the amount of GB in order to support as many fish as possible.

I figured I needed about 2' or 70cm of space between the top of the FT-ST and the bottom of the first level of grow beds. You can see the 2x4 in this picture that is above the holes. This is the bottom of the first GB.

Then I need to leave room between the top of this grow bed (33mm or 13"deep including pallet) and the bottom of the second grow bed. I couldn't really find any advice on the forum for the minimum distance between GBs, but I figured it should be at least 53 to 70cm (18" to 24"). The plants have to get adequate light.

That would put the bottom of my second level GB at about 1.75m (5') and the top of it about 2m (6'). This means using a ladder to get at the plants in the second GB. I don't have a problem with ladders, it just feels like it will be really high. Yet, I do want to maximize my space.

Any thoughts?

You could just add a step (fixed or removeable) across the front):



Probably just a 4x4 would be enough to stand on?

Yes a step attached to the outside is a great idea. I did think about adding a step/walk board. Thanks for the confirmation.

what tour temp during the winter? and how are planning to isolate you GH?

Dutchnewby:

During January and February, our temps can drop to -20C (-5 to 10F). That is rare. We are often somewhere under -13C (20F).

What do you mean by isolating the GH?

same here on temp...
wel do you want to keep your system going on in the winter?

Dutchnewby:

Yes, we don't want to keep our system going in the winter. The GH is south facing and it is connected to the house. Both should provide good heat. The GH is well sealed. The tanks are in the ground completely buried about a meter. I believe we will have enough solar and ground heat to keep the GH in good shape. If not, I can run heat in there from my woodstove.

We will probably have to add grow lights given the short days.

What are you doing to help make it through the winter?

the first 50 centimeters from the ground up wil be double wood whit insulation between them.
backwall (2 by 6 meters) the same.
side walls partial dubbel wood with insulation, double glas windows.
for roof i will use polycarbonate plate..

water tank is partial burried in the ground every thing above the wil be coated with isolation (between the wood and pontliner)
the water tank is going to be as big as i can go in ratio to my Gb.
mayby i'll put a extra water base inside the GreenHouse, tis all in hope it will stabilize the temp.

i've it is not enough ill put in a rock heating system. (woodstofe under barrel, barrel stuffed with roch, and then a fan wil blow hot air from the rockbarrel into the GH.)

i wil put a new topic whit description and pict. today about my to build system..

Oh man are we making progress now.

- Got the electric done and final inspection on the GH from the building inspector. A - Ok!
- Worked on plumbing today and have most of it done.
- Just had to run the sump pump and it worked great. I bought a Campbell/Husfeld 1/2hp sump that runs 4200 GPH. The reason I bought this monster is because a) the head to my top GB is going to be 10', b) I want to do a timed flood and drain and from what I have seen on posts it is good if you are able to turn over your water when the pump runs. Well I have two IBCs with around 275 gal in them, so I figured I needed plenty of pump. Plus we may expand GB with NFT or something down the road. The pump cost about $100.
- Still have to connect the FT to the ST so water will flow back to the sump tank.

Now for some pics. Sorry it is hard to see. The GH is tight and hard to show everything.

Finished the upper grow bed construction tonight.

Ordered the EPDM liner for it from Ebay $42 for 5x10' shipping included. Seemed like a good price.

Two concerns:
- The pump moves a lot of water. I am hoping that when I open up the upper GB, the flow will slow down. Right now the water draining to the FT is overwhelming the connection to the ST. I added a T and valve to dump water right back into the ST. No matter what happens with the upper GB, I can control the flow now.
- The sump pump is cast iron and was rusty immediately. After sitting overnight when I turned it on, the first shot of water was red from rust. Boy I hope that is not a problem for the fish.

Any thoughts

Since I found on this site the best media size was 8-10mm, I bought some pea gravel that matches that requirement. It only cost US $26 for 3/4 of a ton.

I have seen a number of posts on this site about washing the media before putting it in the growbeds. Wow! Are they right. We washed and washed basically a half of a bucket at a time. It was tedious work. But man did we clean off sand and dust. Below are a couple pictures of the clean process.

I should note the screen for cleaning the gravel is a frame made with 2x2s. I put 1/4" hardware cloth on one side. I then took some screen door screen and put that on the inside. This worked great to let the sand and dust pass through to the wheel barrow and the pea gravel stay.

We dump the washed gravel in a 5 gallon bucket. We emptied the dirty water in another 5 gallon bucket and dumped that on our garden. It is dry here and my wife was real happy to have the extra water on the gardens.

Every step is fun in this process. Here is the first half bucket of washed gravel added to one of the grow beds.

Anyone know how to clean up the water? Even after cleaning our gravel it still made the water cloudy.