Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

A couple suggestions for initial water tests.
Yes it is worth while to test all the levels of your source water.
They are not Always 0 so do the initial tests of everything.

And the water pH tests. If you can take a sample and put an aquarium bubbler in it or do something to aerate it and test it again tomorrow, you may get a very different reading. Water right out of the tap will have trapped carbon dioxide in it and give you a false low pH reading.

Yeah, that's a really good point.

My tap water comes out at around pH7 then the next day is pH8+

My tap water also registers some nitrates as well.

I'll have to look inside and see what the auger looks like. I suppose as long as they were smaller than pellet size, it probably wouldn't hurt anything. Think the neighbor would mind me snipping twigs off his apple trees?

Good to know. The sample I took sat out for a couple of hours before testing (I got distracted by a friend stopping by to see the new place), but it didn't have any aeration.

Water conservation in western Washington state... You could probably collect enough rain water from the roof of your greenhouse to fill an IBC in a day or two. Really any day you want to start should work I suppose pumping from one IBC to another would help keep the ground from getting THAT much more saturated.

I just checked, and it turns out they planted them so you could do just that.

Really get some apple tree wood. sooooo nice. As vanilla pods are to everything in the universe, apple wood is to a fire place.

In fact, just climb the fence right now and set fire to it in your kitchen.

I miss living in the country. Where we lived we had dozens of apple trees and all the wood that went with them.

Sooooo nice.



How does a pellet heater not set fire to the hopper full of fuel?

I just finally googled rocket mass heaters. The crusty granola eater in me just got all excited!

Based on my one very brief look inside one of them, it apparently has a funnel-shaped compartment up on top where you dump the pellets. In the base of the funnel is an auger. The auger turns every few minutes (it's powered by electricity) and dumps a few pellets into the fire in the compartment underneath.

This bothers me in several ways, not the least of which is whether we can stay warm if the electricity goes out. I'm sure there must be some way to manually dump in the pellets.

I've been so busy learning about AP and RMH that I don't know how my new house works. But that's what husbands are for, right?

I can not WAIT to see where you put yours.

I can lift 1,500 pounds.

Now I have to go and get the other half.

The only problem is that there is only like two days that I would ever even need it!

I know, right? I was looking at the downspouts on the house and calculating how much rainwater we could catch, and Hubs chuckled at me and asked, "why, so we can save money on our water bill?"

Yeah, so we have a well. Still, there's something cool about catching rainwater. And I could definitely catch a LOT of it off the greenhouse -- which actually *would* make sense, since there's no water supply out there, well or not!

Depending on your water chemistry from your well, perhaps you wouldn't save more than a few cents on the electric bill for pumping water out of your well but you might save lots of money over dealing with RO filters or acid and a water prep tank with aeration trying to battle hard water.

Now I don't know what your well water is like but mine is full of carbonate hardness and if I'm constantly topping up a system with it, I have too much calcium carbonate and not enough potassium and the pH stays too high. When I'm lucky enough to have ample rain water, I can then use some potassium bicarbonate or potassium hydroxide to bring the pH up sometimes and I avoid getting the overabundance of calcium that can some times really mess with the balance between calcium and potassium.

So, even if you don't really need to collect rain water to save on the electric bill, having at least some rain water on hand can be very helpful since it is naturally soft water and it can give you more control over pH and mineral balance in your water.

Sure, but for those two days, it would be AWESOME!

Hmmm. By my unofficial methods of measurement, it's not too hard or too soft...no mineral buildup in the toilets/sinks, but also not too difficult to rinse shampoo out of my hair. And it tastes just right. Maybe I should take some somewhere and have it tested for all that other stuff too, huh?