Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I am located in a cold desert climate, and am looking into harnessing a friend's natural hot spring to heat a small aquaponics operation. I am trying to figure out possible methods for inexpensively keeping a desired water temperature.
I know I could achieve the desired temperature in a flow-through system for tilapia by mixing the hot water with cold at a specific ratio. However, I am interested in a recirculating system with an aquaponic greenhouse.
Are there any existing recirculating systems that are using geothermal wells for the warm water? Could anyone point such a system?

I would appreciate any comments or ideas on the subject.

Thank you,
100chihuahuas

Don't know about the growbeds but you could run some warm water barrels in the greenhouse to keep it warm. Wouldnt hurt anything to make those a pass through system and dump back into the spring as long as the barrels are clean.

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Run piping through the FT, run the hot water through the piping. Use a thermometer/thermo controller and a solenoid to regulate the temperature.

Hi 1c
The test/pilot RAS, buildt in Reykjavik, Icland is a "back yard" size (fig. 6 page 10)
There is pics and specs on commercial size as well, all based on hotspring/geothermal aquaponics producton of arctic char and tilapia.
The info. on such systems you seek starts at page 7, the hole document is on coldclimate AP so read it all.

www.nora.fo/files/13/20121024112120176.pdf

cheers

Oh dear, I am very sorry about the late reply, how rude of me!

jrl91rs: That is actually a great idea for keeping a greenhouse warm!

Yavimaya: That is a wonderful insight, thank you. I am going to have to do a bit of research on how to activate a pump based on a temperature sensor, and see if it could keep my water within a very small temperature range. Are you experienced with such things?

SolTun: Thank you for pointing me to this paper, I am going to go read it with a hot cup of tea!


Thank you,
100Chihuahuas

Before you add hot spring water to your system be aware of what is in it. A lot of hot springs are rich in sulphur and may contain heavy metals.

The standard profesional engineered way would be to have a heat exchanger taking heat from the hot spring and another heat exchanger to deliver it to the greenhouse and/or system water. That way you can keep your heat exchange water and piping clean. Running spring water through the GH in a closed loop may be fine but minerals may be deposited n the pipes over time and restrict water flow and energy transfer. If you use AP water through your heat exchangers then biofilm will build up over time and restrict water flow and energy transfer.

Do a google search for a temperature operated electrical outlet. They use a probe in the water and turn the pump on/off based on set temperatures. Only about $60 U.S.

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ccBear: I am one lucky duck, this hot spring is so pure it was actually used by a company to bottle drinking water! Too bad they were jerks and got kicked off my friend's land ; )

Stuart Chignell: I had to do a bit of reading up on heat exchangers! So Lets say I wanted to heat my FT by running hot water through pipes in my fish tank. I would want a closed system that is connected to a heat exchanger? From what I understand, the hot spring water would be pumped through the exchanger through a series of pipes that are intermingled with pipes containing the FT closed system water. I could trigger the pump to work through some kind of temperature sensor. Is this the basic premise?

jrl91rs: I think I found what you are talking about, is this it? http://www.greenhousekits.com/resources/Ranco-Therm-Ins.pdf
So I could program this to turn the hot water pumps on and off depending on the ambient temperature of the greenhouse interior? Could something like this also be used to regulate FT water?


You guys rock, thank you for your insight

100.
Stuarts alteration is simply to say "dont run spring water through pipes, like yav said".
So you have a radiator (e.g.) in your FT and a radiator in the spring (water running over it) and pump normal tap water between the 2 radiators - it is its own closed loop system then( or if you are 120% confident of your plumbing, then you can use something with better trandsfer) .

100, just put the probe in the water instead of air and you are good! I would just put it in the warm water barrel and keep them at the temp you want and they should keep the air warm for you.

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He is after a certain water temp, not air temp.
This seems like a pretty wasteful way of doing it.
Sorry.

I would just coil up a bunch of pipe in a water barrel and run my ap water through the barrel. Run the warm water from the spring through the coil. No way I would let a hot spring go to waste if it was near me.

If you keep the air at a constant temp the AP water will stay at that temp as well as it is going to aclimate to the temperature around it.

Here is what I was thinking to be more clear.

Run warm water into a barrel inside the greenhouse and it can dump back into the spring so it is always warm, can be regulated with a thermo controlled electrical outlet. A coil of PEX tubing can be ran inside the barrel with AP water warming it also. This will heat the AP water and the air at the same time and keep the entire system at a constant set temperature. With everything being at the same temp it will help avoid causing excessive condensation, and also make it easier to control the temps of AP water as it will not be fighting the ambient air temperature in the greenhouse.

Thats cool, we are thinking along the same lines, i just dont think there is need for a middleman.