Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

You guys are killing me.

Incredible system Domani, I look forward to seeing it all come together

Me too, Cargs! Thanks for the compliment.

Out of interest, Domani... where was you place of birth? Are you Aussie, Thai or maybe from somewhere else. Just being nosey

I could say that my place of birth was Ork, but that is not true. Who else would give WOW workshops on the banks of lake IJsselmeer near Amsterdam than a Dutchie?

A Druid...

Anybody know where I can get one of those silver spoons I have been hearing about?

Today we made a start with installing the remaining part of our PV system. The Sunny Boy and Sunny Island are on the walls. The holes you see are pre-drilled for a second SB we expect soon to order. Tomorrow shopping for more stuff we still need. If all goes well we might even have the system running in the upcoming week. Exciting....

Great work!. Would love to see this thing up and running!

Thank you! But the last time my thing was up and running I had to visit the doctor in a hurry. But I guess you didn't pointed to that?

Where about are you in Thailand?

Today we spent some time looking for the right material to connect the 24 2V batteries together to form a 48V bank. Cables with terminals pressed onto them are in my opinion not the best option. The constant expanding and shrinking caused by temperature differences will eventually weaken the connection between terminal and cable with possible the two parting. This can cause battery failure. And to replace 1 or 2 in a system with 24 of them is not a good idea.

So what to do? First I stumbled upon a guy who used copper pipe of 3/4" with a wall thickness of 2mm. The ends are flattened with a hole drilled into it to connect to the battery terminal. Copper pipe is generally readily available in most places but.......not in Thailand! Thin wall copper pipe of 1mm no problem! But anything better forget it.

Another option, and in my eyes the best one, is using copper strips. But after some surfing on the web that one certainly looked hopeless. Nothing available wherever we tried, best was to order and wait for two weeks or more.

So we went on a quest to look for the best possible alternative, expecting nothing and to eventually end up with cables and pressed on terminals.

Amazing Thailand!

First shop BINGO! They had copper bus bar of the right dimensions in 5 meter length and even for a normal market price! Pay and go.

So the afternoon we spent with cutting the buss bar into lengths of 22cm, drill holes in it and prepare them for connecting the batteries. The best solution right around the corner, in Thailand. Beats me!

Short update:

Everything is now installed, tomorrow morning I'm going to commission the system. Some pictures….




Tomorrow maybe some more pictures of better quality.

Looking good!

Awesome job Paul