Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Thanks! Yep, very simple. This guy has more along the lines of what I had in mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVPVJ6GXkN8

His fans are also more appropriately placed, as is the water wall. Heat rises, the plants are down low, you don't need to cool the air above like the first guy is doing, plus he should be using the fan on the opposite end to pull the air through the wall and thru the greenhouse. But you need a sealed greenhouse and not just shade cloth with its holes to be most effective.

Obviously I am going to need to experiment on a small scale. There is always double the expense of putting plastic all around and adding shade cloth to the interior as needed against the sun, but if done right, that will also add a pocket of air, albeit leaky, for air insulation.

But I think you may not understand the true dynamics of Vegas. Vegas is not just the Buffet Capital. I'm not looking to compete against Yuma for the buffets nor the huge quantities. The real Vegas has more world class chefs than any other city in the world. They are all always trying to outdo each other. None are running a buffet nor is that my target market. They want to have the freshest organic microgreens, the best local grown organic produce, etc. They are all into bragging rights. We have a CIA here, too, as a potential source that I know is already buying local from others. Chefs want to know that should they run out of whatever that ingredient is for their event that evening, that they can have it delivered within the hour that day vs waiting for the regularly scheduled delivery days from Yuma. And they will pay for that, too.

BTW, Yuma is "only" 3rd in the USA, lol. wink, wink - just joking around with you here.
http://www.visityuma.com/agritourism.html

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Under $300.00 for the build. I will be adding one of these to my future greenhouse. I think a commercial cooler the same size is close to $1500.00. Your right about moving to the opposite wall.

You can get a poly house pretty close to airtight with wiggle wire and a double wall. A buddy of mine has built several himself for blueberry cuttings, and they're very "tight". Also good for keeping beneficials in. I would say and pest out, but they always seem to find a way in.lol Good luck, it sounds like a promising business plan. I would certainly try it on a smaller scale and test the market before investing tons of $$.

Ok what I should probably have made note of is, during the day you will be using the MOST active cooling and come night, if it cools off too much you would have your thermostat and controls set to reduce the amount of cooling to minimize the temperature swings of your water between day and night since it was the over wide temperature swings my system was experiencing because of too many towers that were causing my fish to NOT EAT during what should have been one of my most productive seasons (Our dry, warm/hot, sunny, spring time but with cool nights.) For me it was the excessive heating during the day and then also the chilling at night that was causing my problematic water temp swings.

The aluminet shade cloth can actually be more effective if placed outside the greenhouse to keep the heat from getting inside the plastic in the first place. If you place it as curtains inside the greenhouse you will still have that HOT HOT air above it that will still keep the greenhouse very hot unless you have a very efficient means to removing the excess heat from inside the greenhouse.

Of course proper greenhouse design really needs to be very climate specific, what is appropriate in inland central FL is going to be far different from what would work in a desert climate. Heck, what works in one part of FL doesn't even necessarily translate well to another part of FL and the design should also take into account what will be grown since an efficient greenhouse for growing ferns will be very different from one meant to grow tomato or one meant to grow lettuce or one meant to grow micro greens.

I also don't agree with the idea of having a greenhouse to keep out pests since they are generally more effective at keeping put the beneficials.

Well, been keeping busy here.
Baby is growing very very well now!

I got an ergo 360 baby carrier so I can now wear him on my back (yes I'm very careful to make sure he is secure and won't fall on his head or anything like that) while I'm doing some work planting/harvesting.
Got the system fairly well planted out for the cool weather crops now that the weather has cooled off a bit and the cook is working on some fencing projects for me so hopefully we will see about getting some meat goats soon.
Also need to make some mobile chicken enclosures to raise chickens ALA everything moves polyface farms style. Have to enclose the birds though since the predators are too much here and the dogs just won't protect them without playing with them to death. So having mobile enclosures that the dogs can patrol around should protect them best. Just gotta make the enclosures easy enough to move/feed/water/collect eggs every day even while wearing a baby. Figure we could have 6-12 laying hens in an enclosure that is about 8' x 10-12' and probably a huge number of meat birds if we decide to raise any. Probably no ducks though.

We did have some pigs last spring and now the freezer is full of pork!

How about an egg mobile and some portable electric poultry netting? That's what I did. I move the coop every couple of days within the paddock. I move the entire fence to a new paddock about every two to three weeks. The fencing is actually fairly easy to move and takes a little over a half hour.

Here is a photo of the egg mobile out in my pasture:



I purchased the netting and solar charger here: http://www.kencove.com/fence/Electric+Net+Fencing_detail_NSPCW.php

Here is a photo of the egg mobile under construction:


I also have a SketchUp model of it out on 3D Warehouse: https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model.html?id=u2f8208fe-f030-4512-b8ec-bd89e64fc607

And just recently to make my life easier I added some chicken nipples and a 12 gallon water tank to the egg mobile:

Where did you get the chicken nipples? I've had trouble finding them, I always find the pig nipples but those are not designed for chickens to drink from.

I've done the electric net fencing and stuff but the hawks, bobcats, and Florida Panthers find it too easy to pick off chickens in an open paddock situation (especially since the paddocks don't really allow my dogs to help patrol and protect the birds) so I need to do enclosures in the Polyface farms meat bird fashion.

Poly face farms - a fascination website! Thanks for the info.

That should say. Polyface farms, a fascinating website!!

Tractor Supply carries the nipples. So does our local feed store. And if all else fails they can be found on Amazon.com.

Great to hear from you TC. Can't wait to see your solution for an egg mobile and the goats too.

Not every Tractor Supply has the nipples, unfortunately. I found some on eBay, myself.

This the FB page for Taranaki Farm.

They move their chicken house with a tractor.







https://www.facebook.com/TaranakiFarm

so thats how they make crop circles, lol!