Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

and make sure its double skin! My single skin greenhouse is not far from ambient at night, and thats with 3000L in it. Bottom line, you need to insulate your system.

Yes I had a you beaut eden glasshouse and when it was 0 outside it was 0 inside

For $1000 you could make 2 or 3 more of the IBC system you have then your output is 2-3 times the amount for a lot of the year, yet in the colder times you still get the same output from your 3 or 4 systems as you would from 1 heated system..

+1 EB

Until you have some way of slowing the rate at which heat leaves your greenhouse the amount of energy you need to pump in is just huge.

Commercial greenhouse s do this by being big (less edge effects) and by having screens or blankets that reduce the size (volume) of the area that needs to be heated but also add insulation above the crop.

Without these measures and without a control system to manage the heat all you will end up doing is increasing the day night temperature difference.

Not good for your fish or your plants.

And use trout in the winter...

All excellent points.
I have a 3x3m single layer plastic greenhouse, which is about the limit of my available backyard space. So expanding the size to compensate is not really an option for now.
Greenhouse upgrade sounds like a good option.. Thanks for the tips!


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Getting a second cover on your house and inflating it will seriously reduce your heat loss.

The parts for that can be purchased from

http://www.redpath.com.au/

Geooff Millers do the best deals on covers

http://www.geoffmiller.com.au/products/greenhouse-products/greenhouse-plastic.html

just thought I would mention that I fill my evacuated tube's with fine beach sand
as it offers a more stable temperature than the aluminium fins that might be inside the tubes you get
( as they are made to be light for roof installations )
but if you want more stable temps sand soaks up that heat really well and keeps way after the sun is gone


you could still use copper as the main pipe work and just use stainless steel for the exchanger in contact with the water

another option could be use a lens to super heat of a large container of something with your water pipes passing through it

in fact I have an large drum here loaded with super heated oil for running my solar AC system
(ammonia absorption refrigerator)
built around 2010
http://www.treehugger.com/culture/chall ... ioner.html

looks like someone else has done it recently
https://diyscience2015.wordpress.com/20 ... nt-page-1/

it would not take much convert for winter/summer functions

Do you have glass tubes if so filling with sand destroys there action
Di you have a photo of them

all the sand is doing is replacing the fins that are inside

they are still Evacuated Tube Collector's depending how they are manufactured
the vacuum is normally on the outer layer



the sands been measured reaching 150c easily and the thermal storage holds it for hours

and I know a lot of people that have done it to prolong the life of the tubes as the sand will not pressurize as much as liquid would

the tubes may be made to take impact from hail but a few PSI inside and they burst


my fish are currently sulking and so are my toes so time to do something about the temps
I was just thinking about heating up an large industrial bin to use as an heat exchanger
but as that would be useless for summer I am thinking another absorption system to be made ...
this could be used to heat and cool the greenhouse as well ...


ps
the vacuum tube without the internals are dirt cheap so buy them and just fill with sand and pop in a copper tube and done ... just mate it in with an stainless steel manifold / exchanger