Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Those seedlings look great TC. Very impressive.

Martin.

The floor of the barn is a compact red clay (well orange)
And we scraped down to get a level area and put the PT frame down. Then filled in with paver base (coarse sand) and added some more sand. Compacted (heavy tamper, no compacter here), then screed to get nice and level. Then used this foam paver base (sold at lowes, supposedly allows to use lots less sand) and lay the pavers. Then we swept some sand into the cracks and then finally topped the cracks with some of that polymer sand then a lot of tapping of everything and sweeping in more sand since we don't have the compacter, sweep it all clean then watered gently. It will take probably a good three days for the polymer sand to really cure here this time of year but I'm hoping it will keep us from having sand wash out issues if we ever need to clean up after spilling something in there.

I'll have to get a picture of the finished floor tomorrow. We will start on walls tomorrow.

Got it. If you do any future pavers, skip the sand and the foam, just order some crushed concrete and save the money. The polymeric will set in a few days, and will work great!

I may have missed it, and I know nothing of Florida weather, what is the purpose of a cool room?

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It is where you go to get away from the nerdy kids...

I think she's trying use it to extend the greens season. Germinate where it's cooler, and then plant in AP.

ugh I think I just lost a whole long post.

For this size project, I think the sand and foam came out cheaper than trying to hire some one to haul a small load of crushed concrete and renting a compactor.



Basically a walk in cooler. When you harvest fresh produce you need to chill it down if you want it to stay nice for market.
I've been using a chest freezer hooked to a thermostat to make it act like a refrigerator but this past spring I had times when it wasn't big enough to handle all the produce I was harvesting, I wound up having to harvest in waves, chill stuff in the cooler then move things into ice chests while I harvested the next batch into the cooler, lots of wasted time moving stuff around.

As to the germinating greens, I do that in the house during the summer in front of a window air conditioner in the office under lights. In the winter I can start warm weather crops indoors instead. I usually only have about 3-6 trays going inside at a time. Right now I have two trays of celery under lights and two trays of celery not yet under the lights and two trays of lettuce under lights. The celery is in pellets in 50 cell trays and the lettuce is in 288 cell trays since I pluck them to place in grow grips for planting out. I'm sure there must be less labor intensive ways to do it but at the scale I'm working with, those don't make sense (I'm planting 12 different varieties of lettuce in those trays so vacuum seeders don't make sense and I don't have space to do a full tray of each type.)

You would only need a pick up truck load. My cost in this area is around $32.00 for 2 yds. You don't have to compact, it's just the best way to do it. You can hand tamp the area and then screed off another thin layer of base to lay your pavers.

What you have will certainly work. Just looking to save some money on any future projects.

We would have $40.00 in material plus pavers for that job. 2 yds base and a bag of portland to mix/pour the retaining edge. A couple bags of sand or 2 buckets of polymeric which you need no matter what. Set up a few grade lines, lay your base, throw down the pavers, lay your edge, about 8 hours -1 person, 4 hours with 2 man crew. But that's doing it all the time. Our first job, I spent 2 days cutting edging brick on a 3000 sq ft. driveway with a wet saw. Then I bought a cut off saw, and did the same size job in 3 hours. Live & learn.

I thought you said the crushed concrete was over $400 a ton in an earlier post? How many yards to make a Ton then? Is this crushed concrete as light as perlite or something?

TCLynx wrote: "Basically a walk in cooler." Makes sense now. Thank you.

Sorry, if I wrote that, it was a typo. It's a recycled product. It's heavy. Appx 2500-3K a yard. I can carry 1.5 yds on my p/u, but it's a 1 ton truck. You can go as little as 2" thick in a nice sandy area. Just wet the sub base down and pack that prior to installing the crushed concrete. It's anywhere between 15-25.00 a yard/ton in this area. You want "paver base" crushed concrete, not the larger sizes. Otherwise you will be cursing as the big chunks ruin your screeding. We use an aluminum straightedge(structural tubing) and then just pull that across the area using the grade lines on large areas and just a few grade stakes on small areas. Goes very fast.
A 3 man crew can lay a 2 car driveway in a day, including leveling all base, installing pavers, all cuts, retaining edge, sanding and packing. 1000-1200 sq ft easily. That's with the dirt being excavated prior and the base dumped close to work area.

Well, I don't really plan to be doing large areas of paving.

However, where in West FL are you located? Do you do excavating/grading work? Or know of anyone over here in Central FL you would recommend? If I Do a greenhouse or another large area of Aquaponic systems, I need to get the ground work done better next time.

I'm in Port Richey. On the gulf, NW of Tampa. I don't know anybody in your area. Look for a Bobcat owner/operator. most will work for $60-75.00 per hour, 3 hr. min. A good operator can do a lot if 2-3 hours. Several thousand feet grading, move several truckloads of dirt, etc. Better to do that then spend 200.00 on a rental that you wouldn't get 1/4 as much done in a day. Unless you have experience in the machine. Get quote for the exact job, and make sure it's very clear what you want done. There are some very good owner/operators...and a few hacks. Like in everything.