Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

so great to see how you are putting that building style to work
thank you for sharing the details
I believe it will last a thousand years!

I have seen Passive solar greenhouses but have not seen anyone include the perfect wall into the design.
I think it will be a great combination. It should really reduce the thermal bridging you get with traditional building.
http://www.finehomebuilding.com/pages/thermal-bridging/
The proof is in how well it dose once it if finished.

It feels so much like I am building a big ice chest.
I worked on the boxing. This is time consuming each square needs to be custom cut. I feel it needs done it completes the envelope.
Everything I do to it lately makes it look worse but it will have to look worse before it can look better.

Now you need a very stiff wind to get all the debris out of the yard

Hello neighbor

The cleanup crew came in to help out tonight.




I finished the boxing insulation tonight. I got out the night lights to finish it up. It was warm out and it is going to rain tonight and next day or two.

The cleanup crew did a good job.

Here is a great write up on DIY Principles for a Passive Solar Greenhouse.
It is by Cord that designs and builds Passive Solar Greenhouses and my greenhouse is mostly inspired by his designs.

lots of good information in this.
http://www.grit.com/farm-and-garden/gre ... x?PageId=1

My FH went from 76 to 67 in 2 days. It's not too bad when it's sunny and cool. The sun heats up the metal siding quickly. When it's cloudy and cool, that when I see the drastic temp swings. Luckily my water is 71F coming out of the well, so even with no heat, I'll be OK this winter.

I finished up the nailers.


It finally stopped raining. My oldest boy helped me mixed the cement. Each hole had two 2’ Tee post drove into the ground with 6” above the ground the 10’ Half inch rebar cut up in each hole. It was put down like a cross hatched pattern. That should make it very strong for the pallet racking.





I now have eight barrels full of water ready to become solar batteries. We just need some sun and less rain.



The first small front vent is 90% done. There are two four foot vents on the sides then three eight foot vents across the front they all take about the same amount of welding.

All the bottom vents are in. I still need to install the auto openers on the front ones. I will not need to use all of them in the winter anyway.

I left a space between them because they do a lot of the venting on the outside edges. The auto vent openers can only open the so far.
The openers attach the middle silver brace. All the cross bracing lets you open them from one spot. This will also will help protect them in the wind.




Here is a side auto opener in action.


This is was at 7:30 am on 1/3/16 you can see 32 F outside and 51 F inside the greenhouse that is pretty sweet.

Mark, nice build. Following this with a lot of interest. 19 degree difference shows the effectiveness of this design. Question. Will you remove the barrels in the summer due to too much heat gain or will the venting help to reduce this?

They will actually help cool it in the summer. They are position so the get some shade in the summer. Once they are in place they are there as long as they last. I will be adding two more rows of them on pallet racking.

The goal is to have natural convection getting air flowing everywhere without fans. For this to work well you need to have everything sealed up tight. Have vents at the lowest possible place and the top vents be at the highest place.
Since I am in a hot climate I have a lot of venting.

Cord of Smart greenhouses in CO. does not even use a fan in the summer and has great air flow for the plants.
He says on a hot day he will go into his greenhouse to cool down.

Here is where I will be adding vents next the whole way across the top of the back.



There will be about 10-12" between them to allow side venting. The two H's up top will be solid.

It was cold yesterday evening and last night South Carolina cold anyway.
I still have plastic for the back vent and only one row of 55 gallon drums. I still am very interested how the greenhouse is performing at this stage.
Yesterday at sunset it 35.6 f and windy it got down to 23 degrees here are the charts. The greenhouse did not go below 50 degrees. Keep in mind it was very sunny yesterday






Later down the road I will be putting in probes so I can show graphs on how it is performing. I will monitor greenhouse temp and fish water temp.

Mark first let me say thank you for all the details and pictures you have posted. I have enjoyed reading through it all and getting some ideas running in my head.

I am planning on building a greenhouse this spring so we will be able to grow our veggies through next winter and have done some reading on passive solar greenhouses but just decided to try the aquaponics along with it... I'm coming to the game with some fish experience having kept both freshwater and saltwater aquariums (and currently running an 8ft x 2ft x 2ft saltwater reef tank, 240 gallons roughly) and my wife has a bit of a green thumb as she is a researcher in Michigan state university's horticulture department, but I'm going to attempt to combine our experiences for the greenhouse/aquaponics adventure to grow fish we can eat (also raising chickens, and will add hogs this summer to become self sufficient for food hopefully)

A couple of questions if you don't mind me asking, my current plans were to build a 16x16 ft greenhouse that I've done some preliminary drawings on, but I was planning to put Windows and glass roof on both the north and south because it seems like in the summer the sun passes a little north of my house while winter of course it's south... With your build you are blocking off all north access, am I actually crazy that I don't want glass on the north and it's my imagination that the sun passes north of me in the summer being that I'm so much farther north than you?

I may have to go start a thread to post my plans to get some detailed feedback but that's something that jumped out at me.... I really have no idea what I'm doing for greenhouse design, I've only seen a couple of small hobby greenhouses and only from a distance... The wife is more familiar with greenhouses but no idea about building anything so not a lot of help on my greenhouse plans...

Read this Grit Magazine article it is very good.
http://www.grit.com/farm-and-garden/gre ... fzreg.aspx

If you want to do a passive solar design the look at this one.
http://bradford.cafnr.org/passive-solar-greenhouse/

The venting is very important.
Have a look at this web site. Cord has been advancing this design for a while now.
I really think it is worth getting some consulting time from Cord. He has built many passive solar greenhouses with a proven design. He refines them after each build. Since you are only building one it would pay for itself.
http://www.pennandcordsgarden.com/greenhouses.html
31 below zero they had tomatoes growing with no fuel bill and they don’t run a fan in the summer either.
Mine is based off his design.

The angles are determined by your Latitude and Longitude. You want the sun to come in at the right angle and the 55 gallon drums in the back need sun in the winter and some shade in the summer.
This book is an excellent book and explains in detail how to figure out what angles you need. You can still buy it used off amazon as I did I like the hard copy

https://archive.org/details/The_Food_an ... Greenhouse
Good luck in your build I look forward to reading about it.

Hi Mark

Did you maybe check out the Chinese greenhouse?

https://www.google.co.za/url?sa=t&sourc ... n20FuA5kUQ

I am interested to know how they would compare to your build.

Cheers

Sent from my SGP621 using Tapatalk

Thanks for the link!

The Boissevain Design has close to the same angles and an insulated back wall. It is hard to beat water as solar batteries.

The other designs are using a fair amount of power. One was 20KW an hour.
But it is great they are doing this research it is very valuable information.

If you look a Cord’s web site. This is what my design is based off. I just added the perfect wall to the mix.

He is not using any fossil fuel at all not even a fan in the summer. it get much colder where he is than where I live.

http://www.pennandcordsgarden.com/greenhouses.html