Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

At last some real progress,the man who can came in with his mini digger and ripped out the existing hedge so they could prepare for the new fence,this clears up the space for the new greenhouse and fish house.

It's getting quite exciting now as I can actually see the extra space Iam working with,luckily i can fit another dwc 11m,plus room for a large seedling starting area and I reckon a small dutch bucket system,plus a tube system for my strawberries.

It all looks like a huge mess at the moment,but give it a week or two and things really should look different,I asked for a quote today for the new fish house,so waiting on that,I have ordered the blower for the air system,plus I am oredering a DO meter and PH controller to finish everything off,oh and the dosing pump has been ordered from the states as well,so it's all systems go.

Yeah, a bit of progress indeed. Your new cone bottom drum looks friggin' awesome too. I love the mini digger with operator, Man could I use something like that here. Sweet sweet. Thank you for posting this amazing transformation Andreas.

Yay for progress. I want a mini digger too, I have to do everything by hand so I don't do much digging.

That mini digger made such easy work of clearing everything,actually when I excepted the price I didn't know the digger was included,I did try to get him to do extra work hahaha but he was having none of it. The downside was he ripped up the water main,so three houses lost water for a few hours and they had a delivery of sand and the tipper truck drove forward and ripped down the mains power to one of the houses. Being Thailand they just twisted the two ends together and covered it with insulation tape,pics to follow on that...

Nice Progress there dasboot. Looking forward to your system up and running. Lucky you, had opportunity to take course of ryan. I wanted to take his course as well, but my money value is low , which make his course not affordable for me atleast at this momemt.

Wishing you luck from chennai(india).

> he downside was he ripped up the water main,so three houses lost water for a few hours and they had a delivery of sand and the tipper truck drove forward and ripped down the mains power to one of the houses. Being Thailand they just twisted the two ends together and covered it with insulation tape,pics to follow on that.

That is almost as good as the guy at my mums village that drilled a hole for a picture hook in the centre of his bedroom wall and hit the water delivery pipe to his house (most likely the pipe to the roof solar hot water system)....

wet bed, unhappy wife, no water and a plumbing bill far exceeding one picture hook.

we are still wondering what logic put the copper pipe in that exact location....

well, I'll do certain things for a customer above the original scope of work so long as the understanding of I hit X, not my problem to fix unless you agree to this price/hr + materials to fix. I will usually get in writing (unless you are 'old school' and a handshake is your word) b/c it is funny how memory fades when more money is having to go out but not when you don't meet customers expectations.

I am going to get a welder and have a go @ the RFS but if I can get cone bottom tanks for the right price, I may forego but still have the welder for future endeavors b/c I can never have too many tools.

Adam

Adam I would have gone the cone bottom tank,but in Thailand I couldn't source anything that would suit my needs and you are so right you can never have enough tools. The plus with owning the plastic welder is now near enough everything is repairable,I have some plastic cement troughs that were used for media beds,I can now patch over the holes and they can go back as cement troughs or whatever else I want to use them for.

The guy doing the fencing didn't turn up today,so I had chance to look around his work,roughly two thirds of the steel galvanized post are cemented in,note the word cemented and are perfect for leve and straightness,that good it pleases the eye. But he used cement and not concrete to set the posts and about a third of them are already loose where they stand,I owe him money which is my bargaining tool but what a *frack* up, he arrives at 8 in the morning and let's see what sort of pleasant day we have,because as far as I can see they all need taking up and resetting in a proper concrete footing....

Question for the builders who might read this,I want to build a trough 11x1.2 meters out of solid concrete blocks,but after the cracking I had on the other two troughs I want to use rebar set firmly in the ground and footings,question what is the way to do this with solid blocks,or should I use hollow blocks and fill them with cement as I go..?
I plan on a 10 mm rebar every meter,which with the hollow blocks I can easily measure how that spacing occurs,I was thinking if I used the hollow blocks I would skim the outside with concert render,just to give it that jun es say kwa as the French would say.

Insulated Concrete forms -- available in your neck of the woods -- a bit more expensive over block (and probably more so in your area) but can add some additional insulating value to keep things cooler???

I am not an engineer, and concrete is my least favorite to do.....

Footing should be twice the width of the block so there is proper bearing and I would go with 12" thick. Rebar should be covered by 2" minimum of concrete with 3 horizontal bars placed in footing and not exposed to the soils for it will cause problems with rusting. Vertical dowels spaced 16" on center alternating the bend every other one to hit the open cells of the block. Create a bond beam at the top and tie the vertical uprights to the two #4 (1/2" US (12.5mm).

Set the top of the footing to the finish height of your wall in 8" increments and I would use open cell blocks and then pour in concrete. Usually set a minimum of 12" below grade, or below frost line per code in the US.

If 8" block used, then maybe 12" for additional lateral support from the weight of the water......but If Ryan can achieve a grow bed using wood, then concrete ought to be even better right?

if you need a detail, let me know for I can pull one from a set of architectural drawings that support walls and have been engineered for building, and should work for your application?

Adam

....maybe I didn't read it correctly - anyway, in my opinion, you need to tie in the vertical rebar with horizontal one!
I would go with a rebar every 20-25 cm.
No need to weld to the verticals, but I would go on the OUTSIDE of the verticals and tie them with wire to the verticals.
However - where the horizontals run out or overlap you need welding - or some serious overlapped tying with wire...

After this - even hell can't break this trought!!

thjakits

je ne sais quoi took me a little while to figure out what you were getting at there... =)