hydroponic aquaponic fowl House Construction

[watercatwn6535nd]

well its been a while since i was on here. I need to post some pictures i know and will this weekend at the latest. The green house floor is in now and it covers the hydronic floor heating. I installed 20 yards of crushed gravel over the pex tubing which is 300ft long. Since i am making my own steel pipe 1.5" green house i have been dragging on the pipes them selves but i have all the uprights now made and will begin the trusses next week i hope. I'm getting very excited seeing it take place or shape.

I have not started on the fish tank size because i keep finding better info and talking to people that have completely different systems that all work well. I ran into issue with miss reading 1 cubic ft of water for 1 gallon of water so i had to change my tank sizes on my plans then i ran into a you tube video of a guy using and doing well with the calculation for fish density wrong like i had done but he was having excellent luck SO! I'm going to go with what ever tanks fit the best and give me room to work around and I'll be fine.

here are a couple links for any interested in fish for plant food and or eating.
Tilapia Farming at Home
and another guy selling fish as well on ebay Live Blue Tilapia for Algae control and Aquaponics - eBay (item 150368185614 end time Aug-19-10 14:28:27 PDT) plus you can do clams, craw fish etc pump-filter-/190392002788?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c543f68e4" target="_blank">12 LIVE FRESHWATER CLAMS ~ uv pond supplies pump filter - eBay (item 190392002788 end time Aug-23-10 19:07:38 PDT)

Right now i am looking at at least 12 250 gallon tanks which i think i will build or find those pallet liquid containers cant think of what there called i used them for my veggie oil car. Takes about 8.5 months to bring a tilipia to a kilo or 2.2lbs. so i figure one tank for every month of the grow cycle and one tank for babies and one tank for my breeder males and one for the females or a nurse tank for what ever reason.

So depending on who you listen to you can grow 2lbs of fish per gallon of water and they do very well. or you can grow 2 lbs in one cubic foot of water which i think is about 7.5 gallons. which they do very well as well. i'm not one to go on chance much and would rather have some systems in place to make sure my little fish friends are comfy before i gut them and eat them. so for water cleaning i am going with a skippy filter Building A Bio-Logical Filter as well as my plants in my two green houses. but i do think i may be able to overwhelm the system ( i dont see any one else doing that but i think i may be possible with two much fish shit? so i have drawn up a design using washing machine parts to build a low speed centrifuge based on the simple centrifuge. going on the idea that at 2000 rpm 4 inchs from the center of the rotating mass each gram is worth about 1lb of weight or so. I figure since my needs are not to terribly demanding i would go with a bigger bowl and slow it down a bit and still create a great way to isolate heavy or solids from my water system at the same time it will be a great filter for everything not totally dissolved.

My thinking here was i could if need be remove waist mechanically if need be and i could also put it back in the system as a tea and the fish wouldn't be any the wiser. plus it will make great compost right out of the centrifuge.

My plan is to sell fish meat next year some time to off set the cost of my growing system or to completely fund it if i can. I may be able to produce as much as 125lbs of meat per month. plus the new green house will do lots of veggies and fruits since there are only 4 of us to feed. not to mention the chickens.

By the way monday we get our tubers and seeds for the green room and it will now be only flowers used by florists ( long stem and such) in a couple months the house is going to smell amazing.

one last thing our out door dirt growing is excellent this summer but i have to say we planted tomatoes as a test inside and out at the same time and the indoor is twice as big and fruited 1 week early. and that's just with my lame 32watt 4 ft florescence. its going to take a lot to get me to ever use any thing but these cheap dollar light bulbs from lowes. I think you will all be surprised how cheap you can grow indoors with these all winter and have great time.

pictures to come
plus i have a home made nutrient injector i have built for my growtronix i will share as soon as i get a chance to test it for a few runs.

[watercatwn6535nd]

YouTube - ‪Nutrient Injector using Floramato‬‎

Planted all long stem florist flowers and built my nutreint injector to make it faster to feed the machine.

I'll post up another in a biti have some picturtes looaded on my other PC of the out door green house. got the trusses up so it looks like a green house now.

[fuzzygrass]

I will be following you on this one

I wish you luck and enjoy your fruits of your labor

[watercatwn6535nd]

just some random shots from around the urban farm

[watercatwn6535nd]

What a great grow season it has been, not so huge in the volume but it was a nice summer and fall is being pretty mild so far. This weekend had no rain and no wind so we took advantage and welded up the center trusses in the drive way and with some extra help were able to get them right up in place in just a few minutes. Now i just need to start tying all the trusses to each other and decide what to put over the pipes at any sharper edges that are there (duct tape)?

since I'm not a engineer and climbing up the ladder today and seeing how strong my truss design is i'm pretty excited. Its nothing fancy but its all just my head and some help from my google drawing software.

I've already decided to tear down the garage next to the green house and to extend it all the way to the property line on the other side. Gives more room for my fish tanks and also it makes it easier to hook up the aquaponics. plus it lets the heat from the tanks warm the green house and the heat generated in the green house will save some energy to.

My goa right now is to just get the roof plastic on it so i can continue to work as it starts to rain more and more here.

Here is a video update i just shot an hour or so ago. Green House Construction on Yahoo! Video

[GpsFrontier]

Hello watercatwn6535nd,
I like your setup, although I have a couple of questions. I believe you were planing to use a plastic sheeting to cover your greenhouse (you posted a link if I remember correctly). One, how do you plan to attach it to the frame? Second, how confident are you that it wont tare/rip and will be durable enough to last through all seasons?

P.S. Have you thought about light proofing the barrels, instead of selling them just to pay the shipping for black ones? Even if the price for new ones is close, black paint will light proof it. Ya you would need to wash them so the paint would stick, but one gallon of black paint and a paint brush should do the job.

[watercatwn6535nd]

Good questions,

The black barrels are by my work and there only $5 a piece. I figure i was paying $10 and $20 for these barrels so why not put them out for $10 and and make enough to buy twice as many barrels or more. This green house is only 25ft long but when were done it will be 85ft so i can use lots of barrels.

Also i was thinking since i was coming up with a issue finding chep tanks to grow fish in that i might be able to use the black barrels and lay them on there sides and build a steel rack to hold them . stack them up with slots cut in the barrel to service them.

I have read that what makes a green house the most consistant in temps for day and night is the addition in the north wall of at least 1000 gallons of water. stores heat during the day and releases it in the night. it just happens that that i was needing about twice that amount of water for my full production of fish. The fish water needs to be a good 70 plus F. kinda cool the fish and plants want the same temp and light cycles.

Plastic sheeting,

I'm mostly going by what i have read on the sheeting. its used commercially all over my area so i have had a chance to take a look at several buildings with it. they sell it in different mills thick and it can and has different coatings like glass. from what i have read the last 10 years has brought quite a change to what is availble. So far what i think is a standard is every mill thick you buy you get about 1 year of life. But to get this you have to install it correctly and make sure it stays installed tight so it can not flap in the wind. Also doing two layers helps it last even longer as you will change the outside layer twice before the inside layer just from the little protection you get from the top layer sheilding the bottom layer from UV and temps.

My plan is to follow the commercial guys more than the hobby guys on the plastic. my green house plan is to build completly covered in two layers of plastic 6mil or 9 mil. There are products called wiggle wire that attch your plastic to the green house but its very expensive. I was going to install 1" x 4" wood boards around the green house every 5' from the floor over the roof to the floor again. then put the two layers of plastic on and use another 1" x 4" board over the top of the first and snadwhich the plastic in between (sheet rock screws to hold the boards together)

Then at each board or seam you install a hose that looks just like a dryer vent hose from one side of the board to the other so that air can travel around the board or seam. then there is a fan installed on the outside of the grren house the pressurizes the two layers of plastic. this causes them to slightly ballooon out and in as well. This stops all of the flapping a green house plastic does that causes the plastic to fail early.

It offer a thermo pane for heat retention as well as it is used for snow and ice control in mostly unheated green houses. They inflat and deflat the plastic to help sheet the snow off and since the air blowing in between the sheets is out side air it stops the formation of dew droplets in the green house and in the snow control it lets them drop the top plastic that has cool air flowing on it and let it set on the bottom layer that is warmer from the green hosue effect and help melt the snow or ice. I dont expect in my area to have snow or ice issues but thats what i know about it so far.

So they tell me i'll get at least 6 or 7 years of plastic life and then at that point thats just the top layer. plus they say when you take it off its still in good shape its just not letting light through it as well as you wnat so it will do a season over crops planted in rows outside if you like. (trying to get every pennies worth for farmers). Imagine if it were a comrecial operation you will find 100 or 150 ft to be about as small agreen house as the start with so you would have large amounts of plastic around. they try and sell the idea to build the chicken coupes, cover the tractors etc. all good ideas

As far as it lasting a long time. I'm not sure i would have issue if it lasted half that time its so very cheap to buy and changing it should be easy. its $2 $3 a foot around here in the size i will be using. I think i'll only have $200 in plastic for the whole job.

I guy walking by this weekend asked what i was building while we were welding. I said a bomb shelter and he knotted his head like looks good, good idea. wonder how long it will take him to realize a plastic covered bomb shelter may not be the best design idea?