More pictures (post 2 of 2)

Things are looking good man, i can't wait till i get to your lvl with my tomatoes.

Double thumbs up!!!

Dude! It's been forever since you updated. Must be real busy getting those plants in. Waiting for an update. I got my webpage started on google, not done yet but its got a solid start.

fintuckyfarms
Ya, I had hoped to have the systems running by now, but it's always something it seems. I had a couple of small (but paying) carpet cleaning jobs, I was sick for about 4 days. Then my mom was hosting a party last Tuesday, so I spent the week before that cleaning her carpets too, as well and helping her clean the rest of the house. I also still need money, so I spent some time running around getting the right bolts to put my engine hoist back together so I could sell it (got $200 for it yesterday).

I think since my last update I only had about 4 days to work on the greenhouse total, and since my moms party I worked on it yesterday and today. All the PVC is cut and dry fitted together. I spent yesterday and today doing some of the gluing it together. Depending on how many hours I have to work on it each day, I figure I still have about 4 to 8 days of work before I can start running water through the systems. I hope to have the systems running by next weekend because I promised to help a friend paint their neighbors house that weekend. He will be paying me to help, and I can really use the money for the greenhouse. I have a few more pictures, but don't plan to post another update until I have water flowing through the systems. Just don't think there's much more to show until then.

P.S.
I'm looking forward to seeing your website. I'd make up some business cards, and put the web address on them so you can pass them out to everybody you mention it to. That way they can check it out at their own leisure when they have the time. Just make sure you always have some with you at all times to hand out (you never know when the subject might come up). Post the link when you have the site up and running. You can also add the link to the signature of your posts by modifying the signature in your profile. Then it will show at the bottom of all your posts like my site does in my posts.

Can't wait for the new picts :D

What an awesome idea on the business cards, I forgot to e-mail my self the power point on hydro so I could work on it at work in the down time. Now I can work on the busness cards them print them when I get home as I have some left over from another project.
Thanks, much....

Well, getting the system running before the weekend wont happen. I have the return system completely done. All glued in, including installing the through hole fittings in each grow bed for for all three levels. The flood/fill lines will be easier because they are more in front (rather than underneath). Thus not needing to do a lot of crawling underneath and maneuvering under the bottom and middle levels. I have about half of the flood lines glued together (then ran out of primer today). Gluing the rest together will take about 2 hours. But then I need to mark all the holes for the flood line through holes, then cut them out of the bottom of all the grow beds.

Once there cut, I need to prep the holes to install the through holes, and install them. Then connect and glue them to the flood/fill lines. I can probably cut the holes, prep them, and install the through holes in about 6 hours. Then finish gluing it together in about 2 hours. Once I have it all connected and ready to run, I need to clean the dust and debris out of all 21 grow beds, drain the water out of the reservoirs and clean them out and sanitize the insides (probably take me another 6 hours to get the reservoirs ready). Connect the pumps, then finally be able to run water through the systems!!!:D

I would be hard pressed to finish the PVC by Thursday, much less the reservoirs. But the painting job has been moved up. I will be starting to do the prep work on it tomorrow (Wednesday). So don't think I'll get much work done on the greenhouse until the painting job is finished. But on the up side, the money I get from the painting job will help pay for materials I need to finish the greenhouse.

P.S.
I just got a back draft damper today free (for inside/outside ventilation). The guy who is paying me to help paint, is a AC and heating tech, and is on the lookout for old ducting materials, including inline duct fans and swamp coolers I can use the way it is or part out. All of witch is free.

Good luck getting it going, with big projects it always seems like it's one or two steps forward and one back.

Well I just thought I would give a little progress report. First the side painting job has turned out to be many more hours than I expected. I have actually worked 41.5 hours on it to date. At $10 an hour, that's a good chunk of change, and I can use every penny. But I have still managed to get almost all of the pluming done. I just need to glue in the last 7 elbow connectors (one for each grow bed) for the flood line on the bottom level, and all the PVC flood and drain lines are done. I also have 2 of the 3 reservoirs drained, cleaned out, and refilled with water from my water filter system. I would have had the 3rd one done today as well, but it wouldn't have been drained in time to clean out before dark, so I left it half full to do tomorrow.

A few notes/observations. First is the in ground reservoirs are keeping the water nice and cold. Granted it isn't 120 degrees out yet, and the water isn't running through the systems yet. But the daytime high today was around 88 degrees, and the reservoir water temp was 64 degrees. Second observation is the flow rate for the water filtration system is around one gallon a minute. It takes 4 hours (240 minutes) to fill the 275 gallon reservoir. A little slower than I hoped. I was hoping for about 1.5 gallons a minute (the listed flow rate on the one micron filter cartridge). I can increase the flow rate to about 2 gallons a min by splitting the line to the one micron filter, and running it through two of them simultaneously. Though it's working fine for now, but I might upgrade it in the future when I have money to spare (just to make it quicker to do nutrient changes, considering I have 3 reservoirs to deal with).

P.S.
Anyhow, without any more delays like the possible rain this weekend, I expect to have water running through all three systems tomorrow. Then I'll try and post pictures early next week.

I meant to post this update days ago, but better late than never. Anyhow I'm not sure if I mentioned it or not but I have all the PVC pluming in place and glued together. I also got the pumps running water through the systems on schedule. I expected to have a few leaks, but got a lot of them. Not from any of the PVC tubing or fill and drain fittings, but from the seams between the sides and bottom of the grow beds. I took pictures of the beds when I had water flowing through them all.

I drained and dried out all the grow beds. Then decided the best way to fix the leaks was to just pill out all the silicone seams inside the grow beds, and redo them. When I was constructing them, I noticed some of the silicone seams were starting to peal out (but was in too much of a hurry to fix it then). That's mainly why I expected some leaks, but thought the fact I had 3 layers of sealing, any leaks would be minimal. So now I'm needing to redo them. I have already pulled up all the inside silicone seams, and I'm in the process sealing it with marine goop (actually pluming goop). It will be more expensive than silicone, but the goop wont peal from the plastic. It's just a mater of getting a good bead of it in the seam. I have almost 1/2 of the grow beds resealed at the end of today. by the time I'm done I will have probably gone through about 20 tubes of goop. Luckily wal-mart carries the pluming goop for about $4 each, but I bought all they had on the shelf last Friday (11 of them). Hopefully they'll have restocked by tomorrow. Home depot (dopey) has it as well, but it cost about a dollar more ea.

As usual I have more pictures than can be posted in one post, so I'll make another post for the rest.

As mentioned here are the rest of the pictures I couldn't post in the previous post. for the heck of it I added a couple of pictures of the bird that has been nesting in the oddest place in our yard for the past couple of weeks. She dosen't seem to mind us humans walking all about the yard. In fact that wood on top of the blue tarp I placed there with her sitting there. I placed it there because it was going to be windy, and I didn't want the blue tarp to flip her nest over in the wind.

A couple of times every day I walk right up to her and tell her she's a nice birdy. She looks me right in the face, and just sits there. Yesterday I noticed the head of baby bird sticking out from underneath her chest. I asked if that was her baby birdy, but as usual she didn't say much. Anyhow that's the damndest place for a bird to nest I ever saw.

You ever test your finish water PPM? And did i miss a list of what all filter's you used?

Since we've moved i don't have my old house water filter system with the RO at the sink so i'm needing to come up with a new set up. Had thought about buying a portable RO set up. But would rather build something i could get the filter's locally.

Hello T'Mater
No, I've not tested EC/TDS/PPM yet. I don't use/have a EC/TDS/PPM meter, and there is no money in the budget to buy a good one at this point. I have checked/compared pH, but that didn't have any conclusive results. The pH of our outside water (unfiltered, straight from the city supply) was about 7, our inside water (filtered through the water softener) was about 7, the water from the water filtration system I built was about 7, the water from the RO system was slightly lower at about 6.5. Bottom line there is only a .5 difference between the straight unfiltered water and RO. Eventually I will do some water testing to see what minerals/chemicals are in our water supply, as well as what's left after the water filtration system. But that will need to wait until I'm making money for it from the greenhouse. From there I can adjust/change the filters to be more effective if necessary.

Right now I'm using 1 pre-filter to get out seatmate that can clog the other filters. Next in line there are two carbon filters, and lastly is a absolute 1 micron filter. I expect to change the carbon filters to carbon/ion exchange filters next time I change them. I bought everything from Home depot. I attached pictures of what I bought. The two filters on the right with the red ends are the carbon filters, the filter in the center is the 1 micron, and the twin pack on the left is the pre-filter. The close up is of the label on the 1 micron filter. The water quality you get from a system like this is about 3 things, and is completely adjustable. First variable is the quality of the water source you start with, second is what filters you decide to use, and lastly (is related to the last one) how many different filters you actually choose to use.

Ya i took down a list of what you got, i figure i'll duplicate your filter system and go from there. I would rather build something i can get filter's locally then buying an RO system that i have to buy/ship filters in. Odds of local business going out of business slim vs online store's.

I have a meter and so after i get it built i'll let you know what i get. Maybe that can help you and anyone else mimicing the system.

Loving your set up man. Maybe when your all done you can take a video of it all working for us. I"m sure more then just me would love to see your work in motion.

green house update
 

I've been gone for months. Just read this GPS what a great project. how is it going inside there now.

Hello watercatwn6535nd,
It's been quite a long time since I've seen your user name, good to hear from you again. Hope things are going well for you these days, and hope you'll catch us up on what you've got going. Ya, my greenhouse quite a project. But I'm in the home stretch, I was just hoping to have a few months of sales before I really needed to test the sub T system. But with days like today that are already in the mid 90's, the cooling systems will likely all need to be up and running from the first day of operation. I have all the hydro systems running, But I do have some leaks to fix. I had to pull out all of the inside silicone seals because the silicone wont stick to the plastic, especially as the plastic flexes.

I'm in the process of resealing all the grow beds with pluming goop instead. It works fine, and bonds to the plastic well, but it's not the easiest job to do. First I need to run water through each level one at a time/day, then mark where the remaining leaks are. Then use the wet dry vac to get the rest of the remaining water out of each grow bed that still has a leak. Dry the rest out with towels, and search for any holes. When I pulled out all the silicone, it was frustrating at times (as well as in uncomfortable positions). In doing so I made some holes in the plastic. Then once I think I have it all resealed, I need to wait two days for it to fully cure before I can recheck that level by running water through the system. Then do it all over again if there is still leaks. I hope to have them running leak free by this weekend. But all it takes is a pinhole for water to seep through the plastic. It's easy to make pinholes in the plastic when you need to climb on/in the grow bed to fix them in place.

Considering all the money spent on the plastic in the first place, plus the adhesive to laminate it to the wood, silicone I originally tried to seal it with, hot glue for the corners and outside seams, not to mention all the pluming goop it takes to redo the inside seams now. I'm thinking it may have been better/cheaper to just fiberglass the inside of grow beds instead. It would probably be close in cost, and I would still need to use the mesh for strength because the grow beds took a lot of abuse banging them around before they were set in their final place (and a likely cause for a lot of the original leaks). But may be much less of a headache in the long run.

P.S. T'Mater
Good idea, my camera takes video, and once I have the systems running leak free I'll make a video. I don't do videos much because they are only in real player format. But I think I have a program (or can download one free) that can convert it to windows media player.

green house updates
 

Well i just mostly stared out the window over the winter and did nothing but i'm back at it now that the sun has re appeared. New Aquaponic Green House Update - YouTube this is where i am as of a few days ago. I bought some starts today and put them in and hope to have drip lines this weekend. i am having one hell of a time making the fittings not leak and am about ready to use some sealant myself. I even paid extra for the good fittings with rubber gaskets on both sides.

Are you still selling GPS's? i need one for my boat. I was thinking a a 5" or maybe a bit bigger unit chart plotter depth sounder with the DSC system for showing other vessel locations. Mokai X-Wing update - YouTube

water quality
 

GPS why the filters whats in the water there?

We have very hard water here. I don't have a report yet, but the excess minerals I know of include iron, manganese, and calcium.