Okay I've been very busy lately doing re-landscape. I'll post photos tomorrow night.
First i have wanted some aqua culture in the system. so I went ahead and installed a 2500 gallon pond for rainbow trout and fresh water clams. Since i am wanting to restock my own system if possible i have added a 20ft long spawning stream replication to the system that feeds the pond as well is the bio filter. This is currently still under construction and i'll be trying to get it all up and on line by the end of august so i can get some fish/clams in it for the winter. I have some cool stuff i am adding into the landscape such as a old style gum machine that dispenses fish food for only .25. its a small price to pay to see them jump. I also built a granite cleaning and gutting table and a nice stainless marine BBQ. more to come here and lots of pictures. I'm really enjoying this build much more now that i have the hole dug.
With the dirt from the pond i have added a 10 x 30 raised flower bed as well as put it on its own zone in the sprinkler system. this si going to be my wild flower grow each year. just rototiller it up every spring and throw in a bag of mixed flower seed and let it do its thing. should be a great hummingbird and bee/fly draw. can never have enough pollinators.
But what i have really been up to is my new custom fully automated hydroponic green house. its 25 x 25 so its not to huge but i have raised the ceiling in it to 12ft high. I'm setting up for 50 total plants. all evenly spaced so each one gets its own 25sqft. of green house space. I'm going with a 30 gallon poly drum for each floor container and cutting a hole in the top of the barrel to add a net pot from a 5 gallon bucket system i currently use. so the bottom barrels will be my storage fluid tanks as well as my plant buckets. this will save a ton of space. i was going to bury a large tank in the ground but either not having the tank or not wanting to dig the hole leaned towards a bunch of free barrels. plus i like the idea the plant is up off the ground for maintenance?
directly above each barrel hanging from the rafters will be a 5 gallon bucket system. my plan is to grow these as upside down plants by simply pulling them down as they grow and training them with tomato yoyo's and string. i want to have the male and female of each plant if they were needed to be right next to each other to help with pollination so directly above should be perfect.
I'm pumping the
nutrient to the rafters and coming off a set of pipes up there with drip ammeters to each 5 gallon bucket. then in the bottom of the bucket drains that go straight down directly into the barrel under neath feeding that plant as well. i like gravity and i like drains in bottoms of buckets not in the sides when the root ball is huge and the plant is really old. its much easier to keep the drain lines clear and trim the root ball to keep it out of the drain. plus in the bottom you get to use a hose as a siphon if it starts to plug and that extra pull from the vacuum really helps.
between the hanging buckets and the top of the barrel I'm installing my standard indoor lighting florescent system just as i have now. but this time I'm removing the fixture from the
bulbs and re locating the ballasts. I'm putting the bulbs in a position hanging directly under the 5 gallon bucket and probably taped to the hydra farm hose drain line. then I'm simply running wires over and plugging into the bulbs. this will give me a 8ft bulb in length. 4ft for the top plant growing down and 4 ft for the barrel plant growing up. what i like a bout this is my bulb is in the middle of the plant and shining 360 degrees around. so instead of lots of bulbs surrounding the plant like i have now to get it lit up in all directions i should be able to get this same effect with one.
Since i am now out doors i will get the extra Benny's of out door real sun. so this will be a nice feature. it also has the down side that i am needing to build a automatic shade cloth to keep my light cycles in flowering all year around which i now just have a timer doing with my indoor
lights. another advantage of added bulbs for lighting is it will be easy to extend the day light in the fall by leaving them on.
I'm not doing in air conditioning outside it never really gets to hot here and the green house fans will work just fine dumping the excess heat out on hot summer nights. plus hydro plants do better than dirt plants in hot weather.
I am adding a chiller to the system. we just built one and it looks to small so I'm going to up it all in size and will let the growtronix tell us if its working out. I'm not cooling the nute tanks just the nutes before they go out to drip on the plants. i'll be fine either way i run the nutes in the mid 70's no and have no issues. i was thinking more along the lines of it would be back up for really hot days and not having a/c to help out a bit?
Heating i have to have it it can get cold here in the northwest. i have decided to use hydronic floor heating. i like the idea of a heating system filled with antifreeze so it cant destroy itself and floor heating is the most efficient heating method. i just don't want hot air blowing out of ducts on the plants. floor heat is also so even and it will keep my nutes warm in the winter helping to keep the plants warm since they will set on the heated ground.
I decided on two layer 6 mil covering with a pressure fan between the two layers. fairly basic here.
In the floor the ground was not perfect so it sloped around between 6" and 1' of depth so were just filling it level to the base boards with crushed rock. this should be firm to walk on and great drainage. Plus i can spray weed killer on the floor to keep it looking sharp and not have to worry about it getting into my hydro system.
The green house is also part of our new chicken coupes. separate but working together to minimize waist and boost food production. i am fully automating the new coupe and it will operate off the growtronix as well. I'm keeping it simple in the coupe. a lean to roof to keep the he houses dry and the new hen houses are being built in 55 gallon drums that are plastic or poly. They have doors that open at sun rise and close at dusk that lock in the hens and protect them from night pretenders. the growtronix has a motion sensors so this will be placed facing the coupes and after the system locks the place down at night ( they have light sensors to). it will take a web cam video of the intruder while he is in the facility. this way i will get a email that were under siege as well as i can see how he got in or out. the fences are electric top and bottom but raccoons can be very tricky.
the barrels or hen houses are getting 1" holes drilled in the bottoms of them or sides since they will lay on there sides. under the holes or bottom will be PEX hydronic heating lines to regulate the heat in the cold. the growtronix temp probe will turn the system on and off as needed. the pex is also going to be in the ground in the run area so its keeping the ground dry as well and helping the lawn grow to keep it clean. i know i could do more but there chickens.
the chicken feeder is going to be the new shop vac that fits on a 5 gallon bucket. its only 20$ and i just saw it at lowes. I'll store the food in a poly tank 55 gallon drum. the suction for the vacuum hose will be in the barrels bottom through the the threaded holes in the top of it. the discharge will be on its side mounted in a way that when its feeding time it will blow the feed out across the entire coupe area so that they keep scratching it all up and there doing there part to keep it clean. no reason to feed in the same place and keep that area torn up and messy. the vacuum will turned off and on by the growtronix of course. water will be your basic dog water bowl i already use but I'm installing a drain on it right it the middle of it under neath. a simple sprinkler valve maybe. this will turn on everyday and just drain the water away through a hose out of the coupe to keep the mud mess down. The auto refill will top it back up and the pex heated floor will keep it from freezing.
plus i'm trying to get out on nice days to hovercraft on the rivers but that's my summer plans and I'm well into each project right now. plus i bought paint for the house today and am hoping to trick beer drinkers into applying it all for me soon.
if you have my you tube channel watercatwn6535nd i just posted a automated composter that i just finished building and will get some pics of that up to with the wood chipper installed for cutting up the compost before it goes in to speed the process up. its built to expand if i have a need for more volume composting and still run on the same electronics.
Lots of pictures to come,