Fish Tanks in the House

As you can see, the 300 gallon tanks were too big to fit through the doorway.  I measured and found that I might have barely been able to fit them through on their side, but instead of marking up the door trim, I just decided to take two glass panels off and one of the vertical supports and I was able to get them in without any problem.  It took me about 30 minutes.

Now I am at the point where I need to dig a hole on each side so that I can partially bury the two tanks.

Electric Meter

The electrician put in the meter box and circuit breaker panel today so that we can begin the process of getting electricity to my workshop and greenhouse.  This building is the size of a two car garage and it is where I have been storing all of my extra "stuff."  But there was never any electrical power brought to the building.  I have been researching solar power, but regardless of what I do with that, I need some good old grid power.

Now that the meter is set, and a single circuit has been run (see the wire coming out of the panel, it goes to a single outlet), we can get an inspector to come out and sign off.  Once this is complete, the electric company will come out and run a line to the building for me.  Finally I can hook up some lights and some tunes!

Murray Hallam Lecture

Today was the Aquaponics lecture by Murray Hallam at the Denver Botanical Gardens.  Murray is from Brisbane, Australia and is one of the top Aquaponics gurus in the world.  It was his videos that originally got me interested in researching this in the first place.  He has a very down to earth way of explaining everything at a practical level and he has a great sense of humor.  Check out the trailer for one of his key videos here.

The program was for 6 hours including lunch, and it was very interactive.  I was able to show Murray my plans and get some good feedback on my system.  Others asked some great questions also that I hadn't been smart enough to ask.  Coming out of this session, I feel more confidant about my system plans.

After the lecture, we drove over to the Colorado Aquaponics GrowHaus to see the system that is being built by JD Sawyer.  This setup is pretty inspiring.  Basically received some grant money to put together a greenhouse system in a depressed neighborhood in Denver with the goal to help provide good, affordable food in the middle of a "food desert."  Murray had some good practical advice for the set up.

Aquaponics Field Trip

I flew out to Denver today for an Aquaponics conference and a chance to meet some other crazy Aquaponic people.  Sylvia and Alan Bernstein of The Aquaponic Source held a Wine and Greenhouse Tour at their house in Boulder, Colorado, and then the group went to dinner together at a local restaurant.

It was awesome to see a system in real-life after watching lots of You-Tube videos.  I was amazed by how green and healthy everything looked.  Alan also pointed out all of the plumbing and electrical secrets that he has accumulated.  

I also was able pick up some good advice from everyone at dinner.

Tanks and Grow-beds Arrive

The tanks and beds arrived by truck today.  I was unsure how big the truck would be, and how easy it would be to unload everything.  I ended up pulling my pickup out onto the road and backing up to the back of the truck.  The driver was able to lower his lift-gate to the level of my bed and load me up.

Everything fit perfectly in the back of my truck.

Here is what the grow-beds look like.  I am real happy with how heavy and substantial they are.  I think they will hold up real well.

Here are the fish tanks, 300 gallons each.  I thought about putting Sadie into one of the tanks.  I am going to have to get creative on getting these babies into the greenhouse.  The door is not big enough.

Running the Water Line

Today, Rick the well guy was out to help me run water from my well to the garden and greenhouse. As you can see, he had to run a trench through a lot of roots. The well is a long way from the greenhouse, but there is an unused water line with frost-proof hydrants that runs from an unused second well on my property to a spot close to the greenhouse. So I am having this line connected to my active well and running that to the garden. This will allow me to irrigate the outdoor garden and have fresh water supply in the greenhouse. We are fortunate to have an endless supply of water from the well or from the lake. Just need electricity to pump it.

The Aquaponic Source

Now that I have finished building the greenhouse, I am turning my attention to setting up the aquaponic systems.  When I was originally doing my research I found that if you were not lucky enough to live in Australia, then you were pretty much on your own for building your system.  In Australia, there are a few well know sources to buy and install a medium to large size home system.  In the US, there seemed to be very small systems that are designed to fit on your patio or very large commercial systems.  I was interested in something in between, and I couldn't find any supplier of systems, so I was on my own.  

The most difficult thing to source is tanks and growbeds.  Most of the research on-line had indicated that people in the US have to be creative and build their own beds.  I wanted something that was going to last a long time and that would look good.  After a lot of searching, I found an on-line plastic tank manufacturer and I designed my whole system around rectilinear polypropylene tanks that they custom build for you with pre-existing molds.  The problem was the cost.  The tanks were not cheap and the shipping from California almost doubled the cost.  I was just about to suck it up when I found The Aquaponic Source.

In my research I had discovered the site and blog that Sylvia and Alan Bernstein had created, but at the time I had not seen any tanks for sale.  I had been feeling a little uneasy about the direction that I had been heading in with the plastic tanks and so I had procrastinated in placing the order.  When I re-discovered The Aquaponic Source I found that they were now selling grow-beds.  I called the support number to ask a bunch of questions and met Alan and Sylvia.

Alan is the tank-growbed-system designer and Sylvia is the Aquaponic guru.  They each spent a significant amount of time answering my newbie questions and I made some tweaks to my system design based on the things that I learned.  I ordered my growbeds from them and Alan also was able to custom supply me with some 300 gallon fish tanks as well.

The tanks and growbeds have been built and are about to be shipped to me.  Now the fun begins...

Hot House

Wow, now that we have closed everything in, it gets mighty hot in the greenhouse when the sun is beating down.  This thermometer that came with my kit is designed to register the high and low temperatures.  On the right is a regular thermometer that marks the hight temp.  At the time I took this photo, it was about 92 degrees F, but the blue indicator line above the mercury shows the high temperature, which reached about 117 degrees F.  The gauge on the left is the reverse of normal, when the temperature rises, the mercury (if that is what it is) falls.  So the blue indicator marks the low temperature, which was about 72 degrees F.  The button on the center of the thermometer resets the blue indicator lines.  

Now, the reasons that it got so hot in here is that (1) the roof vents were closed, (2) the fan was not running since there is no electricity yet, and (3) I don't have any shade cloth over the greenhouse.  

Here are the automatic roof vent openers that we just installed today.  The way that it works is interesting.  There is a cylinder that is filled with a paraffin material which expands and contracts with the temperature (parallel and below the springs).  When the temperature rises, the material expands and drives a piston out the end, which has a screw end on it that prevents the piston from sticking out any further.  This causes the hinge to open up against the tension of the springs.  As the temperature falls, the springs compress the contracting material and it closes the hinge.

Here you can see the vents have opened up.  The temperature is a little over 90 degrees inside the greenhouse at the time I took this photo.  I had put the openers in the refrigerator before we installed them so that they would be closed all the way, in this photos, they were still in the process of warming up and opening.

Finishing the Roof

Burr caulking up the vents on the roof.  It is getting unbelievably hot up there.  Now I know why it is called a hot-house.  Notice Burr standing on the very top of the ladder, where it says "Do not sit or stand."

The only problem we ran into with this greenhouse model is the louvered windows.  Some how something is wrong with the design of what they sent to us.  There are holes to screw the window into the vertical supports, but they don't line up with the supports.  So the screw holes go into air.  Also, the window was resting on the glass below it.  So Burr came up with a great idea and he took the metal bars that were supposed to be diagonal braces and cut a support that screwed into the vertical supports below the window.  We don't really need the diagonal braces because of the extra rigidity of bolting the whole greenhouse to the existing building.

We finished all of the construction.  We have some caulking and a few finishing touches left.  The heat inside really builds up when the sun is shining.  It will be interesting to see how warm the house will be in the winter with out any additional HVAC.

Putting up the Glass

Burr and I spent all afternoon yesterday and all day today working on the greenhouse. We have put up most of the glass walls and have the roof to go. Probably a good day of work left to complete the building.
Let me tell you how hot it is already getting in the greenhouse without even the roof!  I am going to need to research some shading options for this time of year.  Also, I think I ought to call it the Fish Bowl, since that is what it feels like inside it!

Back to work

After a busy weekend last week and travel out of town during the week, there hasn't been a lot of progress on the greenhouse. But today we made some good progress.  We worked on putting up the roof ridge piece and supports.

Burr and Polly put the flashing in under the greenhouse frame.