Gordon's Crater

Gunagulla

Seems about the right time to start a thread about my system, so here goes

Right now I've had my 8000lph pump running for a few days and have added a few doses of pee (aged 0 to 10 days) over the past 3 days and have my first signs Ammonia this morning at about 0.25ppm. The FT is 4500l, mostly buried in the ground, with about 3700l of water in the system (FT + 2X 500l GBs) ATM. I should get another 2 GBs installed in the next week, and will add more later as the fish grow.

Water temp has been fairly stable at about 15.5-16C, although it will probably warm up a bit over the next few days with slow water flow through 1 partially filled GB in the sun (I have to go into town and get a couple more trailer loads of gravel), which should get the bacteria multiplying a bit faster while I'm having plenty of 25-27C sunny days.

I'm also planning to add a bit of shell grit to raise the pH from the current 7.0 for the bacteria's benefit. I've added about 10litres of water from a bath tub with a few goldfish to help speed things along too. I also added 100ml of Seasol a couple of days ago, and might add some compost worms and worm juice, as I have planted out one grow bed today with silverbeet, cauli and a few peas. I might sprout some spelt grain in between the plants before they get too large.

The water is still murky from the remains of the dust etc not completely washed off the 15mm river gravel and Canna clay balls mix ( 135l of clay balls, remainder river gravel, per bed), hopefully it will eventually clear. Right now I can only see about 30cm down into the FT, with total dissolved solids up to 75ppm.

The post hole digging attachment on the Toro we hired would not dig a hole, - (I had planned to dig a few of them in the area of the tank and dig out the remains manually) as the clay was just too hard, so we used the trencher to dig down as best we could, then it was a matter of shovelling out the loose stuff before attacking it with a pick- the mattock mostly bounced off, and was useless.

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File comment: Soon after I started digging

2013-04-07Crater.jpg [ 162.14 KiB | Viewed 64561 times ]

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File comment: 3 days later

2013-04-10Crater.jpg [ 192.18 KiB | Viewed 64561 times ]

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File comment: not too much more pick work to go...

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More details and pics to follow.

theha222

I`m guessing that is for the fish?

RupertofOZ

theha222 wrote:

I`m guessing that is for the fish?

How many did he kill.... :lol:

theha222

well i know he killed too many to count

Gunagulla

This'll stop the fish escaping from the crater! :lol:

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2013-04-21Tank.jpg [ 103.28 KiB | Viewed 64537 times ]

Heating/cooling pipe to modulate water temperature / extend growing season- hot water from evacuated tubes- which will be necessary to extend barra growing season here, or cold water cooled with a small 24V refrigeration unit I have to keep the temps down in summer or extend the trout growing season.

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2013-04-22Tank-coils.jpg [ 122.62 KiB | Viewed 64537 times ]

RupertofOZ

How are you going to modulate the temperature from the evac tubes... through the PVC pipes....

I ask... because my evac tube experiment.... got so hot... when the controller failed.... that the tubes nearly melted...

Gunagulla

There are no PVC pipes in my system! The white pipe in the pic is Pex-Al-Pex, which is designed for hot water.
I'll also be using a wax with phase-change around 60C to store a lot of heat, without the need to go too hot with the water, even though that pipe will handle 100C.

RupertofOZ

Gunagulla wrote:

I'll also be using a wax with phase-change around 60C to store a lot of heat.

Interesting... an experiment that I never got around to doing...

gbisus13

That's brilliant, using the wax with Solar thermal collectors. I've studied using phase change materials to offset time of energy use in industrial apps but hadn't thought of this (or for that matter consumer level heat storage at all). Do you have any pics of the setup? How are you figuring how big to make it? Do you use it for other heating about the property?

Are you considering a similar cold-storage method to run the AC at night (or are you on solar and would lose too much efficiency storing the electricity for later?)

Also how are you controlling the pumping of the heat? Temperature switches in the tank and storage devices or...

Gunagulla

No pics yet as I am still setting it up, but the plan is to use wax enclosed in copper pipe, submerged in the water storage tank. When operating near, ie a few degC above to a few below the phase change region (~56-60C), the wax can store about 10X the energy of the same volume of water. Water from a 24 evacuated tube collector will thermosyphon to the storage tank, and be pumped when required to the coils around the FT, and I'll probably use the controller I was going to use in the house hydronics heating, but I'm happy enough to do that manually, and have done so for a few years. I'm using 78 evac tubes for house hydronics heating ATM. and plan to use some wax in that system too, when I get around to it

I'm stealing one 24tube collector from the house heating to use in the AP system, as I will be adding a wetback in a wood combustion stove to the house hydronics heating system soon, and can add heat from that to my domestic hot water (30 evac tube, 250 litre) via a heat exchanger when required. I have no gas or electric boost on that, and, with careful planning, have plenty of hot water all year round.

I run everything with off-grid 4kW solar (+ a tiny amount of wind) power with 21kWh of storage in an LiFePO4 battery, and only plan to use the cooling during the day if water temps are heading a bit too high, and not planning to use any "cool storage" as such, as the earth around the tank will act as a large heat/cool buffer/storage system.

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File comment: house hydronics + solar hot water systems

solar-hydronics-HW array-GJGsmall.jpg [ 115.08 KiB | Viewed 64480 times ]

theha222

Just wondering whats the point of having a crater if your just gonna place a big tank in there you can just leave the tank on normal ground

Gunagulla

It's all about the flow ... GB to FT, gravity does the work

ATM I have it running CF most of the time, apart from a few F&Ds - 3 X 1hr Ds overight and one 30 min one in the middle of the day.

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File comment: water return from GBs on right, excess flow used for aeration on left side.

2013-04-29Murky-water.jpg [ 106.15 KiB | Viewed 64277 times ]

theha222

How many fish are you planning on?

dot tell me its more than 1000

Gunagulla

ok I won't tell you that!

80 trout are going in at the end of May

Gunagulla

First bed planted out a couple of days ago, everything is still alive

I still have to get a few more poly fittings to finish the plumbing arrangement into the GBs.

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File comment: Rainbow Chard, peas & cauliflower

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Gordon's Crater

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Gordon's Crater

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Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics