Passive solar greenhouse / aquaponics system planning/build

thsdragoon

For "amateur" work, I'd say that looks good.

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rininger85

thanks, the biggest issue is just that I had already poured some concrete around the edge of my blocks, I did not get enough bags to fill it back up above the height of that existing line so you can see the line along the edge of the blocks. Plus I had dug out 27" from the blocks then bought a woven mesh to put in the concrete instead of rebar that was 24" wide. Well I didn't think about that existing concrete, so even though I was 27" out the 24" mesh didn't fit, but I just bent it down and forced it to fit the best it would. There are a couple spots it is sticking up out of the concrete that looks bad, and the picture looks really bad on the near side where it looks rough, doesn't look quite so bad in reality, but it is a bit rough. I might just pick up a bag or two of portland cement to put on top of it that doesn't have gravel mixed in to it to be able to smooth it out better if the barrels don't appear to sit flat when I start putting them in.

rininger85

I spent several hours digging dirt over the last couple of days. I didn't get it dug out as deep or as wide as I originally planned, but it's about 3ft wide and 2-3ft deep the width of the greenhouse (16ft)... I am going to run with it and see how it works because I am tired of digging and I have to be able to afford to buy enough pea stone to fill this hole back in!

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rininger85

My progress remains rather slow on getting my greenhouse up and going... I will probably get the plumbing ran tonight or thursday so I can start filling the hole back in, but I'm down to 8 weeks before my kid is due to arrive and my weekends between now and then are pretty full so not sure how realistic it is to think I'll get it built this year... I do plan to have a couple of weeks off when the baby is born so might be able to spend some time on it then when mom and baby are sleeping, otherwise maybe if hunting season goes like it did last year I might be able to get some help from my dad in November but by then we'll probably have a foot of snow this year knowing my luck. Still hoping to have it enclosed before snow though even if it's not insulated yet...

thsdragoon

Sounds like you've got quite a fun time ahead of you. If I were near you I'd offer to help, but since I probably most likely don't live anywhere near you...

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Food&Fish

rininger85 wrote:

I spent several hours digging dirt over the last couple of days. I didn't get it dug out as deep or as wide as I originally planned, but it's about 3ft wide and 2-3ft deep the width of the greenhouse (16ft)... I am going to run with it and see how it works because I am tired of digging and I have to be able to afford to buy enough pea stone to fill this hole back in!

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I will be using that idea for my garden beds in my hot house
At night time how are you going to stop the stored hot air from traveling up the pipe to the roof area

Food&Fish

rininger85

thsdragoon wrote:

Sounds like you've got quite a fun time ahead of you. If I were near you I'd offer to help, but since I probably most likely don't live anywhere near you...

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I'll get to it eventually... my dad is always here for a week mid November, so I can get him to help me on it some if I don't have it enclosed by then... life happens, I'll get it built eventually.

rininger85

Food&Fish wrote:

rininger85 wrote:

I spent several hours digging dirt over the last couple of days. I didn't get it dug out as deep or as wide as I originally planned, but it's about 3ft wide and 2-3ft deep the width of the greenhouse (16ft)... I am going to run with it and see how it works because I am tired of digging and I have to be able to afford to buy enough pea stone to fill this hole back in!

Attachment:

4.png

I will be using that idea for my garden beds in my hot house
At night time how are you going to stop the stored hot air from traveling up the pipe to the roof area

not something I had considered... but the goal is really to heat the gravel above the plumbing, so there might be some loss from heat going back through the plumbing, but if it is heating the gravel heat should continue to rise, so should be minor loss from the heat going back in to the plumbing and going up to the peak I would think.

In some of the examples that I had seen people insulated their ground to have less loss to the ground so the heat was contained and went up through the gravel. They use different types of materials (rocks, dirt, muddy mix of dirt/water)... I am not getting as fancy as some of the ones I saw who actually built an underground box to contain the heat in... I believe that my water barrels along the north wall should be enough to heat my greenhouse, so really the underground plumbing is just additional attempt since it is easier to do now before I have walls built... hopefully it's not actually needed... same thing with my third heating plan hopefully it's not needed.

rininger85

had to look up the numbers for the water barrels again...

Quote:

The rule of thumb is 2.5 gallons/ft2 of glazing for season extension or 5 gallons/ft2 for all season

So I am planning to have 21 barrels * 55 gallons = 1155 gallons / 249 sq ft (very roughly, this does not account for the space between my windows, I just quickly measured my drawing for an estimate of the overall length from one side to the other side so there will actually be significantly less glazing due to the area between windows that I'm not taking out of this estimate) = 1245 gallons that I would want for year round operation based on that rule of thumb... with my 1155 gallons that should be enough for 231 sq ft of glazing, but having no real world experience with this and no way to test it without waiting until my greenhouse is built I am building in backup plans from the beginning because it is a lot easier to dig the dirt out now before I build the walls and have to take dirt out in 5 gallon buckets instead of just tossing it in the back of the truck...

I had someone else mention running the plumbing for the grow beds and fish tanks underground too, that would help with the water temps as well if I got the plumbing below the frost line so they stayed 40+ degrees year round, and would help to cool them in the summer too, and then the water temps should help bring the ground temps up too... but I'm digging all of this by hand by myself... I'm tired of digging already, I want to start building walls, so I think I'm done digging, now it is time to buy gravel to fill the hole back in and move on...

rininger85

I got my PVC glued together in my trench last week but not much more than that... I have the ends bagged right now so rain (if we ever get any) doesn't get in them, I am ready for gravel but I need to fix the lights on my trailer to be able to haul the trailer to town and get a load of gravel. Was busy all weekend with diving saturday and a baby shower/diaper party sunday so didn't get anything done at home. We've been working inside the house at night this week trying to finish getting the baby room ready.

If I get the trailer lights fixed some night this week then I might just haul the trailer to work one day so I can get the gravel on my way home instead of having to make an extra trip. This coming weekend I won't be home to get any work done, the following weekend I think I am free so will hopefully work on the greenhouse, then my weekends are pretty much shot for a while and the kid is about 7 weeks or less away now so running out of time.

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rininger85

July has been a very busy month, I still have not managed to make any further progress on the greenhouse, and I'm down to 5 weeks before my kid is due. I do have a few free weekends between now and then, but not until the end of July/beginning of August. So this is going to become a fall project from the looks of it and hope for the best.

rininger85

I managed to get half a yard of gravel in the trench on Friday. As it turns out my trailer is only rated for 1800lbs so I can't do more than about half a yard at a time, and my Avalanche I don't want to put gravel in the back of it, and my Silverado I have taken the insurance and plates off of with plans to sell it, but even the Silverado is only a half ton so would only get about half a yard in it too... so it might take me a few trips to get enough gravel for the entire greenhouse floor, but I found unloading the first half yard it was easiest to use a bucket to scoop the gravel up and carry it to the trench to dump rather than shoveling it, so I've decided I'm going to pick up another half yard on my way home tonight which will hopefully mostly fill the trench in, then the rest of the floor of the greenhouse I'm not going to worry about right now, it won't be that much more difficult to carry buckets of gravel through the door than it is to carry it how I did this first load... so I'm going to go pick up most of the lumber all at once and get this show on the road... if my kid doesn't show up and slow things down... we only have 2 weeks left until my wife's due date so kid could be here any day now (but I think I'll actually be able to work on the greenhouse quite a bit once the kid shows up because I'm taking 2 weeks off, so when mom and baby are sleeping I can go make noise to wake them up (hopefully the house is insulated well enough to allow me to run the air compressor without being too noisy to keep them awake...)

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rininger85

one other note on the underground plumbing - I was reading on subterranean heating and cooling systems a bit more and found where they said one of the big failure reasons for them is that they fill up with water due to the hot air going in to cold pipes underground and condensing so water build up happens, so I decided to drill 1/8" holes about every 12" all along the underground pipes plus I drilled a hole in the low point of each fitting to hopefully allow moisture to drain out. They say you should wrap the pipes with something that doesn't allow bugs to get up in to the holes you drilled, but I did not do that so hopefully it will be OK, I figure it will probably be a few years before it got filled up with enough dead bugs to really impact it with a 3" PVC pipe, so it's a risk I'm willing to take (eventually I may end up digging this system up to make it larger anyways, for now it's just 3 sections of 10ft pipe, if it works fairly well I may eventually dig up the rest of the floor in the greenhouse and run pipes through the entire floor instead of just that 3ft section.)

Food&Fish

With the air and water pipes in my wicking bed I find I get more benefit from the hot water pipes
This bed is holding around 24 deg it drops about 1 deg a day so every third day I run the water heater
At the moment the temps 5 deg outside and wont get to much more than 12

Backyard Aquaponics
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