Greehouse Bizz

mmmmmm, my 10 year old son just cooked me some "spring tonic" tastes great.

Looks like it'll work well as long as the water level doesn't get too low. I've been using plants and fish pond water to support each other for a long time, so I though "yes" was a great answer! I've thought about plumbing it into the water tables, but I'm worried that it would lead to needing to clean off the water tables more often. I use a second closed tank to feed topoff to the system, since all of that surface area leads to faster evaporation (which is a good thing for the greenhouse here in the desert, but maybe not so good in more humid parts of the world).

What are you using for your black tilapia tank? I haven't seen one like that before.

how hot is it getting inside ?

sounds great "tropicalaria" got any pics. the black tank is a honey tanks that the local cookie company gets their honey in its 250 gallons i buy them for $10 a piece. they are white when i get them. and "angiegr if you were talking about how hot it gets in the tank i havent checked it yet. but when i am done i will keep it at about 70 degrees.

no i meant how hot does it get in the gh

Wow, I wish I could get 250 gallon containers for $10. Around here they want $10-20 just for the 55G food barrels, which is more than I can buy them for new at Ranch & Home. Used agricultural tanks start at $100 and go up...

I'll see what I can scrounge up. They're not next to each other, so the setup won't fit in a single photo, but I probably have the design diagram somewhere.

that would be cool if you you can find it. i get the 55 gallon food barrels for $4 but i can only get 4 or 5 a month."angiegr" if your talking about my GH i haven't got a therm. in there yet. but i would say about 85 degrees.

started a new thing for me called air-layering. did 8 apple trees today.

and 2 of these don't know what they are called. does anyone know. they do make a good wind and noise brake.

Oh, I like that plant, pretty leaves.

it block the hwy noise from my house. it its about 9 foot tall

How incredible. I'm so drooling over your seedling and green houses.... and the fish tank... I wish I still lived in the south as I always wanted to raise shrimp....

I just read on another thread about the air propagation and I'm going to have to try this. Hope you don't mind me stealing your idea of using the pots. You are as handy as a pocket in a shirt.....

Janet
formerly owned by Blessing & Acacia

now problem "meadowyck" but remember to take pics and come back and share.

It doesn't look nearly so elegant in practice, but here is the diagram. The elevated tank is the water reservoir, the top pipe is the airline, and the bottom is the water topoff, which is completely submerged in the tank. When the level of the tank falls below the airline opening, then it allows air to get into the sealed topoff tank, releasing water through the bottom pipe. Both of these should be small pipes to prevent a rush of water--1/2" to 3/4". I use an angle-cut pipe fastened to the side of the tank for my airline so that the topoff starts and stops gradually. By closing the ball valves on the airline and topoff you can refill the system from the top, but make sure you close the refill valve before opening the bottom valve again, or the whole topoff tank will dump into the main tank.

The other two types of topoff I've used in the past were solenoid/pump, and siphon. The former system works great until the solenoid sticks, and then everything is flooded and the pump burns out. The latter always seems to collect minute bubbles in the siphon section which aggregate over time and eventually breaks the siphon. I actually had a pump attached to the siphon for a time to periodically flush the bubbles out.

I love seeing all these ideas. I've been trying to plan a solar water heater outside my GH that will move the heated water in to my water barrels inside the GH, and move the cooled water back out to the solar heater (for next winter.) As of right now, I don't have electric. I do have a submersible pump. The small solar pumps don't look like they are worth spit. I think I would need some kind of backflow prevention for night time.

Will you explain how siphon works?

thanks "tropicalaria" good explanation i'll have to see if i might be able to incorporate that in to my design. right now i was going to just put a pipe hooked to it with a toilet float attached to a value so the when the water drops to low it would refill the tank.

hay "cathey4" i'm designing one that i,m hopping will work on the principle the heat rises and cold falls to run the thing without electricity at all i'll let you know if it works. i already have a heat grabber"heater" that works that away and it does work. "whitebear"

I'll send home baked cookies if you can figure out how to do it without electric, I just don't have the money to run a line out to the GH this year, but would love to be able to use it when it is cold. We go below freezing for weeks at a time.

Put me on the list for heating and circulating water without electricity... I tried a hot compost pile this winter, but the temp didn't stay up. Next fall I'm going to try green wood chips, but the circulating is a question in my mind.

i hope it works. the theory is sound but you know how that goes. hope to have a working model by 2 weeks. also looking to make steam from solar reflective panels concentrated on a pipe or tank which could be used to heat a greenhouse or even run a steam engine. to many ideas and only one life time to try them all in. not to mention lack of moo la.lol

We got down to 32 last night for a few hours, the greenhouse held 45 with just the water jugs & concrete floor, but I know it won't work that way if the water isn't getting seriously warmed during the day in the winter.

well its about that time again this thread is getting a little to log to so i'll start a new one i'll call it " GH bizz #2" see ya there."whitebear"

New Thread:

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/965799/