Another winter update....

Made a quick video of our greenhouse in the winter...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_3o9EbtvX8

Enjoy!

Winter Update

It's been awhile since I've posted any updates about the greenhouse. We're now in the blistering cold of winter. This is the first year I've heated the greenhouse.....it may be a costly mistake. Here's a little scientific data to ponder:

From Misc

1) 2:30pm: Sun starts to set (yellow) and the greenhouse has no solar gain and the temperature starts to drop (Orange & green lines)

2) 3:45pm: Temperature goes below 40F (4.5C). Heater is able to turn on/off as it maintains the temp at 40F. Ceiling temp (light green) jumps a bit as the heat rises....

3) 9:15pm: Outside temperature (Red) goes below 20F (-6/7C) and the heater no longer can keep up with the demamd. Temperature slowly declines to around 38F (3.3C). The outside temp is 13.3F (-10.4C)

4) 9:15am: Heater turns off once the sun comes out the next morning. Total run time is roughly 17 hours.

There are 2 electric heaters totaling 2400 watts. After all the fees and taxes, we pay $0.20 per kilowatt:
2400watts & 17 hours = 40.8 kilowatts
40.8kW * 20 cents = $8.16 to keep it heated for the night!

Since we are getting so little sun and it's cold, the lettuce is growing very slowly. There's one tomato plant that I started in the fall still doing OK but needs a lot more light. I had a few cukes growing, but the consistent cold has killed them. I am not generating $8 worth of veggies/day. Perhaps it's time to invest in a propane heater to lessen the heating costs....or just shut it down for the winter..... Jan & Feb will be even colder!

Greenhouse update

Just a couple of update pictures of the greenhouse aquaponics....

Found this giant walking stick on the pepper plants last night:



This is one cucumber plant! I don't have an official count, but I've picked at least 20 cukes from it. My dirt garden produces no more than a half dozen per plant. On this plant, the spots where I've already picked, it's now sending out TWO new cukes. It's awesome!



This is one cherry tomato plant. We've been keeping an official tally sheet on it. So far, we've picked 185 and there are 100's more on there. Sorry about the "burnt" look of the leaves. After I killed all my fish with the seaweed meal, I think they got a bit nutrient deprived, but all the new growth looks good. My garden cherries are doing terribly since most of them have the "potato famine" blight....

Time-Lapse plants

Here's a time-lapsed video of my greenhouse aquaponics transformation. Sorry about the changes in the camera angles and the lighting variations - it's a really crappy webcam. The last frame does have less plants in it since I just ripped out all the beans and started a new batch. I think I may get three growing "seasons" of beans this year.

greenhouse tour

threw together a little video of my greenhouse setup. For a HQ video, click on the link to go directly to youtube

Strawberry Towers

Here's a couple of pictures of phase 2 of my greenhouse aquaponics system. I'll give credit to Synaptoman for his strawberry tower design....and I've made a few tweaks to the design.

Here's the entire system. I don't have a open pit for the drain, so there are caps on the bottom of each tower with a 3/4" tapped fitting thats drain to the discharge pipe. I was afraid to have each tower hang since this greenhouse isn't really designed to hang that much weight in it. So I took a piece of 3" PVC pipe and made little stands to carry the weight, then strapped each tower to the cross brace to keep them balanced. Each tower has it's own ball valve to regulate the supply water flow.



Last week I chiseled out a few strawberry plants out of the frozen ground and planted them. They're already sending out new growth...early berries this year!!! This setup will hold a total of 48 plants which takes up about 5 square feet.



I had some problems with the water escaping at some of the 'pockets'. The surface tension was just enough where the water would flip off the curve. I took some scrap pipe and cemented a lip to each opening. If this drained into an open pit, it wouldn't have mattered, but I wanted to keep my floor somewhat dry.



This is how the drain from each tower is connected to the discharge pipe. I just cut a bunch of holes in each stand and ran a 1" pipe through it. Also, you can see part of an oval piece on the floor. This goes into the bottom 'pocket' to help prevent the stone from getting stuck in the drain fitting.



After a few weeks, there are now new leaves and they are starting to blossom!



I'm really hoping this setup will work. Strawberries are a lot of work in a regular garden. Plus, just when the berries are ripe, the chipmunks steal them. I'll keep you posted on the progress....

I'll admit it...I love automation. So it takes a day to build something where it normally would take 10 seconds to manually feed the fish....it's well worth it! My latest creation is a fish feeder.

I took a small gear motor and slightly modified an old auger bit that was laying around. Then welded a couple of pieces of black pipe together and stuck a cam and switch on the end. A 7-up or mountain dew bottle makes a great feed holder. I probably could have made it independent and put it on it's own timer, but I have it running off of my computerized controller that runs the rest of the system. The only think I paid for was the gear motor, which was around $12....plus I lost my $0.05 deposit for ripping the label off the bottle. It works great! NOTHING gets stuck in there and it could easily take off a finger if you stuck in in the feed tube. After all, the bit is made of hardened steel and is designed to drill through wood!






Here it is all up and running. Right now my goldies are small and are still on flakes...and there's some pellets mixed in there.