Aquaponics Photos 11/14/13

Laying 2" PVC in the ditch at a depth of 18"

Filled buckets waiting to be watered before loading them into the beds.

West Bed

White Sage

Control Board with Thermostats attached and wired

Wiring Intermatic GM40 Timer

Strawberries

 Sunflower microgreens. 

 Varied the seed spacing on three different trays, thin, medium and heavy.

Night shot

 Top bed filled with 180ish pots

Draining the East tanks to clean a strange mess in the beds and tank.

The bottom of the beds and tanks have strange casings in them that resemble fish poop. There is a layer 1/4" thick on the bottom of the tanks.  I think this is from 2lbs of duckweed that died and sunk, and was eaten by some critters that have now died due to a lack of food and population explosion.

Running wire

1. When installing electric conduit all the pipes are cut and glued before the wire is run through the conduit.  

2. After the conduit installation is finished, a string is blown through the piping leaving exposed tails at both ends.

3. The desired wire is then attached to the string and pulled through the conduit with the string.

4. Pull the string all the way through until the wire attached to it is pulled out the other end.

5. Thats it, untie the string from the wire and your done.

PVC conduit to be wired

Air Compressor for blowing string through piping

I tie a small piece of foam to the end to my string to create a tighter seal in the pipe.  With a tighter seal more air pushes the string down the tube instead of air just being blown through the tube.

With the string in the pipe blow it through with an air compressor

String with foam blown through and hanging out the other end

I pulled a single 14g wire through with the string.  This way when pulling a heavy wire or multiple wires through the lightweight string wont snap and you can pull as hard as you need on the 14g wire.

Pulling a bunch of six 14g wires through

Pulling on the opposite end

Out comes the bunch of wires

Making connections with twist wire nuts

Lady Bug, Excavator, Foundation

 There were some aphids munching on the watercress so we released some lady bugs to what would happen.

 More leafs added to the pile. 

 Soon will add wood chips, coffee grounds and water to begin the composting process.

Buckets on the top level, keep on mixing that soil.

 Mini Excavator.  How Cute.

Leveled an area for the geodome foundation with the excavator.

Control Board Finishing

Laying out and gluing parts

Painting the back board

Holes drilled in 8"x 8"x 8"Junction box

All fittings and pipes glued

Mounted the board to the greenhouse frame with self drilling sheet metal screws.

Plumbing the board, pulling wires through the conduit

Intermatic / Grasslin GM40 timer wired 

New Electric Pole 11/7/13

LPEA came out today to install a new electric service to the greenhouse

Looking around on the farm
(Black trash bags are leafs for compost heating)

The old pole was replaced due to old age

New power pole

One electric service for the house

One electric service for the Greenhouse

55 Gallon barrels for making heat storage tanks

Back boards and future compost pile for heating.  The boards will go against the sides of the greenhouse so we can pile it up and protect the plastic from the compost.

Compost piles for mixing soil

Installed better outlet covers.  These models keep out water better than standard outdoor outlet covers.