Home Kit - Revisited

Decide to reassemble my Home kit, I was contemplating on whether to give it away or make use of it. Its best to keep it and use for some testing, if I gave it away to a person that is keen on Aquaponics is okay but if that person is not interested then its a waste of equipment.


Its outside my compound on the back alley that not much use in between the houses, as long as I don't block any path for emergency exit during fire then its not a problem. Since its not a permanent fixtures its also okay.
I use Astro 2000 pump rated at 1540 Litre/hour flow rate, water is more than required by this single growbed so I made a "Saddle Valve" on the water feed line to divert excess water. This way I don't need to use ball valve to do this simple job, rotate the Saddle Valve to varied its outlet.
That's the remaining water flowing into the growbed its almost half of what the pump can supply. BTW I am not using those Hydroton, this one that I have floats and remain floating, so not suitable to be use.
Closer look at the Saddle Valve at full flow, its very easy to make. I don't know whether anyone else have had use this type of water diversion. I just called it Saddle Valve since it look like a saddle piggy back on a pipe, first time I use it here on my single barrel kit.

That Astro pump is the series 2000 suitable to feed 2 growbed, its easy with this Astro pump, Astro 1000, 2000, 3000 and 4000 correspond to 1, 2, 3 and 4 growbed. Each growbed I recommend 800 liter/hour flow rate. Its best to use 1 pump for 2 growbed its the best value for money and the easiest to construct.
Water inlet not finalised, I yet to put in gravel then I will make a better water feed. I will just cycle this growbed for the next two weeks.
Siphon above the standard 25mm version no other improvement except the water outlet from siphon is using my "Whistler" outlet. This siphon will drain till about 0.5 inch of water left in growbed then it cut OFF.

If you are wondering how big a growbed this siphon can handle, I recommend up to 4' x 8'. If bigger you will need to provide better drainage within growbed to ensure no water logged.
Saddle valve in action. I drilled 2 holes on it, from experience 1 hole is not enough. You can have more holes and wider saddle if needed. Either rotate the saddle or slide it up/down will varies water outlet. It can't be simpler than that.
Flush in action with Whistler aerating the water. 
Close up of siphon outlet this arrangement will give maximum aeration possible with minimum noise, Saddle valve also aerate water in the fish tank.


This setup I will try without aerator pump, what I'll do is to run water pump from 8 am till 8 pm without stop and from 8 pm to 8 am I will run it at every alternate hour. So its 1 hour "ON" and 1 hour "OFF" during the night, hope this will give enough aeration during night time.


Its best to just switches it "OFF" but if that's the case I need an aerator pump to run during that period. The reason for pump "OFF" is as what I experience, I will need to clean the pump less if I switches it OFF at night since if any debris stuck at pump inlet will be dislodge during pump OFF as compare to stuck and remain stuck if pump is continuously running and eventually choke itself.


It also saves energy and reduce noise and some plant do better if they are given some period of "Dryness" while there is no sunshine.


Okay that all for today.

2 comments:

  1. Wonderful work you are doing here.
    I'm going to start a rather large scale system in my yard very soon I've been putting the math together and information to have a flawless system but you were saying to turn off the pump at night. Should that be an always thing where every night I shut down the water pump or should I just put a timer and run one hour on and off continuously? Very interested to here thoughts on this.

    Again great work here it is very much appreciated.

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