A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

Building a system in our empty pool, some advice on system much appreciated!

Hello everyone! I'm so glad I found this community, a lot of knowledgeable people here with great attitudes. I hope this is the right forum to post in.

So, my first project is a little bit ambitious. My mom found the Garden Pool site about a year ago and we finally convinced dad to let us try building a greenhouse in our pool that has been empty for 15 years.

Here's a picture of the frame we have so far, nearly finished:
Those gussets on the side are built around the lip of the pool to hold it in place during severe wind. We live in Palm Springs near the mountain so along with the high heat we get crazy winds too. And then there's the platform in the bottom so we can walk over the fish pond and have access to some trellises in the corners and hanging mushroom chandeliers.

So my main question is on what we should do for some of our grow beds. In the shallow end on the floor we're going to have a bunch of rubbermaid containers (no plastic 3 or 7!) on blocks with flood and drain siphons.

To make use of the vertical space, we were originally planning on having rain gutters run along the rafters all the way down into the deep end. Out here, the biggest we can get is about 5" ones. I'm just worried that we won't be able to grow much besides lettuce in these, and we would have way too much, haha. Then I saw some of those PVC channels that are anywhere from 6-10" and that would give us some leeway... but then I would have to do an NFT system in those right? We were originally thinking about just capping the PVC/gutters and then having a hole in the endcap so the water would overflow at a certain point... but if the pump was on a timer wouldn't water just sitting there be bad? Or should we run continuous flow and just make sure to use bigger siphons in the rubbermaids?

There are just so many variables, I've researched a ton but I am getting a bit lost. If you have any other ideas for what we could do I would love to hear them. Any advice is appreciated!

Thank you so much fellow aquapons,
hayden

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Permalink Reply by Murray Hallam on November 22, 2017 at 10:35pm

Best of luck, for your project. Just maintain the proper pH level of your water because it is a very important factor for the proper working of your system.