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I see a need for inexpensive water heating since everywhere in the States seems to be getting cold. Then I ran across this article. I don't know if it has been visted here before.

 

DIY Water Heater Using Compost

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Compost can heat water and this idea has been visited on other forums I've been on.  Problem with using compost to heat aquaponic water is that compost tends to only stay in the really super hot stage for a short period of time then it begins to cool at that point you need to add more high nitrogen material and re-mix and perhaps add moisture or whatever the re-pile it around your heating coils.  Those I know who have tried it found it to be quite a lot of work to keep it hot.

 

I Know how to get a really hot compost pile, however I doubt most people would really enjoy re-arranging the tubing in such a pile to keep it in a good warm position regularly.  We humanure compost and the secret ingredient in making for good hot compost seems to be liquid gold.  If a few people were to add their pee into a big pile of leaves or other carbon material, after about 3 weeks it can be really hot  But that hot spot will move up in the pile as the pile grows.  I've never tried turning humanure compost and we always build a continuous pile.  We build the pile for a year then we let the compost age for a year and then we use the compost. 

 

Anyway, do some searching on the internet, I've seen water heaters for something like a workshop shower done with compost.  It was only expected to provide the hot water for a limited period of time.  They built a big mound of compost and in the middle of the mound they placed a big coil of water pipe.  Apparently it did rather well providing hot to warm water for short showers and they needed to space the showers a bit apart in time so the water in the coils could heat back up for the next shower.

 

So, conclusions would draw are that a small compost pile won't do well heating but a very large compost operation might be able to provide some useful heat to a medium sized aquaponics system.  Just note that the compost pile would probably need to be something on the order of 8' wide, 4' high and at least 16 foot long.  (this is the scale of compost pile that growing power builds against the sides of greenhouses to provide some warmth as well as to keep a big population of worms going over winter in their climate.  I don't believe a pallet bin size compost pile would provide more than several days of really hot water then perhaps a couple/few weeks of tepid warmth. 

 

But I could be proven wrong if anyone wishes to test it out.

I don't see it as a constant heat source unless you have a lot of compost. But it may be an option for over wintering fish. Just enough to keep the water warm enough to support fish. It may be the difference between cold fish and fish popsicles.
i was just thinking the same thing after i mentioned waste CPU heat.

I read up on Jean Pain a few months ago and sounds really cool to use for a hot tub inline with a wood fired hot water heater.

does anyone water cool their grow lights???
Sweetwater has some water cooled lights, however, they currently don't work because the tubing got clogged.
how about passive solar water heating?

How passive?  I've done the coil of black water pipe out in the sun before and I've done a couple pool heating panels on the roof heating a separate tank of water and running my system water in a coil in the heated tank (didn't want to clog the pool panels with bio-slime.)

Unfortunately the sun is not as available when it is needed most and the heated tank I was using wasn't big enough to heat my system water enough to keep the tilapia alive in my greenhouse system.

 

how low of a temp will they survive?

It varies a bit with different species.  I would attempt to keep the water temp above 55 F though with any of them.  Mine survived down to 53 F no problem.  I've been told that Blue tilapia might survive lower than 53 F but that their immune systems will likely be weakened.  Mine died before the water got down to 45 F.

 

I would not really recommend tilapia unless most of the year keeps your water temp up over 70 F though since tilapia don't eat or grow much at all when the water is below that.


caseyhalone said:

how low of a temp will they survive?
I harvested mine after the water had hit 47. They were still swimming fine, and would even eat a little.

caseyhalone said:
how low of a temp will they survive?

Hi,

 

I spent a few months with this....   It does work, the key that we are missing here in the states is the chipper like Jean pain had, but that being said, It does heat, but in my experience takes lots of work.    I heated a 55 gallon barrel outside filled with water last year with this method you can check out my youtube channel for that info.  

 

Here is a good link from what I have been told on this method.

 

http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/compostheatedgh.html

 

 

In my months of working on this method I found several kool sites about hot compost  ->

 

http://www.pandscorp.org/Hot-Compost.html

 

http://www.green-trust.org/wordpress/2009/10/11/hot-water-and-metha...
 

http://mariposagardens.org/Handouts/Composting/Compost_Festival_Dis...
 

http://www.permacultureactivist.net/PeterBane/Jean_Pain.html

 
http://energymd.wordpress.com/2008/12/05/heat-free-nearly-with-a-co...

 

 

 

Lots of good info.

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