How to prevent evaporation

[Jeremiah Robinson]

I've been growing using aquaponics in the cold for a little over a year now, and it seems to me that one of the biggest energy suckers is evaporation from my grow beds.  I know that when water evaporates it absorbs a lot of energy, and especially in flood-drain beds the filling-expelling action can cause a lot of evaporation.

I wonder if anyone has ideas for how to best prevent water from evaporating from your grow beds?

Are DWC beds better for this issue?

[Jim Fisk]

Thanks jack. To be honest I canned the EE career I started on at Columbia U and chose an outdoor, hard work, healthy lifestyle and have changed my career so many times I never got bored and I am enjoying being semi retired so much that I am forced to believe that has a lot to do with it. Also not trusting the FDA, AMA, big pharma, etc and figuring out what works for me, like curing my own nearly crippling arthritis I suffered with for 30 yrs using non chemical reliance natural techniques has made all the difference.

AP has fit right in to that creed and is why I related to it instantly. I broke ground for our AP system in less than a month after first hearing the term Aquaponics and that was in Dec 2012, not the best time of year. My Dad brought us up on the importance of natural foods like kelp and yogurt when 98 out of 100 people had never heard of either (1950's). We even made our own acidophilus long before it was available in stores and he learned how to make it from the inventor. So I had a kick start in the right direction. Life is a crap shoot. I am blessed. Lots of great life altering info out there now with the internet. Not so easy to find back before cyberspace.

@Jeremiah, absolutely. I have a blog out there somewhere on my battle with arthritis and what ultimately worked for me using only natural substances like digestive enzymes and Knox gelatin. Sounds simple now but it took 30 yrs of trial and error and thinking outside the prevailing box. Basically natural anti inflammatories. (such a new topic the spell checker can't handle the word yet. A sure sign you are on the cutting edge of something:-) I used to have all sorts of blogs and websites on everything from my panorama photography to tool reviews but I found I did not have the time to keep up with them and at hosting renewal time I just finally said enough $ spent. That could change. The free blogs are still out there.

Got to go herd goats now. Talk about cute critters

[Jeff S]

Not to stray from the AP subject but my brother thinks like you Jim. He's been beating prostate cancer for a couple of years using holistic methods. His PSA soared to unheard of numbers and went right back down and his tumor disappeared. If he listened to everything the medical community told him he wouldn't have a prostate now. He was known as dead man walking.

Jim Fisk said:

Thanks jack. To be honest I canned the EE I started on at Columbia U and chose an outdoor, hard work, healthy lifestyle and have changed my career so many times I never got bored and I am enjoying being semi retired so much that I am forced to believe that has a lot to do with it. Also not trusting the FDA, AMA, big pharma, etc and figuring out what works for me, like curing my own nearly crippling I suffered with for 30 yrs using non chemical reliance natural techniques has made all the difference.

AP has fit right in to that creed and is why I related to it instantly. I broke ground for our AP system in less than a month after first hearing the term Aquaponics and that was in Dec 2012, not the best time of year. My Dad brought us up on the importance of natural foods like kelp and yogurt when 98 out of 100 people had never heard of either (1950's). We even made our own long before it was available in stores and he learned how to make it from the inventor. So I had a kick start in the right direction. Life is a crap shoot. I am blessed. Lots of great life altering info out there now with the internet. Not so easy to find back before cyberspace.

@Jeremiah, absolutely. I have a blog out there somewhere on my battle with arthritis and what ultimately worked for me using only natural substances like digestive enzymes and Knox gelatin. Sounds simple now but it took 30 yrs of trial and error and thinking outside the prevailing box. Basically natural anti inflammatories. (such a new topic the can't handle the word yet. A sure sign you are on the cutting edge of something:-) I used to have all sorts of blogs and websites on everything from my panorama to tool reviews but I found I did not have the time to keep up with them and at hosting renewal time I just finally said enough $ spent. That could change. The free blogs are still out there.

Got to go herd goats now. Talk about cute critters

[Jeff S]

Jim have you been able to measure the benefit of the 55 gallon water barrels for heat? I have a 2x3x4 ft. steel tank that I'm considering using if it's worth the space. It can also be used as a bench/shelf/grow bed stand.

[Jim Fisk]

Water has an amazing ability to obsorb and give off heat so the more mass the better. I still use flat black although Mother Earth News tested and found that Elm Leaf green over all will soak up more heat because reradiated heat was less so the overall end result was greater for some applications where the heat was being delivered elsewhere. BUT we want it to reradiate at night so flat black should be best. I grabbed 4 black pvc drums when they showed up at a local recycler and during the Winter they would drop as much as 20F on a cold night and regain it if the Sun was out the next day. Pretty easy to measure the results. Mine will eventually be in my way so I will have to find space under a bench or the like as well but they should be in direct Sun light for as long as possible in the Winter to be effective.

Yes it is amazing how many folks save themselves WITHOUT all the horrible side effects that are sometimes worse than the disease. You cannot believe all the flack I have taken from medical "professionals" over the years. It is gratifying however to know there are MDs that think outside the box these days like Dr. Whitaker and Dr. Wallach. It was in fact Doc Wallach that turned me onto Knox but I had to figure out the correlation with enzymes elsewhere at the time. Now a days they are attributing pretty much everything from cancer to God knows what to inflammation. So anything that is known to reduce inflammation does wonders. My latest kick is Turmeric and Ginger (and garlic). Wow, so far I am blown away by it. Our daughter turned us onto that and she cooks with them a lot and I noticed the difference without even knowing anything about them in this regard so even that was a form of blind study. I do a lot of heavy lifting so any results pos or neg are quickly apparent. I do my own tests and have for 40+ years. I at least trust my test results taken over many months and often based upon thousands of years of anecdotal evidence as well. Far faster than waiting for the FDA, now about 15 yrs and a billion dollars to bring test results and approval on bringing new drugs to market. NOW we are in threadjacker territory

Jeff S said:

Jim have you been able to measure the benefit of the 55 gallon water barrels for heat? I have a 2x3x4 ft. steel tank that I'm considering using if it's worth the space. It can also be used as a bench/shelf/grow bed stand.

[Jeremiah Robinson]

Cold weather aquaponics and alternative medicine.  A natural fit if I ever saw one :)

With regard to barrels, the real benefit to them is that they really, really don't want to go below freezing because of enthalpy.  For a barrel to go from 32 to 31 degF (and freeze), it has to release 67,000 Btus.  That's equivalent to a medium-sized furnace output, from just one barrel.  

That wouldn't keep your greenhouse above freezing, but it would likely keep it above 25 with enough of them.

[Jim Fisk]

Cool science. That and a bit of wood heat can make a huge difference. Above freezing is the goal and that can certainly help although in all honesty the barrels HOPEFULLY will never get that close to freezing. Now if we can just come up with something that would do that at say 40F wouldn't that be a hoot. Or a way to store all that heat of say my 4 55g barrels under the GBs so the second tent could hold it all in the GBs overnight. So many projects and so little time.

Delightful day here at 76F. The biggest AP problem now is keeping the GH cool. 105F in there even with the big exhaust fan going. So much for the cold weather crops. The fly boys are cranking out the chemtrails as fast as they can here today. Be a lot hotter without them. Mixed blessings I'm afraid. Nowadays we joke "Where the H are they when we need them?"

Can u tell I am stuck inside waiting for my $2000.00!! Epson to clear it's print heads as I have a 17" x 34" chart to ship out. Got the day's siphon orders out and now I'm stuck in here anyway. GRRRRR.

[Jeremiah Robinson]

If you filled them with ammonia and pressurized it to 50psi you could get an insane amount of thermal mass. But if they ruptured you would die.

[Jim Fisk]

Aw shucks. There's always a down side

When I was doing electrical at the fish factories in New Bedford Mass there were still lots of drive in (as in semi trucks) freezers still running on the old ammonia systems. And of course the propane fridges are still on ammonia as far as I know. Done right and safely it could have a place in heating and cooling AP GHs.

[Jeremiah Robinson]

I think it could.  I'll bet you could find safe vessels.  They must ship it pressurized somehow.  

I know that large refrigerated warehouses run on ammonia.

Oddly, while it's horribly toxic to us it's largely neutral on the environment.