A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

Greenhouse or not?

Many parts of South Africa has a nasty Warm / Cold seasonal mix that play havoc with your choice of structure. In the Eastern Cape, a small plastic or polycarb greenhouse cooks in summer but is still too cold for proper year-round production of veggies and warm water fish such as tilapia. Heating and cooling costs is getting more and more unrealistic.

Has anyone come up with any clever ideas around solutions available here? I'm talking about small rather than commercial sized structures.

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Permalink Reply by Jon Nose on July 6, 2011 at 2:18pm

One solution is to dig tanks into ground as temperture does not swing to much ...

Rocket stoves and solar heaters such as the pop can heater for heating

shade cloth for summer .... depending on land layout ... if you dig down greenhouse will keep a more stable temperture year round

Permalink Reply by Kobus Jooste on July 7, 2011 at 12:19am

Jon - I have a sunken tank in my micro system (1300 liters total) and the water temp there goes below what tilapia can survive. My larger polycarb unit remains warm enough to just keep tilapia feeding, but it is a job to keep it cool in summer. The solar heater for winter and an open system in summer is likely the way that I am going to investigate. I have seen a few members have a go at rocket stoves, which can also work, but I do not think I have the correct lay-out in my systems (too little floor space in the micro unit and a pvc floor in the larger one) to retrofit one of those.

Jon Nose said:

One solution is to dig tanks into ground as temperture does not swing to much ...

Rocket stoves and solar heaters such as the pop can heater for heating

shade cloth for summer .... depending on land layout ... if you dig down greenhouse will keep a more stable temperture year round

Permalink Reply by Jon Nose on July 7, 2011 at 2:19pm

I am trying a system where I will have a 2 ft high raft tanks dug 15 inch into soil with fish tanks above ground (a couple of them over rocket stove mass) theory being that water should be cooled down in summer via the raft tanks ... soil temperture only changes by about 10 degrees between winter and summer ... will have about 4000 gallons of water to try and maintain a stable temperture .... time will tell ...

here is some info on a walipini greenhouse ....

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Walipini_Underground_Greenho...

http://www.bensoninstitute.org/Publication/Manuals/Walipini.pdf

Permalink Reply by Kobus Jooste on July 8, 2011 at 12:27am

Jon - those Walpini structure sure looks incredibly interesting and I would love to be able to visit one and see (and feel) what it is all about. I just love these simple solutions to what can be a very energy hungry problem. Thanks again for the links.

Jon Nose said:

I am trying a system where I will have a 2 ft high raft tanks dug 15 inch into soil with fish tanks above ground (a couple of them over rocket stove mass) theory being that water should be cooled down in summer via the raft tanks ... soil temperture only changes by about 10 degrees between winter and summer ... will have about 4000 gallons of water to try and maintain a stable temperture .... time will tell ...

here is some info on a walipini greenhouse ....

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Walipini_Underground_Greenho...
http://www.bensoninstitute.org/Publication/Manuals/Walipini.pdf