Comment

Comment by Jim Fisk on February 17, 2014 at 8:03am

I totally agree. If you don't need to dig it in one day for some reason it is really not a bad job in most soils. Just great exercise and one or two Aleves and I will be 68 this year so I need all the exercise I can get. The clay here is hard digging as well but the good news is you can dig straight down with no cave ins. Now feeding 4 woodstoves all Winter and felling and cutting and splitting and drying and hauling... enough of this global warming already.

Comment by DJ Wambach on February 17, 2014 at 7:45am

 No heavy equipment needed, a small back hoe rented for $300/ day was to much for me to fund so I bought a pick ax and bottle of pain killers!   Biggest root was about 1.5" and they were all in the sandy soil and gravel that was the first 2 feet. Then it was hard red dirt that I think is clay. Hope to get the last little bit cleaned out tonight.

Comment by Jim Fisk on February 17, 2014 at 7:27am

Yup DJ, I remember it well but where are your 4" roots and 100# boulders? I needed a chain saw and our front end loader along with the shovel and pick ax. Good news is it is all worth the effort.

Comment by DJ Wambach on February 16, 2014 at 8:51pm

@Jim Firtsk spent a few hours playing in the dirt and got almost all the hole dug for sump tank. Here is one of the photos I uploaded.

Comment by TCLynx on February 11, 2014 at 2:20pm

I was going to recommend Arther's Idea of a ground loop for cooling.  Especially good with a low flow pump and lots of loops of pex pipe running a few feet underground.  Moist clay is a far better heat exchanger than the sand I get to deal with here.

Comment by Jim Fisk on February 11, 2014 at 11:48am

@DJ, our soil here is very high in clay so we can dig straight down save for boulders and roots so I simply filled the IBC with water after it was in place and PRIOR to back filling. The cage helps as well. Once it was back filled I soaked and packed it even more and it set up hard. Pull any rocks from the backfill.

@Arther, good idea. I could bury a loop the length of the fish room and back (24') under the walk way as that rm is always in the shade. Low priority but down the road it could well help.

I still hope to find the time to make a pvc solar collector for the back wall of the GH and that will be on a separate pump triggered by a differential thermostat and heat the sump on those cold but sunny days. Winter heating is still a bigger fish to fry here than Summer cooling and that should be a big help and along the same lines. The GH can hit 90F plus on a cold but sunny day here.

Comment by Arthur King, Jr. on February 11, 2014 at 11:02am

Hi Jim, might be a little crazy, but here's an idea.  Keep the sump insulated as you stated, but have 2 paths to feed it from your beds, one that travels underground, and an alternate one that could be used to bypass the ground coupling.  Being discharge from the beds, it should be pretty clean, so you could even make it an extended trip so it could exchange thermals with the ground even more.

Comment by DJ Wambach on February 11, 2014 at 10:28am

After checking the ground temps I think it will help to have the bottom of tote sitting on soil. I will be using plywood or foam on the outside of tote cage to protect from being crushed and add some more insulation.  Thanks for the info.

Comment by Jim Fisk on February 11, 2014 at 9:44am

All good points TC. The ideal solution would be to take advantage of both scenarios somehow. In the Winter I would like to "uncouple" as the ground temp is too low but in the Summer when the ambient air is too high that 55F ground temp is very useful. I am in the envious, perhaps, position that my water is totally free so I can dump and refill all I like to keep the system compatible with Trout so I have come to the conclusion that isolation would be best especially after THIS Winter. For others the ability to uncouple at will could be very advantageous. Any thoughts on how we could go about this other than 2 sumps?

Comment by TCLynx on February 10, 2014 at 8:39am

As for ground temperatures and "should you couple your system to ground temperatures" you need to look up your locations average ground temperatures and and desired water temperature of your system and compare them.

If your locations average ground temperature is colder than your year round desired water temperature, then you do NOT want to couple your water temp to the ground, you will want to Insulate as Jim mentions he is going to do.

If your year round average ground temperature is Perfect for your desired water temperature for your plants/fish then by all means bury things and get as much contact with the ground as you can.  (NO not lava rock that would be dangerous to the IBC tank and it wouldn't transfer temperature well anyway)

In my location Inland Central FL, the ground temperature is great for fish like catfish and bluegill and possibly even good enough for Tilapia (though in my opinion they are over rated.)

Do be sure you design the system such that a heavy rain event won't risk floating a partly empty tank out of the ground on you though.  And keep in mind that dirt pressing in on the sides of an IBC liner can crush the tank in.

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