Background

This is a guide to a hit and miss, handy-man, swimming pool conversion to acquaponics set up. I thought I'd write this up so others thinking of doing the same thing could see what might work and what might not.

This project began around the middle of the 2010 calender year after my neighbour handed me one of 48 Barramundi he had harvested from his standardised acquaponics set up next door.

Not long after the government announced severe water restrictions, after a winter of virtually no rain, and keen vegetable growers like myself faced the prospect of having to pull up our gardens over the summer.

An aquaponics system seemed like a way to solve a number of issues - including what to do with your swimming pool when the kids have left home and it gets little use. How to water your vegetables in the face of severe water restrictions, and how to afford fish when the cost keeps skyrocketing.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Filtration - In - Pool Grow bed - September 2010

As well as filtering the water through the standard grow beds (3 in number), I decided that the volume of water was large enough to warrant additional filtration and the cheapest method to do this was to incorporate a section of the pool as a gravel filter itself. This section lay behind the sand bund and water would be filtered from the open section of the pond through pipes (on their way to the external grow beds - through a one way valve and out 6mm holes - 10 cm apart) at the bottom of this section. This in- pool filter would house the water plants and nutrients would feed up through the gravel to the plant roots. I've seen similar ideas in swimming pools where people wanted to avoid chlorine or salt filters.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)