• If you need help identifying a pepper, disease, or plant issue, please post in Identification.

hydroponic Hydroponics / Aquaponics as a heat source?

AJ Drew

AJ Drew

Odd idea struck me.  People now heating their homes by using solar energy to heat water and then run the water threw radiator like networks under their floor.  Of course you would have to regulate the heck out the temperature, but I wonder about doing the same to heat the water in a hydroponic / aquaponic system.  Idea being the radiant heat might be able to provide enough warmth to heat the area sufficient to keep the foliage happy.

Thoughts?
 
     I don't think so. If you're relying on water to warm foliage in the cool area above the reservoir, water vapor will constantly be condensing on the cool foliage and lead to disease. And if you use a vapor barrier layer on top of the water to reduce evaporation, you'll probably lose a lot of the heating ability of the water. 
     But I guess if the water reservoir was large enough wrt the space you're trying to heat, it could work. Maybe a cool weather crop like lettuce or a brassica.
 
I'm not sure that I understand... What are your target parameters? Generally, you want a cooler reservoir to be able to maintain saturation of dissolved oxygen in your nutrient solution. The cooler the reservoir, the better. (to a point - maybe 68 degrees, with a max of about 82, if memory serves) Sometimes on a cold night, my outdoor hydro gets an aquarium heater, but that's to maintain the range.

Are you talking about keeping plants warm indoors, outdoors, during the cooler months, etc? Because unless you are talking temps close to frosting or freezing, the solution temperature is more critical than the ambient air around the foliage...
 
alot of the VERY VERY VERY large greenhouses up north rely on very very crude radiant heating systems using biomass fueled boilers and duel fueled biomass/natural gas so they can switch between the two on the go.

they run large diameter steel pipes down low between the rows... the heated water is circulated from the boiler room, through these pipes. the heat rises off the pipes and up through the canopy of the plants... tomatos usually.

were talking about greenhouse operations worth many many millions of dollars.

most smaller high poly tunnel type setups use less efficient smaller gas burners, though i HAVE seen a real slab radiant heating system in a real nice gothic poly tunnel... this was a very cold area so it was build on insulated stem walls to resist frost heaving. the stem wall is haunched and a slab was poured over some rigid insulation later on.

there was a shed structure outside with a boiler inside to provide heat to the greenhouse.

this was probably the most expensive polytunnel ever.
 
With the hydroponic / aquaponic systems that use PVC it just seems like if the water were warm enough, it would keep the air warm enough.
 
you would need an awful large surface area to absorbe the heat.
 
some greenhouse designs use south facing walls with black plastic and crap like that. these work, but only because they have an ENORMOUS amount of thermal mass that can radiate that heat back into the greenhouse during the night.
 
any aquaponics system sized appropriately to heat he greenhouse would take up most of the greenhouse.
 
just burn propane. get like 2 grill tanks tee'd off to standard galvanized pipe... when one runs out, valve it off, then open the valve on the other one. 
 
you will probably burn through a tank every few days though. refills exchanges on small tanks is pretty expensive so you might look for a way to refill from your big propane tank.
 
Que, have spent much time looking at how pit houses / underground green houses manage.  With the methods you mentioned, they can provide year round grows but only certain crops.  I thought to add additional heat to get warmer crops to grow, but turns out that per some German University research it is about pointless.  The same insulation that helps it maintain a temperature acts like a giant heat sink and sucks much of what you might add away.

Last year, I tried to heat a poly tunnel with electricity.  Didnt go well.  Not sure what I will wind up trying this year, but from the business end of things I am willing to bet it will be a very small structure only for starts.  Would still like to grow other things, cold crops, year round but we will see.  Started moving dirt years ago with my little tractor, tractor broke, can not imagine digging the rest out with a shovel... ah but I do have kids.

I apologize if I seem like a broken record, but really into the idea of year round growing even if it is just lettuce and carrots.
 
OT a little but we had a customer who had us build him an indoor pool. His Pool equipment was in the basement and he had us install the plumbing through the attic of his 1mil + dollar home as a radiant heat source. Well needless to say one the pipes burst in the attic and drained quite a bit of his pool into his house. Because the equipment was lower than the pool the pump didn't cavatate  when it got below his skimmers. 
 
D3monic said:
OT a little but we had a customer who had us build him an indoor pool. His Pool equipment was in the basement and he had us install the plumbing through the attic of his 1mil + dollar home as a radiant heat source. Well needless to say one the pipes burst in the attic and drained quite a bit of his pool into his house. Because the equipment was lower than the pool the pump didn't cavatate  when it got below his skimmers.
Click to expand...
what a fucking idiot. does he know how much surface area you would need to appreciably heat a fucking pool?

i seriously want to slap that guy.
 
im not talking about a burried greenhouse. im talking about a greenhouse with a thermal mass on the south wall.

like this:

GHAR3.jpg


in the summer when you dont need the heat, you draw a curtain across the thermal mass to reflect the heat back out, or you just drain it.

again this is hippy shit, nobody does this on a large scale. it takes up too much space imo. just burn propane.
 
queequeg152 said:
what a f**king idiot. does he know how much surface area you would need to appreciably heat a f**king pool?

i seriously want to slap that guy.
Click to expand...
 
I think he wanted the pool the help heat his house. In arizona we used to install large coils of black poly pipe on roof tops to heat smaller pools. Seemed to work fairly well. Though not many people where actually trying to heat their pools there. 
Like this 
SuncoilRoof.jpg
 
I think he wanted the pool the help heat his house.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's what I was going to suggest. It's much more practical to use the pool as your geothermal mass... And it does work. For a VERY small part of the year. :D
 
My guess is that it would be challenging to achieve the temperature a person wants in a swimming pool using those roof top solar collectors but maintaining it might not be all that hard.
 
no no no. the rooftop solar collectors are LEGIT... you just need to do the calculations.  they absolutly do work, you just have to use large diameter pipes or the pumping costs are ENORMOUS.
 
thing is the solar collectors can weight like 10-20lbs lbs a square foot when they are full of water. if your roof is not engineered for snow loads this can be a big problem. 
 
rooftop solar collectors here in houston can heat a pool year round if you use an insulated pool blanket as well. a spate of bad weather though obviously will make the pool cold though. 
 
the thing is that retard wanted to do the same thing with convected heat from his attic... not from much stronger solar irradiation.
 
the flow of heat from air to plastic to water is going to be WAY WAY WAY less than ... sunlight => plastic => water, hence you need much much more surface area.
 
plus putting plumbing in your attic when you can avoid it is f**king idiotic, though putting them under a structural slab is worse.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top