Aquaponics & Geocentric domes for greenhouses

Is this the right group to discuss Aquaponics and Geocentric domes for greenhouses?

Or is Rec.gardens a better group?

thanks.

Reply to
Jenn
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It wouldn't make much difference, this NG has more emphasis on fruit and vegetables but that is not OT on the other group. On aquaponics there isn't much talk on either. On geocentric domes there is unlikely to be any at all. If you mean geodesic domes that could be more fun.

Reply to
David Hare-Scott

You're right ... I meant geodesic domes.

Reply to
Jenn

Terribly inefficient in the real world, where joints leak and products don't come in triangles. So unless your reason for being interested in them is "pure cussedness" realize that a normal-shaped plastic film covered greenhouse will cover ground far more reliably and cheaper, in this world, anyway.

As for the less agricultural uses, the writers of the dome home book have publicly renounced the darn things, but evidently a whole new generation of people that don't want to learn from the mistakes of 45 years ago is raring to build the leaky, noisy, unpleasant things again.

Reply to
Ecnerwal

I would be surprised if there are too many commercial greenhouses that stray from either box structure or arched roof design. I gather there are some but you need to ask why you want one.

DIY greenhouse designs are mainly hoop houses. That is a rectangular floor plan with an arched roof and sides built of bent members - usually polymer tube. You will find many plans for these on the web. They have the advantage of being fairly cheap and simple to build out of commonly available materials.

Geodesic designs allow you to have a roof with no internal posts at the expense of the self-supporting dome shell being constructed out of planar polygons - mainly triangles. It is hard for me to see why you would bother as there is no particular problem with internal posts in a greenhouse and making a self-supporting dome out of triangles requires unusual structural members and forms that are not at all readily available and that would be quite hard to fabricate yourself. Another issue is the covering would have to be manufactured by joining many triangles together. This is an added expense and every seam is a point of weakness. In the more traditional designs the number of seams is far fewer depending on the size of the house compared to the size of available polymer covering.

If you are going for the coolness factor or you have some special aversion to internal posts by all means but I am yet to be convinced the design is very cost effective for this application.

Reply to
David Hare-Scott

With steel frame tubes, hoop houses without internal columns are quite normal, even in heavy snow country.

Reply to
Ecnerwal

We haven't built one yet, but my husband has been researching them to see if one would be useful for our small back yard. He's shown me some videos on how they are built and covered, too.

We're urban farmers on a small scale, and have a large back yard raised bed garden on one side of our back yard, and on the other side we have a chicken coop with laying hens. Between the garden and the chicken coop we have a small greenhouse where we overwintered some peppers, and other container grown veggies, including a couple of kumquat plants, a lemon and a lime tree. My husband set up an aquaponics area where he raised fish and pumped the fish water into grow beds above the fish containers. He raised lettuce, and some strawberries and other similar veggies during last winter. Eventually, he went to raising tilapia and by spring the fish had outgrown their tank in the greenhouse, so he bought a larger tank and now has a large setup in the middle of the back yard where he's raising tilapia, and they've been breeding, so we also have various size fish now.

Since fall is on it's way, he's moving the smaller fish back into the small greenhouse, and putting the really tiny baby fish into the sump that feeds the tank there. Now, he's left with the larger fish that are still outside and he's wanting to build a dome over it for the winter. I'm not sure that's going to work, though. I was looking for other ideas and thoughts on what we might could do.

thanks for any suggestions.

Reply to
Jenn

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