The Experimental solar Frag tank

7/7/11 update pump testing

Well i got my hands on the pump, and the first tests shows some real promise. ;D held 77. for the first 8 hour test


size its sitting on a 4" pipe cap


not very fast, gonna have to add one or 2 in the tank for flow


outside temp.


tank temp.


fast temp. swing . yep gonna have to control it some

8)

all for now i'm

Back to brain storming :thinking2

 

I am a little confused mostly because I have no foundation with regard to engineering this type of set up.

You are running the SW through the two black tubes, that run through the white tubes that run under ground for the most part, one is vented to create air flow?

What is the image that show the water returning to the tank over what looks like egg crate and some type of trickle?

I am so intrigued.....

 

The trickle you see is the return from the cooling loop, about 75 gph i estimate. and so far its just some fresh water till i get some of the bugs worked out.
the egg crate stuff you see are just some extra frag racks hanging in the tank.
the blak hose are the overflow drains for the tank they drain into the 4" cooling pipe witch makes a big loop, and the water then is pumped back up to the tank

 

pretty cool..cant wait to see how it turns out..

 

wow this is a really cool build

 

Cool read! Keep up the geat work.

 

cool project pop looks like its comming along

 

Just a quick question! I know that the water drains through the black tubes, but does the black tube run the length of the 4" pvc and then to the return pump (like a pipe going through a pipe) or does the black tube really deposits water into the 4" pvc which then runs the full length of the pipe and then to the return pump ( similar to using couplers but going from a small tube to 4 ").

I see that you said it creates a closed loop to cool the tank down, but have you thought of having it go to a sump then to the return pump? Or is that going to be in a separate closed loop?

 

Totally cool... I see you're in NC, so this may not be an issue, but what are you going to do in the winter to keep your cooling loop from freezing? I guess you could just close it off and pump all the water out, but then you'd have to do something with all that water. How warm do you expect your greenhouse will be when it's cold out?

Looking forward to seeing how this pans out. My wife wants a greenhouse....

 

The black tubes drains into the 4" thin wall cooling loop thats about 50 feet long and then pumped back to the tank, the idea was to have a thermal mass in a way, it holds about the same amount of water the tank has.
This tank will run on solar panels/batteries only all 12 volt and probably wont have a sump to save on power i need to limit the number of pumps i use,
this is truly an experiment.