Aquaponics – Fuel & Feed – Closing the Loop

Fuel and feed are the greatest costs in running a greenhouse and an aquaponics system.  You must heat a greenhouse in our climate, and you have to feed the fish.  We have been working toward closing the “loop.”  I believe with Biomass as a fuel, those that live on several acres should be able to produce enough fuel to  heat their own greenhouse and possible produce the electricity to run the system with steam power.  With supplemental power in the way of solar panels, energy needs should be met.

Duckweed is a highly nutritious food source for animals, fish, and even people.  Cultivation of Duckweed is relatively simple.  Water, fertilizer in the manner of a compost tea, and sunlight is all that is necessary to raise this fast growing plant.  All this combined, is a plan to drastically reduce the dependence on resources outside your capacity to produce them.

Biomass, any organic matter that once dry can be burned, can be processed into pellets for a uniform and consistent fuel source.  Supply of this fuel can be automated, so physical attendance to the boiler can be limited to a daily maintenance routine.  Collection of raw fuel is processed through a hammer mill to reduce the matter to a fine pulpy consistency.  Then run through a pellet mill to produce uniform pellets that can be stored for later use.

These methods and resulting products can make it economically feasible to own and operate a greenhouse and aquaponics system at the rural individual level.  Slight expansion of the system and one could produce an excess that would be marketable.

Where does your food come from?

Where does your food come from?  I have been thinking about this more often lately.  Looking at what is in my juice bottle or in the ingredients listed on the package.  I wonder what would happen if all the food that is not sourced within 100 or 200 miles from us didn’t make it to the store.  What would people do?  Or more likely, the cost of that food doubles or triples as fuel prices and other issues have their impact on those foods coming from other parts of the world, how would people react then?

I am just wondering how much difficulty and cost does it take to motivate people from complacency to action.  currently I here a great deal of grumbling about fuel prices.  When gas hit $5.00 a gallon a couple of years ago, I bought my motorcycle.  It was cheaper to make the payment on the bike and fuel it than it was to just put gas in the Jeep I had then.  I hear a great deal of dissatisfaction but see very little action.  They just complain and pay the price.  Why should they reduce the price if we are willing to pay whatever they ask?

Back to food, for some a necessity, it would seem just as logical to raise prices until people stopped buying it, then drop the price back to where they will buy.  Why not extract the maximum possible from consumers if they are willing to pay?  This is what we have to look forward to.  Until going to the grocery store is a luxury again rather than a necessity, there really is no need to limit prices.  The retailer has the power now, not the consumer.  Fuel is a necessity not a luxury or oddity as the automobile was introduced and we moved around by horse and buggy.

I propose we become more independent.  We have the technology.  Actually it is the technologies we gave up in favor of the luxuries that have become necessities.  Biomass fuels, steam power, and gardening, with small animal husbandry, we have the capacity to take care of ourselves.  Then we can “treat” ourselves to a trip to the grocery store, or go for a “joyride” in the classic car we keep for memories sake.

I know it isn’t practical to give up all these things, but I do believe we can reduce our reliance and dependence on them dramatically.  I also believe this is going to be more and more important in the not so distant future.  It needs to start somewhere.

Where Do We Begin…?

My adventure into my latest project had a very humble beginning.  I wanted to create a biological filter that would use the waste of the fish to grow plants and clean the water for my fish. I also wanted this in a greenhouse environment so I could protect the fish and enjoy them year round.  Then I though why not use this to grow vegetables instead of just greenery?  So I dug a huge hole for the pond and started to put up a large greenhouse over it.  Then I wondered how will I be able to afford to heat it?  What will the cost of the glazing for the greenhouse be? What happens if I lose power?  How will I aerate the water with no power?

Then I thought, “Maybe someone else has done something like this…”  So I began my search on the internet.  It wasnt long until I stumbled upon Aquaponics.  Growing vegetables and raising fish in a system that is a symbiotic cycle.  Basically what I was going to do but now I had 30 plus years of R&D already done for me!  As I continued to study though, I found it was most popular in warmer regions: Hawaii, Florida, Australia, basically everywhere that has a great deal of sun and warm temperatures year round.

Heating a greenhouse I found is relatively expensive through conventional means: gas, electricity, propane, oil, are all very expensive fuels for a structure that by nature isn’t very well insulated. Greenhouses are a necessity in our climate if you want to keep the fish productive and the plants growing.  I thought about wood heat, but it is difficult to use wood heat if you are not around all the time to keep the fire going.  Then I thought about wood pellets, cheaper than the other fuels but on the rise in cost too.  So began my research on the most plentiful and renewable fuel we have here, Biomass.  Weeds, grass clippings, tree trimmings, paper products, any vegetation when dry is combustible.  These when dry, shredded, and compressed into pellets, are nearly as good as wood pellets and cost far less.  I found a hammer mill, and pellet mill, then I wondered why does it take two fuels to do the job?  The pellet stove needs electricity to run. It should be able to generate its own power somehow, I thought.  So I looked at the Sterling engine for a long time, trying to find an example that really was practical and eventually gave up.  The technology just isn’t there for the small-scale user.  It is practical in space and on a huge industrial scale but not apparently for the home or single consumer.

Steam power I found out is a primary mover. In other words it is a major and cost-effective way to run machinery.  Steam is water that is expanded by heat over 1000 times.  That means a lot of pressure. That pressure when released in a controlled fashion will turn a turbine like those in a huge ship, or in one of our electric plants that provides most of the power in the US.  So I started looking for a way I could use steam.  It has been largely forgotten about on the small-scale. There are a few people who keep old steam engines for a conversation piece and display them at the county fair, and also a few steamers out there that have little steam boats for pleasure and tinkering. But as a working piece of equipment they are basically forgotten.  I stumbled upon a fellow in India that builds steam engines exactly like what I needed.  After several months of negotiating and convincing myself he was legitimate, I purchased one of his engines and embarked on my importing adventure.  We now have our engine and are trying to find the right boiler design.  Soon we will have our steam power for electrical generation and machinery operation.

We have recently set that part of the project aside for a more moderate goal. Pellet fired furnace / water heater is now the object of our efforts.  We have a working proto-type and are in the initial stages of design for a production model.  This I feel will be more appealing to the average homeowner on a budget but concerned with the operating costs of a greenhouse.

We are now expanding our research and development to other areas of study.  Sustainable fish feed through the cultivation of duckweed, more energy-efficient greenhouse design, using recycled glazing, hybrid growing systems, and so on.

We are now about a year into our project.  We have had the support of several generous and forward thinking people.  To these people we will forever be grateful.  It is an immense project with amazing potential.  We are very excited with the results we have had so far and look forward to what is soon to come.  We are also looking for intelligent, motivated people who would like to get involved and make this happen for the benefit of our local communities and eventually other areas.

Big Picture

Genetically Modified foods. I see the phrase “no genetically modified ingredients” used to show that it is a better product.  DNA from insects, bacteria, and other organisms spliced into the DNA of the food we eat is somehow supposed to make it grow faster, better, with less disease and more resistance to other problems.  AND still be OK for us to eat…. Years past it was just a process of selective propagation to increase yields and other traits we want.  But all this is to forestall the problem of overpopulation.

Population of the planet is akin to a forest fire.  Our solution to this is to pour more fuel on the fire to increase its spread and destruction rather than to contain it.  Wouldnt it be cheaper and easier to gather our leaders, and I mean all our leaders, religious, secular, political, professional, etc. and begin a re-education program?  We need to limit our reproduction rates.  Offer incentives to have fewer children, tax deductions for childless households.  Sustainability begins with responsibility.  Nature limits it’s populations with instinctive controls.  No food, no babies.  That seems pretty logical.  Our vanity and desire for a family legacy is going to destroy what beauty we have left in the world.

It is scary and amazing the abilities we have acquired in the mutation of life.  We are on the cusp of creating artificial life.  But for some reason we can’t control the spread of our own species.  I like the analogy that we are a virus on the earth.  Either we will run our course and consume all the resources we depend on, or leave the earth barren.  I also remember something I learned in my science classes in college.  99.9% of life was wiped off the face of the earth during the “Ice Age”, and all we have now and all that we have already consumed found its way here since then.  So maybe we will just be the “Human Age” remembered or forgotten by the next dominant life form.

I would think with all our technology and “intelligence” we could learn to control ourselves.

Our Immense Project Continues

I have recently met several people who have responded to ads I have placed concerning our project.  Overwhelming, is the general response I get when I explain what it is we are trying to do. Like any organism it takes many parts to make it function.  In order to replace the current system, you have to propose an alternative system.  To only address one part is akin to offering a single part to replace a whole system. It just wont function.  But, just as the liver does not need to know how the heart does its job, so one person working on one aspect of a project does not necessarily have to understand another persons duties.  Of course it helps to have a general idea of what the goal is so everyone is moving in the same direction.

To change how we acquire our food and energy needed to produce it, we have to address the various details that make a practical and economical change possible.  In order to grow produce year round in the Northwest, greenhouses are necessary.  Heating a greenhouse is expensive to do with conventional methods.  Solar, and the use of biomass can make it possible to keep the cost of heating within the individual farmers budget.  Aquaponics addresses the issue of excessive water needs in farming.  Recycling water through the system can reduce water usage dramatically.  Raising fish addresses the need for fertilizers, duckweed cultivation addresses the need of food for the fish.  Chicken, or other small animal waste addresses the nutrient issues for the duckweed and other crops.  Solar, wind, micro-hydro electric, and steam address the energy needs to run the system.  These are only a portion of the areas we are trying to cover in order to make the whole project sustainable and attainable by the average person or group.

Finding the people interested in making these changes possible has been and is very challenging.  I hope to find people that have a reaching vision of what is possible.  All of it is possible.  I have found evidence for each area I have mentioned that has been documented and proven that it can be done.  We are not trying to reinvent the wheel.  We are just putting the wheels to use on one vehicle.  If you have an interest in making a change, a real, tangible, change that you can be a part of, please get in touch.  We are moving forward.  Our biomass heated greenhouse is almost ready to begin growing.  We have been in contact with some individuals to get our steam engine operational.  It is happening but more help is needed.

Back to the Village Concept

Successful villages had everything they needed.  Location was selected for its abundant resources and agreeable climate. Tradesman were attracted to the village by the potential for customers, as were the farmers, and merchants.  Prosperity was defined by their success as a whole.  People would identify themselves by where they were from, particularly if they were proud of their roots and ancestry.  With the ability to move things and people vast distances, this concept has been transferred to the entire country.  But the personal nature and familiarity of the village was lost.  We no longer even really know our own neighbors let alone work with them, or socialize with them.  The phrase, “It takes a whole village to raise a child” has no context in today’s society.  We hide and “protect” our children from those around us.

We need to recreate the village.  We need to bring back the trades and professions to each village: carpenter, cobbler, mechanic, farmer, butcher, seamstress, cabinet-maker, electrician, rancher, baker, constable, fisherman, merchant, banker, mason, mortician, barber, and so on.  We need to bring back the concept of the apprentice.  We are losing these trades as the knowledge and wisdom dies with each journeyman, master, and artisan.  There is little interest in these trades anymore.

I have been running a little experiment for several months, another for several years.  I ran a local ad to teach someone woodworking.  I have been a cabinetmaker and artisan for about 30 years.  I have been offering that experience and knowledge for several months.  I have had only one response that followed through to actually meeting me.  I ran an ad in a local paper for six years offering free martial arts classes.  I had not one person respond.  I have a school with about 60 students in it currently.  They are wonderful people and pay their tuition promptly and gladly.  I am deeply grateful and try my best to give them everything they pay me for and more.  But not one person in 6 years wanted to study the same exact curriculum for free.  You would pay thousands, maybe tens of thousands, at a local vocational school to learn a fraction of what I know, but no one wants to learn or study for free.

In a village, we would have each of these masters or journeyman.  Each of these people would have an apprentice or two.  These people would have families.  These families would have their own gardens, put up their food for the season, buy or trade for products from the other tradesman and merchants.  Trade and value would be based on the cost of time and materials to produce those goods.  Security in knowing where your food, fuel, and other needs will be met because it is where you live.  Neighbors helping build your barn, because you are going to help them bring in their crop, or help shear their sheep, or help put the hay in the barn for the year.  Teachers, and Doctors that care because they know the families and have watched them grow up in their neighborhood.

This is possible even today, in a city, out in the country, anywhere.  What it requires, this is the hard part, is trust, hard work, and a desire to be a part of a community.  Community should not be a place.  It is an idea, a feeling, a bond amongst a group with a common goal of living in peace and success in producing the next generation.

I know this is not going to make a huge impact.  But if it can stir a desire to simplify life and bring a few people closer to each other, maybe there is hope for some.  What makes this seem so impossible is our dependence.  We now depend on the supermarket, gas station, electric company, fire department, police, school, and all the other institutions that we rely on to take care of us.  What it requires is a desire to take care of ourselves.  We have to change our paradigm from believing that we cant do this to WE CAN.   I love this old proverb,”Those who say it cannot be done, should not interrupt the person doing it.”  I live by this.  We can be independent.  We can be a community.  We can trust in some people.  We can learn and teach our next generation without burying them in debt.  We only have to imbue them with the value of this knowledge and that they don’t necessarily have to pay for it monetarily.  They can pay for these skills with their hard work.  Pay by working for their teachers, pay by learning their trade with a hunger to do be good at what they are going to do, for a job well done. Pay for the ability and right to be an equal part in a community that takes care of its own.

I hope to see some of these things come to pass.  I hope that I will find someone to pass on the knowledge and experience I have acquired.  It may be vanity, but I believe that what I have begun can help others. What I know can make it so someone else can succeed in their life.  I hope that someone will value the things I would like to pass on enough to not have to buy it.

 

Productive Weekend

Progress on a long and complicated project is satisfying.  Appreciation from others of that progress is also motivating.  We have been working on the development of the bio-mass heating system of our greenhouse for several months now.  Functioning and economically producing heat, this is our proto-type for a unit that will be the heart of our greenhouse/aquaponics system.  Without this heating system, current methods of heating make it too expensive to grow vegetables and raise fish year round here in the Northwest at the residential level.  Documenting the day-to-day output is now showing us the payoff will be coming in the near future.  We will be able to heat a glass greenhouse, and the fish tanks of our aquaponics system for about $5.00 a day.  This cost is based on the current cost of pellet fuel.  Our next step is to begin the development and production of our own marketable version of the bio-mass water heater/furnace.

On another facet of our business, we have begun a very promising residential project.  A 12×15 greenhouse / aquaponics setup that will utilize a hydronic heating system, a passive solar heating and cooling system, with solar-powered vents, and a compost feature for supplemental heat and CO2.  Ground has been broken, the initial design consultation completed, now drawings and the collection of framing materials has begun.  It is particularly exciting because of the realization of many of our targeted feature components will be utilized.

Portland Oregon, has a feeling of a very progressive “Green” movement.  Beyond lip-service, but active progress and a real desire to change the current model of how we acquire our food and how it is produced.  It is very satisfying to be in the presence of like minds with the willingness to work through the inevitable process of trial and error that must take place to develop a working model and plan for a sustainable future.

Ego, Perception, Perspective

Ever since I was a child, I remember being teased and put down for my awkward physical and social skills.  I am left-handed, right-brained, and by nature, an introvert. So I tended to be self-entertaining and independent.  Independence and creativity is the beginning of a good recipe  for exploration and discovery.  My natural inclination was to try to make my ideas and dreams a reality. Quietly, and in private, I would build, experiment, and foster the skills and traits in myself that I rely upon today.

The most important skill I think that I possess is the desire to find the answer.  Not to ask the question.  I have seldom wanted some one to give me their off the cuff and dismissive opinion.  I prefer to seek the answer with a critical and skeptical perspective.  I like to revisit old ideas. Particularly those that have been discarded and no longer in use.  I find that quite often there has been an idea or answer for many questions that we have today, available in our past.  We move beyond many things in favor of those that are cheaper, faster, or more attractive.  Once these things lose their luster and fail, we long for something more durable and dependable.  So, I look at what we had before the things that we though we can not live without.  How did we get by 100 years ago? 200? 1000?  People before us wanted the same things we want now. That is what I try to find, the answers to the same problems in our past.  I emphasize the desire to find the answer.  Many people ask questions. But few have the tenacity to answer them.

The other trait I developed is to appreciate and employ my beliefs in spite of public disdain or ridicule.  I almost always buck tradition and convention.  We hide behind these, so we wont be made fun of.  Do something different and you will be mocked for your heresy, or in the worst cases punished.  But it is amazing to see the things I have practiced and believed, once mocked and ridiculed, now are mainstream and popular.  Timing is everything.

I mention this because to do something extraordinary or to succeed in today’s economy requires creativity and courage.  You have to let go of your ego.  You have to ignore what others perceive as impossible or impractical. Your perspective has to be filled with hope and a belief in what you want to do.  My favorite proverb, “Those who say it cannot be done, should not interrupt the person doing it.” helps me stay focused.