Aquaponics Install Complete

We hit a major milestone in the Aquaponics Adventure this week.

First, let's just admire the lovely green concrete support blocks.  There was some skepticism in the household about whether or not this was a good/feasible idea.  I'm delighted to write that painting these was as easy as pie.

OK, now onto the important parts.  A good friend, Dr. McNie, assisted with the plumbing and a good thing that was too, she definately prevented what could have been some costly mistakes!  

I got all the parts from The Aquaponics Source Store to plumb a 3 IBC system.

It took a couple of days to get it all installed and tested.

Thanks to my guys, we got the lights hung up (the windows provide some light, but it's not really strong enough for robust plant growth).

and the beds filled with Coco-Puffs!

 Just kidding, the fill media is called Hydroton.  It is small balls of expanded clay.  This kind of media is ideal for the system has it lots of tiny crevices inside the balls, which will eventually get colonized by the beneficial bacteria that keep the whole system running.

and Voila!

Now we wait for the beneficial bacteria to colonize the system and start doing their groovy thing.  They turn ammonia (fish poop) into nitrates (plant food).

For the true geeks out there:

Nitrosomonas bacteria convert Ammonia (NH4-) into Nitrite (NO2-)
NH4+  +  1.5 O2  =  NO2-  +  2 H+  +  H20  +  84 kCal/mol of Ammonia

Nitrospira bacteria convert Nitrite (NO2-) into Nitrate (NO3-)
NO2-  +  0.5 O2  =  NO3-  +  17.8 kCal/mol of Nitrite


 for everyone else:
Ammonia and Nitrite BAD, Nitrate GOOD

Aquaponics baby!

The aquaponics adventure begins.

A couple of years ago I read about a couple who had reworked their backyard pool from a leisure feature to become a nearly self-sustaining food production area.  They converted the pool to grow edible fish in the deep end, the fish water (nutrient rich with fish poop) is then pumped through vegetable growing beds. And they have some chickens in there providing yet more nutrients to the growing system.  From this they can sustainably produce their own vegetables, fish, eggs and the occasional chicken to eat.  You can read more about that here:
http://modernfarmer.com/2014/09/ground-gardening-going-deep-end-arizona/

I was very intrigued by this idea and have since researched Aquaponics (AP) like a mad woman.  Having always liked keeping aquarium fish as a hobby and a growing interest in vegetable gardening (pun intended) this seems like a cool thing to do.  From the moment we first saw our new home, I became obsessed with putting an AP system on our screened patio.

The patio is an ideal place to do this as it gets great morning sun and is fully screened to minimize garden pests (we have lots of rabbits, squirrels and racoons around here as well as the usual multitude of vegetable garden eating bugs).  Additionally, as the patio is big enough to accommodate a nice seating area as well as the AP system, the sound of running water will enhance the whole vibe.  And finally I'm hoping this will help us put a lot more fresh, organic produce on our plates.

The first step was preparing the patio. 

Original:

after much sanding, painting, reworking storm windows and minor electrical upgrades:

I know, it hardly looks different in the picture, but trust me it is much lighter out there now with the dark wood and red brick painted white. Also, we insulated the ceiling area to better hold in whatever little heat there is in winter to help the future fish tank temperature.

Now we are ready for the next step; setting up the hardware.  We have purchased 3 IBC (intermediate bulk containers) previously used to store agave syrup.  Each tank is 275 gallons.

The plan is to cut them up as follows:

IBC1 = 1 grow bed and 1 fish tank
IBC2 = 1 growbed and 1 sump tank
IBC3 = 1 growbed and 1 sump tank

The growbeds will gravity drain into the sump, the water is then pumped from the sump back into the growbeds and fishtank.  The fish tank will have an overflow siphon back into the sump tank.  This keeps the water in the fishtank at a constant height.

Aidan had a fine time rinsing out the tanks yesterday (grow bed and fish tank).

my new favorite tool:

It cuts through metal and plastic like butter!

Stayed tuned for further developments.

Bronco Busting

Or, I should say, busting out the Bronco theme room.

As you may remember from my previous post, the former occupant of Aidan's room had rather feminine taste. So we undertook a good effort to make a cool, sports theme room for him.  He loves the Broncos and orange is his current favorite color.

We took down the fussy peach drapes, repainted the room in Bronco team colors, and got some cool IKEA furniture to provide a great play space and lots of toy storage.  I also refinished a thrift store dresser to match the room.  This is a room he can enjoy now with room to grow.

Before (with previous owners furniture):

  Now:

some of our favorite parts:

Team color dresser, thrift store find sanded, painted and sealed with poly for durability.  It's over-sized now, but with plenty of room to grow into.

Lego play area from slightly modified IKEA storage furniture. We cut the long shelf in the middle from MDF, sealed it with poly and have Lego mats on it (soon to be glued down).  We used 3 of the Trofast storage units to create the end pieces (2 are assembled as usual, then we used the sides from the 3rd unit mounted on the outside to create the supports for the shelf.  The shelf can be turned upside down for a smooth surface and moved up as needed)  The white storage bins contain the eighty bazillion Lego pieces he has collected to date with room for more.

My personal favorite is the "Secret Laboratory" area we created in the lower bunk bed area.  I installed an LED light strip (hard to see in pictures), which creates a ton of light underneath. Aidan picked out the fabric for the curtains, they have a flame pattern.

Closed during secret experiments:

Open for inspection and cleaning:

He is a happy little Broncos fan now :)

Home, Sweet, Home

We are getting all settled into the new home.  She is a lovely old home built in the 1950's with great bones.  The previous owner obviously took pride in ownership and cared for everything really well.  I have big plans to update and refresh this lovely old lady.  We also got a fantastic Mid-Century Modern (MCM) living and dining room set with the house and I'm pretty excited about using that as the design jumping off point for most of the rest of the house.  Very Mad Men, with a big dash of Scandinavian Modern (OK, really, mostly IKEA, but it sounds much cooler to say Scandinavian Modern).

We decided to start with Aidan's room.  Below is the before picture, pretty but not great for a little boy.

For this area I'm not really following the MCM theme, because Aidan couldn't care less about that and is much more in favor of a sports theme room. So we are doing it all up in Denver Broncos team colors (orange, blue and white). Aidan is a big fan!

Paint, paint, more painting and yet more painting is in progress.  I'm currently working on re-painting a thrift store dresser to match the theme. I'm trying something called "Chalk Paint" followed by Polycrylic in the hopes of getting a smooth finish over the slightly beat up wood, so far, so good.  I'll post more pictures when it's done.

Here is a link to learn more about Chalk Paint.
 http://blog.diynetwork.com/maderemade/how-to/make-your-own-chalk-style-paint/http://blog.diynetwork.com/maderemade/how-to/make-your-own-chalk-style-paint/

Earring Display case

As promised, my new jewelry display case.  This is made of completely re-purposed items (except the rods).

The loose design concept was: "simple, modern, could be part of a retro space show (Star Trek, the Jetsons) and not antique, crafty or Victorian"

• Deep, square picture frame about 20" x 20" at the Goodwill.  
• Removed the glass and backer board (which I was happy to find was a hard composite material like MDF, not cardboard as I thought it would be).
• Turned the whole thing around. This doesn't really change it in any appreciable way, but I needed the depth to be in the front so a simple mental switcheroo, and voila ... back is now front.
• Spray painted with my beloved silver (I don't know why, but I just love to spray paint stuff silver!)
• Drilled holes and inserted 5/8" wooden rods from Home Depot, cut to size
• Covered backer board in leftover blue shantung from my bedroom curtains
• Spray painted everything silver, many, many coats with sanding and spackling trying to hide the holes where the rods were inserted.
• Gave up on spray paint on the sides, decided to hot glue a ribbon on the edge. 

 By some miracle I just happened to have enough length of the right thickness ribbon of  the PERFECT shade of blue to match the silk inside.  I guess some things are just meant to be.

The creepiest crawlie!

WARNING:  You are about to see a close encounter of the spidery kind.  Quick, avert your eyes and skip on to the next post if spiders are not your thing.

this guy was super fast and I was frantically following it around with the camera, kind of close, to get a Macro mode photo.  At one point it got a little annoyed; here it's definitely looking right at me and sort of menacing the camera with it's chelicerae (the blue mouth parts).  I believe it's commonly known as the "Bold Jumping Spider".  It was pretty cool, but looking at it now is kind of giving me the creeps!

Dental Origami

We have a great dentist, he's skilled, pragmatic, and funny (which is important since he has to do 95% of the talking while he's got his fingers my mouth).  My only gripe with the dentist is how he sends the bills for payment. He mails a standard letter size (8.5 x 11 inches ) bill statement with a return envelope only 3.5 x 6.5 inches.

 I simply cannot make myself just cut a check and put it into the return envelope with no indication of an account number or something to connect the check to my bill.  So, I try to take the tri-folded statement and simply shorten it to fit into the 6.5" wide envelope.  No dice, because, of course, it's too tall now, so yet another fold to make it fit into the 3.5 inch high envelope. By this time the bill has been folded multiple times and it's getting kind of bulky.
As I am doing all this folding and stuffing I'm thinking  "sheesh, I've got to do freakin origami just to pay the dental bill". Which then lead me to create this message for my dentist.

 I am highly tempted to do this with the next bill I get with the too small return envelope.

The Hopeless Handypeople Strike Again!

We went a couple of rounds with the dishwasher recently.  It was doing a crappier job than usual cleaning the dishes, the glasses were getting opaque with hard water build up and then they started coming out with soap granules on them after MULTIPLE CYCLES!  It was clear at this point that something had to be done, this would not stand, not handwashing, oh noooo!
So we put on our figurative gloves and entered the ring, first we determined that the pump was indeed running and inspected the clear drain hose for signs of blockage.

After determining that while the pump was running, no water seemed to be exiting the machine and the drain line looked clear.  We next set about investigating the underbelly of the beast. 

nothing obviously wrong. For good measure we back-flushed the drain line, which seemed to clear.  We replaced everything, bandaged our bloody knuckles and ran it successfully a couple of times.  The third time was NOT the charm, dammit.....still not draining.

Round 1 goes to The Dishwasher

Literally, rinse and repeat.  This time we did the smart thing, super handypeople that we are, and flushed the drain line in the actual direction of flow, VOILA, lots of slimy fish skin popped out, and then the satisfying sound of water draining quite normally, each and every time we ran it.  Happy dance, happy dance.

Round 2 goes to The Hopeless HandyPeople

Getting Crafty Again

The weather outside is getting cooler and the urge to nest is growing. We recently splurged on a new flatscreen TV, which necessitated moving all the living room furniture around and re-purposing a shelf unit to hold the TV. One of the attractive features of a flatscreen TV is the clean, streamlined look, which was completely spoiled by the tangled mess of cords we had to hook up to it.

I really like this shelf unit we got from IKEA a while ago, but the see-through shelves did nothing to disguise all those ugly cords, so it was time to get crafty!

We already have a red/black Poang chair (also from IKEA), which has bright red cushions, I wanted a little more red in the room, but didn't want to clash with the existing colors. This book by Alice Hoffman had the perfect combo of colors, so off we went to the fabric store with one of the chair cushions, the book and a little pumpkin for inspiration.

After much deliberation and consultation with an exceedingly patient Craig (who usually totally hates the fabric store), we found several suitable fabrics in the desired colors from JoAnns (I was a little skeptical, as JoAnns doesn't always have the best selection of "upholstery fabric" on hand). Onward we went to Home Depot, where a super friendly clerk helped us select and cut to size a 1/4" piece of plywood to the dimensions of the shelf unit.

Once again, Craig was a trooper and helped me layout the locations of all the shelves on the back plane. We also cut a couple of holes for the cords to poke through from the components to the back. The next step was using spray adhesive to adhere the fabric to the back plane in an alternating pattern of yellow, orange and red.

The spray adhesive seemed a little weak to hold everything together long term, so I used the glue gun to adhere strips of black ribbon to all the areas where the fabric joined. This also has the additional benefit of camouflaging minor misalignment of the fabric edges where they line up with the shelf edges.

Attaching the back plane to the shelf was easy as pie with a staple gun and VOILA, no more ugly cords to detract from the clean lines of the flatscreen.

How to tell when it's really hot out

it gets really hot here in Winters (which is kind of funny given the name of this little town), so hot we think 90 really isn't that bad. We have become like the Eskimos who have something like 22 names for snow, similarly we have many names for degrees of hotness, such as: superhot (90-95), double sun hot (95-100), based on the double ringed sun graphic in the Sac Bee indicating a really hot day), surface of the sun hot (>100) and for the very worst days: center of the sun hot (>105).

We have an indoor/outdoor thermometer mounted in the kitchen, but sometimes I need a little independent verification of just how darn hot it really is out there, so I have devised this technique to test the actual outdoor temperature:

Bathroom Redo Done

the "much longer than it should've taken" bathroom redo is done!
just in time for the family visit and BBQ.

What did I learn?

• telling myself "just 30 minutes" can, most of the time, get me started
• I don't like wood stain, especially the kind with polyurethane already added, it's just a sticky mess
• grand schemes quickly bite the dust when matched to this worker's skill set and strength
• sometimes good enough just has to be (even when it isn't really)
• your friends and family really don't care what the bathroom looks like and your enemies shouldn't be in your home anyway

Minor Miracle

this morning I was quietly eating oatmeal and reading the paper when I caught sight of a little finch outside the window, as I glanced over I was startled to realize he was actually a zebra finch, the very same type as those in the aviary. My slowly awakening morning brain took a moment to make the connection and then I ran outside to see a big gaping hole in the aviary. Most of the birds were still inside, only 2 missing. As I was inspecting the hole, one of the little escapees was clearly very interested in getting back inside and kept flying around and peeping back and forth with his buddies.

I was torn between immediately fixing the hole to prevent more escapees or trying to net the fugitive. I opted to fix the hole and figured it was a lost cause to catch him. Somewhat dejected I went back inside to finish breakfast. As I was eating I once again noticed him really focused on getting back inside and he seemed especially interested in the little door I usually put the food bowl in. At that point I was feeling quite sorry for him and decided to risk propping the food door open to see if he would go back in. Well, no more that 60 seconds after I went back in the house he popped right back inside and started happily preening, inspecting his sleeping nest and peeping with relief to this buddies. I quickly closed the little door as my heart was just bursting with joyful feelings at this minor miracle, he's happy, his buddies are happy and I'm happy!!

Rocking on

DH has been making good use of his spring break from teaching. The man has probably moved several tons of rock by himself in the last week alone!

He called me from the rockyard to ask what kind of rocks I wanted;

me: "the brown ones"

DH: "they're all brown, honey, they're rocks!"

me: "just don't get the gray ones, get the brownest ones."

DH: long sigh "OK, what size?"

me: thinking out loud "oven size is probably too big, toaster size is too small, how about several the size of the microwave?"

DH: "yes, dear"

God, how I love this man!!

The dogs are checking out the placement of the "microwave size" pee mail boxes. And Max, fancy boy, you just gotta love a dog who stays on the path IN HIS OWN BACKYARD!

with all the big rocks in and several days of spring break left, DH proceeded to move a couple more tons of rocks into the backyard. These are much smaller, but no less heavy in mass quantities. All the smaller areas are filled in now, only the large main area remains.

and now for the shocking conclusion to the weekend activities...........

The neighbors painted their house BRIGHT PURPLE! Of course, I am perturbed by this glowing color, it's so bright it actually hurts. So, I'm outside working with DH when the neighbor pokes his head over the fence to ask me how I like the color, well, what the heck am I supposed to say. First of all, I really don't know this guy at all, they have lived there for well over a year and this is the first time I've every talked to him. So our first exchange of pleasantries is me trying to be diplomatic and saying things like, "Wow, that's really a bold choice" and "to each his own", which anyone who's not a complete dumb bunny can interpret as "I hate the color and what the hell were you thinking, buddy". I'm not sure he will ever speak to me again, hee hee.

rock & roll in the backyard

this weekend we completed the PVC piping, the stub ups are now ready for the drip irrigation hose which we will lay in after the landscaping fabric goes down.

Craig picked up the big rocks I requested to add a little contour interest to what would otherwise be a pretty flat rectangular area.

and here he is sweating to get them into the exact right position, carefully supervised by Tex.
and I am very happy to report that the desert willow tree we planted is in fact, alive!

Guest Bathroom demo completed

The demolition part of the bathroom makeover is complete. We removed the giant mirror as I want something with a little more style and we removed the basic, boring medicine cabinet just because demo is fun and there is really no need for a medicine cabinet in the guest bathroom, it only encourages guests to be nosy : )
Then a trip to the local hardware store where I asked the usually very helpful clerk for a "yellow handled tile breaker chisel, like they use on TV", he gave me a blank stare and said "um, we don't have anything like that here, ma'am", as I was walking away I swear I could here them laughing. So, off we went to the big box store, where, of course, they had exactly what I wanted (you can see it in the background). Onward to taking the sink out using my fun new tool. I must say it looks much easier on TV, my poor little forearms were really aching after this relatively small job. I may have to get in shape at the gym just to keep up with the house projects.taking the tile back splash out really messed up the drywall.

so we had to replace some patches, once again I am reminded that this is why most people hire professionals for these kind of jobs. This was a frustrating pain in the patootie, as on our first try the wall board wasn't properly braced and actually moved when I poked it. This necessitated a couple of hours of careful measuring, sawing and adding some support pieces behind the wall. The biggest pain was getting the support pieces in by myself while working in a really tight space and making sure not to mess up the electrical wiring running through these studs. Done and done!!
my home improvement reference book says to do the mudding in 3 stages;

1. mud and tape, let dry
2. mud a little more to even everything out, let dry
3. mud a final time to feather the patch out to match existing, dry and sand smooth

this is all well and good, except when your patch is grossly uneven with the wall, I did step 2 about 4 time before I felt OK about it. Also, we had to patch over all the tears where the big mirror glue tore holes in the drywall paper. I'm kind of nervous about the next step of using the spray for the the final "knock down" texture, after all this mudding and sanding it will be such a shame if the texture looks weird and just doesn't match the original.