Bell Siphon the Parts List

Folks have been asking for parts lists and drawings on how to put this together. So Ive (finally!) put together a parts list, complete with links to the product pages for these bits on the Home Depot website.

Bernoulli Standpipe

• 1" slip to 3/4" male pipe thread (MPT) adapter - $0.77
• 3/4 in. Sch. 40 PVC Pressure Slip x FPT Adapter - $0.44
• 5.5 inch length of 3/4 in. PVC Schedule 40 Pipe - $1.97 for 10 feet, $1.15 for 2 feet

Inexpensive Bulkhead Fitting

• 3/4 in. Male Terminal Adapter - $0.46
• [A 1 inch diameter hole drilled through the bottom of your grow bed]
• #18 O-ring - $2.27 [for Box of 10]
• 3/4 in. Female Conduit Adapter - $0.50

Coanda Discharge

• 5 inch length of 3/4 in. PVC Schedule 40 Pipe (already bought)
• 3/4 in. PVC Sch. 40 45-Degree S x S Elbow - $0.62
• 5 inch length of 3/4 in. PVC Schedule 40 Pipe (already bought)

Auto-siphon "Bell"

• 10 inch length of 2 in. PVC Sch. 40 Pipe - $3.69 for 2 feet
• 2 in. PVC Cap - $0.98

Media Guard

• 11 inch length of 3 in. PVC Sch. 40 Pipe - $5.95 for 2 feet

All told, the parts add up to about $20 if youre just building a single Bell Siphon. If you build two of them, they come in at $14 apiece. Or if you get a bunch of friends together to build 10 of these, the price comes down to $9 apiece (because youll buy the 10 foot long lengths of 2-inch and 3-inch pipe - economies of scale).

Now that youve got the parts, heres how to put it together:


Small system I put together for a Feb 2012 science fair

Installing the Bulkhead fitting (the grey conduit bits and O-ring)

Assembling the Standpipe, Bell, and Media Guard

Different Discharge Options (I like the 45 degree or Coanda Discharge)

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12 Installing a Float Valve

Float Valve Hardware
It isnt fun going to my garden and finding the pump grinding away in a mere 1-2 inches of water. When the water in the sump gets that low, you no longer get adequate water circulation in the system. Plus, its hard on the pump.

I spent hours trying to figure out how to modify a standard toilet float valve to add water to my sump to replace evaporation. I may yet figure it out. Or you may figure it out and explain it to me. But using toilet bowl hardware to regulate my water levels is still a mystery.

Luckily, I have a smart mother who has lived much of her life in desert conditions. When I explained the problem to her, she said, “You need a float valve like they have in swamp coolers, to replace the water that evaporates.”

Oh.

I live in a humid climate where there are no swamp coolers. So no one sells the bits to replace swamp cooler parts. The big hardware stores don’t even list these parts when you do online searches, because no one in a moist climate would need to buy such a thing, and they stock them in dry climates in such quantity that there’s no reason to allow dry climate folks to buy them online.

There’s a flaw in there, somewhere. It turns out it is possible to buy such bits via a site like eBay, once you know what you’re looking for. Better yet, have a friend in a dry climate buy the bits and ship them. I assume fine aquaponics stores everywhere will start stocking them soon, as well. In the mean time, you can search for "aquarium float valve" on a site like eBay and find something to do the trick. The float valve itself will run you about $15. The tubing and bibb to connect to your system will be additional.

The way it works is the plastic bulb floats on the top of the water. As long as the water is high enough, the float keeps the valve closed. But once the water level drops, water will flow in (from a special bibb and tubing you connect to your faucet or some other water source, like a water barrel). Easy peasy.

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Installing a Residential Refrigerator in an RV Travel Trailer

Here is the video of the process of installing an off-the-shelf residential refrigerator in an RV.  The old refrigerator was leaking ammonia and needed to be taken out right away. Once that was done we decided to replace this fridge with a residential off the shelf model that will only run on 120/110v. The cost savings is significant, however, we will not be able to run it while on the road or if we do not have a plug-in where we are camping. For us that is not a factor as we always stay at state campgrounds and normally do not travel more than a few hours. We can cool it down at home, and unplug it for the trip, and plug it back in when we arrive.



The residential refrigerators actually work better and cool faster than the RV models and, in this case, I only paid less than $250 for the project. If I were to have replaced the cooling unit on the existing fridge it would have been about $600 and for a new fridge it was over $1300.

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Installing a tank window

I installed 2 viewing windows in my 1000 gallon stock tank for the aquaponic system.

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Geodesic Dome Greenhouse Part 12 THE END

This is the final video about construction the aquaponic geodesic dome greenhouse. Dont worry, there are still more videos about the aquaponic system and other projects were working on!



Hi Everyone.  I’m Rob Torcellini from Bigelow Brook Farm.  This is the last video on the series on building the geodesic dome.  I wanted to thank you for watching all of these.  I’ve had a great time of the last year building this.  Learned a lot, made a few mistakes along the way, but overall, it came out pretty good!

I’m planning on do a short series of videos about how I set up the aquaponics system inside the dome.

I also had this camera shoot about 1500 photos of the entire project that will be in a time-lapsed video.

Again, thanks for watching and we’ll see you soon!


It’s starting to get a bit warm in here so it’s time to add some vents.  I started by building frames that would fit loosely inside various areas around the dome.  There will be a total of five vents and each section will be able to swing open and closed.

Next I removed the existing polycarbonate glazing and then attached the new frame to the dome with a couple of standard door hinges.  In order to get the glazing to fit back into its spot properly, I had to cut it down a bit so that it wouldn’t hit against the hinges or the surrounding polycarbonate when the vent was closed.

I simply held the polycarbonate into the new frame and screwed it into place with the washer-backed screws and the vent was done.  The remaining 4 vents installed the same way, but just a bit trickier for 2 of them since they were 15 feet off the ground.

All of the exterior joints needed to be sealed to help prevent the rain from leaking in between each joint.  I used a clear polyurethane tape which is used as a protective tape on the edge of aircraft wings and wind turbines.  If it’s good enough to hold on to a wing at 500 miles per hour in the rain, it just may be good enough on the dome.  It was easy to apply by just removing the backing and pressing it down with a j-roller.  Once it bonds with the polycarbonate, it’s basically impossible to remove.  After covering each joint I drove a washer backed screw through the tape and polycarbonate.

Wherever there is a vent opening, I applied the tape to the polycarbonate and cedar which created a channel for the water to drain from.  I’m not sure how well the tape will bond to the wood…only time will tell.

Applying the tape on the upper areas of the dome proved to be a bit trickier. I found it to be unnerving being up there with the risk of sliding over the side or dropping through a section of polycarbonate.  I’m happy to say there were no trips to the hospital for this project!

I wanted to use some of the logs that I cut down last year from the site in a couple of areas of the dome and for grow beds for the aquaponic system.  My neighbor stopped by with his WoodMeiser saw mill and milled roughly 1500 feet of white pine into 1 inch and half inch thick boards.  It was a great way to save some money instead of buying lumber and we got to use some logs that would have gone to waste.

Inside the dome I covered the walls with some of the half-inch pine boards.  Each piece is roughly fitted, measured for the proper angle, and cut to size.  Sometimes the pieces had to be cut a few times to fit properly.  It was a very tedious process cutting all the angles, but the end result looks great!

In the shed area, I only filled the walls with one inch of foam to save a little money.  The rest of the wall cavities are filled with regular fiberglass insulation.  The boards on these walls installed much quicker since there are long and have square cuts!

The ice and water shield held up well through the winter but it was time to shingle the roof.  A friend of mine volunteered his crew to help out which was much appreciated.  Even for a professional builder, there was a lot of pondering on how to lay the shingles on the dome area.

On the south side of the greenhouse, I leveled and planted timothy grass.  Eventually, this area will used as a small orchard.  A local arborist was more than happy to get rid of their wood chips so I was able to spread this on the remaining areas that didn’t have any top soil.

The shed area and dome knee-wall is sided with cedar shakes.  They require little maintenance and they help to give a contemporary building a little New England feel.  I also added a small awning over the main entrance to make the building less….boring.

That’s about it.  There will still be more videos in the future.  If you have questions or comments, please leave them in the comments section below and I’ll try to address them in future videos.  Thanks for watching!

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4 Installing Bulkheads

Exploded view of Bulkhead Components
You have to do something to let water drain from the grow beds.

If I wanted to just have a simple flood and drain system, I could pump water in the grow bed for a while, then let the water gush or dribble out a hole in the bottom.

But as soon as I want to control that water in any way, I need to install a bulkhead.

The bulkhead I use for the 365 Aquaponics System is constructed from inexpensive PVC pieces you can buy at any hardware store. I use ¾” PVC pipe and fittings. If using metric plumbing bits, the equivalent size is 19 mm.
For some inexplicable reason, plumbing bits in the US are designed with a rounded edge. So for the actual part that penetrates the tank, I use PVC bits designed for electrical conduit.

The male PVC coupling bit is screwed down through the thickness of the tank. Once the coupling is tight, PVC will seat itself against the plastic tank wall in a nearly water-tight fashion. Slip a #18 O-ring around the male threads, then thread the female fitting as tight as you can by hand. The O-ring will make this bulkhead water tight, given that none of these bulkheads needs to withstand more than a foot or 300mm of water pressure.

Credit for this bulkhead concept goes to Richard Kinch, who details this bulkhead design at "An Improvised PVC Bulkhead Fitting for Liquid Storage Tanks."

Here’s a short video clip showing installation of a bulkhead.

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Adding Automatic Vent Openers

I finally get to work on some of the more exciting things in the dome.  Automation!!!  I love being lazy!




A few years ago I made up some vent openers which use windshield wiper motors. They work well for the small greenhouse, but the frames have had some structural problems in strong winds.  For the dome greenhouse I’m using linear actuators to operate the vents.  The actuators have a lot more lifting strength and can withstand stronger wind forces.

To attach the actuator to the window frame, I took a piece of angle iron and made a cross brace.  The brace will fit about half-way up the vent.  I cut off a section from each end so that there were tabs that would be used for bolting the brace into the face of the vent frame.  I then welded a couple of tabs into the bracket which provided the connection linkage for the actuator.  After rounding over the edges and cleaning up some of the welds, the bracket was attached to the vent frame.

The rest of the braces are standard steel bar stock that are bent at slight angles.  There are four of them which go from the greenhouse struts to the back side of the actuator.  Because of the odd angles of the dome, a few of braces need to be bent as compound angles.  If this was a traditional vent the angles would have been much simpler bends.

I temporarily bolt the top brackets to the back side of the actuator and mark where the brackets connect into the dome’s strut.  It wasn’t necessary, but I set the actuator to be level when it was closed, simply for aesthetics.  I drilled out the first hole in the dome strut and attached the bracket.  Once the pieces start to hold themselves in place, it’s much easier to mark and attach the remaining brackets.

The bottom brackets are marked and installed the same way.  It’s just a bit more critical to make sure they are placed properly so that the vent is pulled completely closed when the actuator is fully retracted.  Once all four brackets are secured, the pyramid shape from the triangulation creates a sturdy mount for the actuator.

Now that it’s fully assembled, a quick test is in order.  All the pieces are cleaned and painted to give the system a nice new look!  Once the paint is dried, it’s a quick reassembly and then time to it get wired to the controller.

A regular two-conductor wire is used for each actuator and each vent opener has a line that runs back to the controller.  The actuators have built in limit switches which stop the motors automatically.  To open and close the vent, you just have to reverse the polarity of the power in the wire.

The thermostat controller is a prototype six-relay control unit that can be programmed to set each vent to open on independent temperatures.  The unit can be programmed to sample the temperature at predetermined intervals and also delay the change between relays so that all the vent motors aren’t running at the same time.  This keeps the unit from drawing too much power all at once.  Each relay can also be disabled and forced into an open or closed position.  There are more details about the thermostat in the description area of this video.

Thanks for watching.  Don’t forget to “thumbs up” this video if you want to see more like it in the future and feel free to leave comments too.

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8 The Durso Standpipe

The very first Durso Standpipe™ ever made
Say you want to have a bed that is constant flood, always filled with water. Water comes in through the hose. Water drains out via a standpipe. Very easy to understand.

But if you’ve ever used a simple standpipe, you know it can be crazy loud. I experimented early on with a constant flood hydroponics system. Over time the standpipe started to gurgle noisily. It was terrible.

It was so bad, I was desperate to quiet the standpipe. I came across mention of a "Durso Siphon." Turns out this isnt a siphon at all, its a modified standpipe that Richard Durso developed to quiet the 1500 gph flowing through the 180g Reef Aquarium in his dining room. Richard describes the reason he was driven to develop his standpipe design at his website:

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"The aquarium came with a perforated pipe (a tube with hundreds of holes in it) inside the overflow chamber. This allowed the water to flow into the pipe quickly. However, this also meant that the water level in the overflow chambers was very low — about 3 inches (8 cm) deep.

"With such a low water level, water entering the overflow chamber had about a 20 inch (50 cm) drop! This sounded like Niagara Falls with about 1,500 gallons (5700 liters) per hour enter the overflow chambers. Secondly, each chamber made a gargling noise — sounded like a toilet flushing 24 hours a day. It was so loud my wife could not sleep. I had to fix it fast!

• Little to no water fall.
• Whisper quiet, no splashing or gurgling.
• Each chamber becomes a refugium.
• Chambers will not drain in a power outage.
• Pipe is self priming."

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If you want to convert one of your grow beds to simple constant flood or to floating raft, here’s a quick video clip showing how it is done.

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