Aquaponic Greenhouse

OBI Webinar

Presented During the Open Building Institute webinars series of 2016-2017.

Presenation

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Workshop Announcement

short link: https://bit.ly/2Aeoim2

Aquaponic greenhouse.

Aquaponic greenhouse.

Aquaponic greenhouse.

Genealogy

• Aquaponic Greenhouse Genealogy
• 2015 Workshop Results and the announcement of the 2016 workshop - https://www.openbuildinginstitute.org/portfolio/aquaponic-greenhouse-workshop-2/

Development Template

CAD and other technical details are at Aquaponic Greenhouse Development

Promo Video Prior to Build

Review this to compare the reality.

Open Source Aquaponic Greenhouse from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo.

Designs

You can see all the technical design assets at Aquaponic Greenhouse Development

• Master Google Drive - Modular Greenhouse System - complete designs in Sweet Home 3D as well as exhaustive instructionals are found for the greenhouse structure. Includes BOMs.
• G-Towers
• Worm Tower Calculations
• Oyster Mushrooms. Oyster_Mushrooms#Automation from Peter McCoy
• Chicken House CAD
• IPM for Aquaponics
• Water Elf IoT
• Compost Tea
• Water Control System and other details
• New: 3/23/16 development of Greenhouse Nursery Module

Note: you can download any of the above designs, and if you would like to contribute to a design and have it considered for addition to OSE's work, you can do a Pull Request.

Concept

Overall

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Wall Install

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There are more details on roof attachment and link to hydronic heating design here. More details on the order of installing the modules, as well as alignment - are:

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BOM

See designs above. A lot of those have BOMs.

• Polycarbonate - like at Menards - [1] but needed longer sheets for the roof, so got them from Regal Plastics in Kansas City. Regal is located throughout the Midwest USA - [2]
• Growing towers - [3]

CAD

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Development Template

See Aquaponic Greenhouse Development Template

Followup Discussion

Sign up to OSE Workshops Facebook Group. You can also sign up for our newsletter here - OSEMail.

Results

Factor e Farm

Pictures on Google Drive - https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B7pE5Y9PpJCXWDhaNkNUbHc5ZVE and Facebook Post.

Videos on YouTube

Here is a total of 60 videos from the build on a YouTube playlists. There is a number of build timelapses, aerials, interviews, promo video, etc.

Feedback from Peter McCoy of Radical Mycology

• Integrated Pest Management + Vertical Towers + Soil Food Web - needs sound - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHi3tLJLSF0
• Time Lapses - from Scott - all in master playlist - [4]
• Aerial Drones - uploading, will send followup when done

• Interviews - from Jonathan - found in the overall playlist - [5]
• Pictures and Mother Earth News article - from Stan?

Other Participants

• Facebook pages with posts on the workshop -
• YouTube or other Video and Media Channels -

Workshop Followup Form

This form captures documentation from workshop participants, such as picture uploads, videos, FB pages, other media uploads, suggestions, and feedback. The feedback is confidential. While form results are visible to the public, your name is optional.

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Other Feedback and Data

We also have other simple forms for Feedback of all sorts, such as comments, technical review, suggestions, etc; and Data Collection - any data point, such as time of build, effort, measurements, costs, observations, or anything that is a useful data point for further progress on any of the Global Village Construction Set machines, their submodules, related workshops, and other product designs. Anything related to creating the open source economy - the mission of OSE - is game.

• These forms are Review Form
• and Data Collection, respectively.
• Internal folder for organization- [6]

Participants

• List - [7]

Logistics Survey

• [8]

Benchmarking

• Internal folder - [9]
• Spreadsheet of workshops - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1j6YMctEUoXG9jtQAmEcfIsanHE-fMtcEIbu33jsVygE/edit#gid=0

These organizations and courses are only the ones on the first page of google search results. It's likely that there are more players in the field.

MAIN LEARNINGS

Registration Fees

• Range from $95 for a basic 1-day course to $1995 for a 5-day course.
• They do not price the courses by number of days, but by depth/complexity of content. For example, the Aquaponic Greenhouse Source offers a 2-day intro course for $295 and a 4-day business course for $1195. The big money is in business/entrepreneur training.

Organizations

• All of these organizations are professional. They have huge greenhouses and produce commercially. They have years of experience with aquaponics as a business. They also have good facilities (classrooms, cafeterias, etc) or rent hotel conference rooms.
• Their entire business model revolves around aquaponics: most sell produce to big box stores and other businesses, many sell aquaponic technologies and offer consulting services.
• In one way or another, they all mention "competitors" on their websites and are aggressive in their marketing, Judging only by this, it appears that competition is fierce
• It also appears that some (unnamed) trainers and consultants make their students sign contracts stating that they will not teach nor consult in the 2-years after taking the course. (this is a great opportunity for OSE/OBI to break through this barrier)

Documentation

• The commercial aquaponics courses all include manuals and hundreds of pages of documentation.

CONCLUSION

• These are business people—some of then, if not most, come from the business world—and this is serious business for them.
• Although it must be noted, once again: they ONLY do this. We do a million other things.
• Great opportunity exists in opensourcing this black magic
• None of the players have vertical systems, which allow significantly higher productivity per area and give OSE/OBI a significant advantage.
• Our system has more components, and its integrated nature has more value to the home-scale aquaponics enthusiast
• OSE/OBI clearly has a unique value proposition, and currently nobody comes close to our level of systems integration

NOTES Notes from greenhouse workshop meeting:

Schedule greenhouse workshop meeting: discuss offering/positioning + price (22 plants sf, focus on home scale but for real, not hobby, grow food in a small scale, permaculture + aquaponics, aim at long-hairs - given our facilities) Early bird: 375 / Standard: 475

Links

• Full CAD of Greenhouse 1 in SH3D - [10]
• Seed Eco-Home - includes CAD of aquaponics structure
• Duckweed-Ponics
• Aquaponics Log
• Aquaponic Greenhouse Workshop 2018
• Future Aquaponic Greenhouse Workshop Interest + https://goo.gl/forms/g4saLdO1daLpjNQ13

Technical

• Aquaponic Greenhouse Pond