Building a growing on/QT facility

[zuesfaber]

Hi All , I will be building a growing on/QT facility on my patio , the idea is that I have two exisitng walls at right angles ( kitchen and conservatory) to build against so only need to build two walls to form a rectangle. The internal size I am thinking of is 6' long x 3.5' wide x 4' deep roughly 630 gallons. I want to have the inside fibreglassed and will use a 2" bottom drain serving an Eazy pod with an Oase aquamax eco 5000 returning the water via a 9w UV. I want to make the construction as cheap as possible as we may not be staying in this house long term. I will be having the brick work done by a builder , my question is would a single skin of normal house bricks tied into the house ( somehow !) be strong enough to hold the water or will I have to have a block work wall built and then house bricks on the outside to match the house?. Any thoughts or comments would be most welcome.

[carlejo]

You could get some railway sleepers and fix them to floor(is it concrete ?).

Cut them in half so you don't have to buy as many, fix them with 'L' brackets to wall as well and stagger them so they are not drectly stacked on top of each other, if you know what I mean(you use less of them again. Cover outside/inside in marine ply and fibreglass ........ that's how I would do it personlly, HTH.

[Gazza]

Hi,

I am not a builder so could not comment on if the single skin of bricks will work hopefully someone will know but its a good idea to make it as strong as you can as that will be holding a tone and half of water and you wouldn't want that going over the patio

If you can i would try to put something else on the filters as you mat struggle with just a pod depending on what you want to do with the tank as i have a 500gln tank and run a pod and shower and it works a treat

[carlejo]

Pretty sure that railway sleepers would do the trick, as long as the walls you're fixing to are sound...... better insulation as well with several inches of thick wood. You could also insulate both inside/outside of vat before glassing as well.The pressure is all on the floor, not on the walls.......look at the temp vats made out of plastic at the shows, how do they hold such an amount of water

[carlejo]

A bit like this

http://www.railwaysleeper.com/The%20Bea ... 20pond.htm

I would put down 2 long lengths of timber, make sure they're square and fix them to floor and existing wall.
Then place 2 shorter lengths directly on top of the ends of the long ones,running in opposite direction, also creating a gap. This way you wouldn't need as many timbers.
Then place another 2 longer lengths directly on top of short ones, fix down, so on so forth.
The gaps could be insulated and then both sides (internal/external) fix with ply, and then glassed

In effect, it would look like putting you're fingers together, interlocking them

[zuesfaber]

Thanks very much guys for your advice , some good ideas there , and I will have to plan and think about things a little longer before going ahead.

[StuW]

emmandaj used single skin 4" blocks on his 500 gallon Q/T might be worth speaking to him and have a look at what he has done. Biggest concern might be damp if you are going to have one side of the pond actually against the house wall. I remember Thorny mentioning this to Andy when we were doing his. Hope this helps.

Stuart