Sustainability Store

Monday, August 5, 2013

DIY Solar Panels



In this section I will discuss how to make your own solar panels including an in-depth financial analysis of an off-grid battery bank versus a grid-tie inverter as well as methods to determine insolance for your area as well as calculate wattage per area for your planned system.

My system utilizes recycled windows picked up for free from Craigslist as well as photovoltaic cells and grid-tie inverters picked up from Amazon. This blog entry will focus on how you can build your own photovoltaic system on a budget.

Thank you for visiting. This section is currently under construction. As you can see, this website covers several topics. If you would like to see this section expanded next, please use the voting poll to the right. Thanks!

DIY Lye

In this section I will discuss the process for making lye at home. Lye can be used for making soaps, cleaning products, and bio-diesel. The process in simple and inexpensive.

The following is a list of materials required for this project:

- ash acquired from burning hardwood (700 or higher on the Janka hardness scale e.g. Maple, Cedar, Cherry, Oak, Ash, Beech, and Walnut. Not softwoods like Fir, Pine, Alder, Juniper, etc)
- 2 buckets
- straw
- river rock
- rainwater (not tap water, surface water, or well water due to dissolved mineral content)

Optional:
- a potato (to roughly check pH)
- pH meter, test strips, or aquarium test kit
- bulkhead fitting and ball valve with inorganic gaskets
- 2 bricks

Note: It is important to not use metals or organic components is the lye bucket as these materials will quickly corrode from the lye.

Thank you for visiting. This section is currently under construction. As you can see, this website covers several topics. If you would like to see this section expanded next, please use the voting poll to the right. Thanks!

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Aquaponics

Part 1 - What is Aquaponics and How is it Better than Soil Gardening and Hydroponics?

Aquaponics is the union of Hydroponics (growing plants without soil) and Aquaculture (raising fish). The concept dates back thousands of years to ancient Egypt and the Aztecs, who built floating islands for growing crops in canals where they raised fish. Ancient far East cultures, like China and Thailand, raised Koi in their rice paddies. The Creole peoples in the Southern United States introduced Crawfish to their rice paddies because it offered an additional food source for the farmer - a practice that was later picked up in China. What do all of these farming practices have in common? They all use raw marine waste as the sole nutrient source for the plants. When the conditions are right, bacterial cultures convert the raw ammonia waste into Nitrites (Nitrosoma sp. bacteria) then into Nitrates (Nitrospira sp. and Nitrobacter sp. bacteria) which are readily available for plants to use. These same bacteria are responsible for the Nitrogen Cycle in soil, but it is much easier to create the ideal conditions (pH, temperature, available oxygen) for the bacteria in water. While it is possible to measure soil temperature and pH the process is time consuming and you can never be sure that the sample collected for testing represents the whole grow bed. Poorly distributed buffers like limestone can easily create pH hot spots and the shade from the growing plants can fluctuate the soil/root temperatures. Furthermore, oxygen concentration in soil is exceedingly difficult to control. One accidental over-watering can deplete the soil of oxygen, kill off the active bacteria cultures, and drown the plant (plants require oxygen at the roots to exchange nutrients). In aquaponics and hydroponics, the water is heavily aerated (introducing dissolved oxygen) and circulated to ensure a uniform pH and temperature, which can be monitored continuously by digital meters; pH can also be verified using simple aquarium test kits.

In a soil-less grow, nutrients are available as the plants need them. In soil, time-release fertilizers are used to ensure that nutrients are available until the next application. However, these time-release fertilizers often run off during the next rain and are a huge contributor to polluted water supplies. Fertilizers intended for hydroponics should not be used in soil because they will drain off before they even have a chance to be metabolized by the Nitrifying bacteria in the soil. Plants will stress during the "feast or famine" presented by nutrient overdose, followed by zero nutrients until the next watering.

So, by now you may see the benefit of soil-less over soil gardening, but you may be asking "why not hydroponics?" The simple answer... hydroponics nutrients are bottled in a salt form to ensure shelf-life rather than their whole, organic, form. In the absence of oxygen (e.g. a bottle of fertilizer on a shelf), Denitrifying bacteria such as pseudomonas sp., alkaligenes sp., and bacillus sp., would break down whole organic matter and release Nitrogen gas - causing the fertilizer to ferment. To avoid this, fertilizer companies ship only salt-based fertilizers or organic fertilizers with an antimicrobial agent (which also hinders the Nitrifying bacteria in your system when you need it most). Salt-based fertilizers must first be broken down from their salt form before they can be used. Then, these salts accumulate in your system which limits the plants ability to uptake water and nutrients. To combat this, hydroponics growers frequently replace their water - resulting in a costly loss of nutrients, wasted water, and environmental pollution. With this frequent water change, a hearty bacteria culture does not have time to establish. Aquaponics suffers from none of these setbacks, because nutrients are continuously produced fresh and ready for the plants to use. The key is the bacteria culture. Like a fine wine, an aquaponics system needs to age to become established. As the system ages, the bacteria culture grows and becomes more robust. As the bacteria culture grows it is able to process more waste and produce more nutrients... meaning it can support more plants or plants with higher nutrient demands. A well-establish aquaponics system can produce roughly 30% higher yield and 30% faster growth rate than a hydropinics system (which is already 50% faster than soil-based growing).

Food for Thought: The most common fertilizers are potassium nitrate and ammonium nitrate. Both are harmful if swallowed/inhaled/ingested and if they come in contact with skin they should be thoroughly washed away. Both are most commonly made from chemically processed salts extracted from mined minerals. Both are used in making explosives. Both have extensive handling and disposal instructions. Fish poop... well, that's already in the rivers, and as gross as it may sound, is perfectly safe to drink. Which would you rather have traces of in your crops?

Stay Tuned for More Updates! Like. Share. Comment. Post. Whatever you feel is right. More to come soon. Please vote on the poll to the right if this is the section you would like to see expanded next, thanks!

Thursday, May 24, 2012

DIY Vegetable Oil

Vegetable oil can be used for many purposes, including cooking, making margarine, or making soap. Used vegetable oil can be saved to make bio-diesel. Due to the time involved in making the oil, and the inherent value of the fresh oil it is not economical to make oil just for the purpose of making bio-diesel. Instead, it is recommended that used oil be washed before converting to bio-diesel. But that's another topic. Let's get on to making your own vegetable oil!

 There are commercial scale ways to make vegetable oil, but this blog post focuses on a do-it-yourself method using a hand-powered oil press. I use the Piteba oil press. It can be used to press oils from sunflower seeds, soybeans, canola, safflower, walnuts, almonds, and many other nut and bean sources.

To set up the oil press, you first need to create a funnel for the seeds using a plastic bottle, as shown in the picture to the left. You'll also need to set up a jar to collect the oil. The oil press comes with a small lamp, but you will need to provide the lamp oil. I've included a link below. Colored lamp oil works best because it burns hotter... it also looks cooler! The press works by heating up the seeds just before they are slowly pressed through a small opening at the end. As the crank is turned, oil comes out of the opening above the jar, and a dry mash is expelled from the end. This dry mash makes a great high-protein food source for chickens or can be used for cooking. I prefer to use sunflower seeds with the shells included because the shells are high in protein (which is good for the chickens) and in terms of oil-by-weight, it is not worth the extra cost to by pre-shelled seeds. This time of year (late spring) you can buy a 40 lb bag of seeds from PetCo or Fred Meyer for $30, or from the link below for $24, or you can find them in late Fall for as low as $17 for a 40 lb bag. A 40 lb bag will produce about 2 gallons of sunflower oil. At today's prices, that's about $0.09/oz, in the fall it drops to about $0.06/oz. Just for comparison, I've included a link to sunflower oil on Amazon, at $18.78 for 96 oz. Making it yourself saves around 50%... and you know exactly what went into it!
When you press your own oil, you will get some sediment in the oil. This will eventually settle out after a few days to a week, or you can "siphon" it through a rope. The oil will wick up the rope and down into a collection jar, leaving the sediment behind, as shown in the picture on the right.
If you choose you let your oil settle out over time, you can either siphon or pour the clean oil off the top or just use it as is. Personally, I like to use the sediment for oiling the grill, because it doesn't affect the flavor from the grill. If anything, it adds a pleasant smokey flavor. The picture to the right shows some sunflower oil that has separated after a few days. It has a beautiful golden color.
Making your own oil can be fun, rewarding, and cost effective. It's especially nice knowing exactly what went into your oil, knowing that you are saving the environment by eliminating the need to ship and package the oil, and you can experiment with a wide variety of nuts and seeds to see which oil you like best. So go give it a try. And remember, you can save your used oil to make bio-diesel. Even if you don't want to tackle the project of making your own bio-diesel, someone will buy the used oil from you for a decent price. I have seen used cooking oil selling from $1.80-$3.60/gallon.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Rainbarrels

Installing a rain barrel is an excellent way to ensure you have water in case of drought or emergency and also a way to reduce or eliminate your water bill if considered carefully. Just remember, rainwater collected from your roof can contain bacteria from bird or squirrel droppings and should be either boiled or filtered through a fine ceramic filter (0.7 micron or better) before drinking.

The first rule of building a rain barrel is: know that water flows down hill. This may seem obvious, but you would be surprised how many people think that just because they have 1500 lbs of water attached to a small hose or pipe that that water should just blast out of that hose with tremendous force and be able to reach any height. That's just not the case. If the water level in your barrels is not higher than your toilet tank, shower head, or washing machine faucet then you will not be able to use your rainwater for those purposes. I could explain the math, but it's easier to use an analogy: if you put a hose down to the bottom of a lake, water will not spray out the other end like a fire hydrant, no matter how heavy the lake is or how small the hose is. This is why we put rainbarrels up on blocks. It is easy to collect rainwater to water your garden or fill buckets (which can be used to wash clothes, fill fish tanks, etc), or fill a pool. For anything above the ground, you need to be more creative in your engineering. With that out of the way, let's go over how to build a simple rainbarrel setup.


The picture above shows my rainbarrels in progress. I wanted to wait to post this blog until they were complete, but this topic has been getting a lot of interest so I decided to put this up as a starting place. Note, I've already broken one of the first rules of rainbarrels by using white barrels.

Rule #2: Use a translucent barrel. The white barrels allow light to pass through, which can promote algae growth. I plan to correct this by painting the barrels. I plan to do a Super Mario theme, with "?" blocks underneath, bright green pipes on top, scenery from different levels on each of the barrels, and Super Mario figurines on top. Obviously, I'll post new pictures when this is complete.

The third rule is to use clean barrels. Typically, bung top barrels like these range from $20-$35 used and you can find them fairly clean. I found these barrels for $5 each and they had previously been used to store vegetable oil by a guy that was making biodiesel. The vegetable oil was sticky and exceedingly difficult to clean, so I just let it. I figures the oil would float, so it may never come out, and if it did then it's just vegetable oil. It's biodegradable and shouldn't do any harm. Either way, I would have preferred to use clean barrels.

Note that the barrels are connected at the bottom by a common line of 1" PVC pipe. I could have done direct connections from one barrel to the next, but then each barrel would need an "in" and an "out" at the bottom, resulting in more holes required, more material, and higher cost. I did splurge a little by adding ball valves between each of the barrels. This was done in case I need to add or remove barrels from the system (I will eventually add more barrels), I can do so without having to drain the whole system. However, I suppose it would have been cheaper and easier to just keep a 1" PVC cap on hand in case I need to plug a pipe while I am working on it.
You'll also need a connector that is 3/4" female garden hose thread on one end (to allow you to screw in the hose spigot) and is able to connect to your common PVC pipe (I recommend a 1" slip fit). There are many connectors that allow a swivel for screwing in the hose, but since you will be connecting a spigot (so once it is rotated in the correct position you will not need to rotate it again) I would avoid the swivel. The rubber seal used to allow the swivel action can be prone to leaking. And presumably, you will be storing water for a long time (throughout the summer), so leaking would be bad.
For my system, I decided to replace the downspout with a chain. It has a nice look and does a good job of getting the rain into the barrel without the mess of routing the downspout or finding/cutting the correct pipe lengths/bends.

Note: Despite some controversy over rainwater collection in Utah, Washington, and Colorado over the past decade, rainwater collection is now legal in all 50 states. However, this is not the case in all countries around the world. If rainwater collection is illegal in your area then I encourage you to stand up and fight for your right to put a bucket outside. Most public utilities would encourage rainwater collection, as it reduces their need to sanitize water to drinking standards.

Hopefully you've learned at least a couple things here, and maybe you're excited to build your own. Include your comments and questions below. Link to your rainbarrel photo album. I'd love to see new designs. Thanks!


Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Black Soldier Fly Composting Bin


Using a compost bin is an excellent way to reduce your garbage bill, keep waste out of landfills, and create beautifully rich soil for your gardens and planters, but with a few modifications we can turn a compost bin into a nutrient powerhouse that produces not only rich soil, but a rich "worm tea" as well as grubs that are a great protein source for chickens and fish in an aquaponics system.
The next step beyond a compost bin in a worm bin. By adding worms to your compost bin (typically red wigglers) you can speed up the composting process, and by adding a collection jar below the bin you can collect the nutrient rich "worm tea" that is produced from the decomposition process. The picture to the right shows some worm tea that was collected over a 24 hour period. This stuff works great as a fertilizer. This is your home made Miracle Grow. It can be diluted or sprayed directly on leaves or around roots, or it can be added directly to an aquaponics system. Beware, this stuff is really rich in nutrients. You want to be sure you do not overwhelm your aquaponics system with a lot of nutrients all at once, especially if you already have worms in your media beds or if your system is still young. As an aquaponics system matures, it will become more capable of processing large quantities of nutrients.
Worm bins are great, but you can still do better. With a few more modifications, you can convert your worm bin into a black soldier fly (BSF) bin. Black soldier flies have several advantages over worms, including the following:
  • Black soldier flies are faster at composting than worms
  • Black soldier flies excrete a pheromone that keeps away houseflies, maggots, bees, white flies, gnats, and other pests
  • Black soldier flies are able to compost dairy products, meat, fats and oils, grains, and citrus while worms cannot. 
  • It is generally recommended that your bury and turn a worm bin to prevent rodents and pests, while black soldier flies are so fast at composting that this is not necessary.
  • Worms require a temperature range of 54-84, while black soldier flies are fine at any temperature between freezing and 100 F.
  • Worms need to be harvested periodically because their castings are toxic to them.  Black soldier flies are self-harvesting!
Self harvesting you say? Yes! To understand how this works, let's take a look at the life cycle of a black soldier fly. Black soldier flies begin as as egg, that takes 102-105 hours to hatch. They emerge as a larvae that rapidly consumes all food available. A worm colony in a typical composting bin can consume about 15 lbs of food in a week. A black soldier fly colony in a similarly sized bin can consume 11 lbs PER DAY! After about 2 weeks the larvae reach maturity. If the temperature is not ideal or there is not enough food, they can take several months to mature. At this point, their mouth is replaced by an appendage that helps them move around better. Once they are mature, they do not eat again. This is why adult black soldier flies are not attracted to picnics, they won't try to fly into your home in search of food, and they don't spread disease. Unlike common houseflies, which live for 30 days and must consume food to survive, black soldier fly adults only live for a few days. However, before the larvae makes its transformation into a flying insect it tries to get away from the food source and tries to find a safe place to pupate. This is where the self harvesting comes in. The BSF bin has been designed such that as the larvae try to escape, there is only one way out... and this drops them into a jar where they can be collected and fed to the fish or chickens. In the picture above, you can see a washing machine hose with a cut-out milk jug handle that acts as a funnel. The washing machine hose is ribbed on the inside, so the black soldier flies can easily crawl up. Black soldier flies, however, cannot climb up the steep, slippery, and partially inverted walls of the barrel. Notice also that there is a vent installed in the bin. On the inside of the vent, there is a piece of cardboard wrapped around the pipe. This is done to encourage wild flying black soldier flies to lay their eggs in the bin. Adult black solder flies live for one purpose. They mate up in the trees, then find a place to lay their eggs. They are drawn to locations where black soldier fly larvae are thriving. When they are ready to lay their eggs, they prefer the tight pockets formed in the cardboard. Once the eggs are in the cardboard, this piece of cardboard can be added to the bin to expand the population or it can be used to seed another bin.
There are black soldier fly bins commercially available. A popular design is the BioPod. It costs $179 and has a collection bin for the larvae that crawl off and a section to collect the worm tea, however, you can build your own for a fraction of the cost and create something that you will probably be much happier with in the end. The design shown above has been very affordable and holds much more material than the commercial model. The design starts with a blue 55-gallon barrel (search http://www.craigslist.org for these), two cinder blocks (Home Depot), a two 2" UniSeals, three 2" PVC pipes (one for vent, two for drain), a piece of cardboard, 2 hinges (riveted to barrel), a 2" 90-degree bend PVC, a washing machine hose, a milk jug handle, a piece of screen material, a 2" PVC union, and a mason jar with lid. The picture to the right shows how a piece of screen material is placed in the union at the bottom of the barrel to keep un-composted material out of the worm tea. Links to most materials are shown below. The measurements are not precise, so I haven't included them here. Basically, just go with what looks good. I found a 1" hole in the barrel and the mason jar lid makes a perfect fit for the washing machine hose. When constructing your bin, be sure to make it high enough off the ground that you can place and access a jar below to collect the worm tea. You may also want to put Borax powder around the base of the cinder blocks to keep ants away while your bin is establishing itself. You can either purchase black soldier fly larvae locally or online, acquire from a friend, or wait for them to naturally colonize your bin.
To keep a sustainable population, you will need to either keep the bin in a greenhouse or live in an area where black soldier flies are native. Black soldier flies are native to zones 7-10, but can sometimes be found in zone 6. See image to the left to identify your climate zone.
Hopefully by now you are convinced that black soldier flies are the ideal way to do all your composting, while providing and excellent high-protein food source for your chickens or aquaponics fish. If you have any questions please speak up in the comments. I will be happy to address any concerns that were not fully addressed here. Thanks for reading and have fun on your new endeavor!








UPDATE 5/15/2012: Today I met with Dr. Radu Popa, professor of Biology at Portland State University. He was able to provide me with a bucket full of compost and Black Soldier Fly larvae, a container full of Black Soldier Fly pupae, and lots of great information. After meeting with him, I have a few corrections to make to the above information as well as some additional details.

  1. The Black Soldier Flies do not excrete a pheromone or chemical repellent to keep away other insects. Instead, it is their voracious appetite and competitiveness for food that keeps away other insects. When a BSF bin is stocked to a high enough density, there will simply not be enough food for other insects to thrive.
  2. I showed him my cardboard "welcome mat" for the BSF bin and he advised against this. The BSF bin can become very humid and cause the cardboard to rot. If a fungus takes hold on the cardboard it will immediately kill any and all BSF eggs on the cardboard. It is not known yet how this works, but Dr. Popa suspects that the fungi creates a form of antibiotic that is toxic to the eggs. Despite information I obtained from  http://blacksoldierflyblog.com/bsf-bucket-composter-version-2-1/ saying that cardboard makes an excellent addition to a BSF bin as an egg site, I am more inclined to believe Dr. Popa and avoid the fungi issues.
  3. You BSF bin will probably not "winter over." You have several options: restart the bin with a new BSF colony each Spring, move the BSF bin indoors, add supplemental heating over the winter, or move a small colony indoors. I have heard online that the BSF generate enough heat throughout the winter, provided that you feed them enough, but I won't be able to say for sure until next Spring.
  4. Your compost should be dripping wet. Add water if it looks too dry. The Black Soldier Flies need water. Previously, I had been under the impression that because vegetable matter is 70% water and the BSF generate a large amount of liquid that this would be enough, but after seeing Dr. Popa's BSF bins in action I can see that things are very wet. However, do not allow standing liquid. The Black Soldier Flies will not venture down into the liquid, and if it gets flooded they will crawl out. The perfect level of moisture is dripping wet, not underwater.
  5. The leachate (worm tea, dark liquid collected from bin) should be heavily dilluted before applying to plants or aquaponics. Dr. Popa's recommendation for adding leachate to aquaponics was 10000:1 dilution applied daily. I have had decent results with 800:1 dilution (1 pint per 100 gallons) applied every 4 days. I cannot overemphasize the importance of diluting the liquid. It is so potent that it will burn any plants if applied directly, especially if the leachate is a very low pH or is high in amines. The leachate should not be stored for long periods because it will ferment.
Dr. Popa's website is http://www.dipterra.com/index.html, here he has links to two publications he has written on propagating black soldier flies and the life cycle and biology of Black Soldier Flies. He also told me he has a third book coming out on Black Soldier Fly gardening and composting.


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Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Conserving Electricity


You've heard many tips before on how to conserve electricity. Shut off the lights when you leave the room. Switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs. Don't set your fridge or freezer colder than necessary. Wash your clothes in cold water instead of hot. Use a fan instead of an AC. Use a space heater to heat only the room you are in (better yet, use a wood stove). Improve your home insulation and perform an energy audit to find where you are loosing your heat. However, there are probably many more things you can do, and as you move to a completely sustainable lifestyle these tips become more and more important. If you wish to replace your electric bill with a solar or wind system you need to be able to minimize your electricity use, since the size of the system you require will depend on your power usage.  Here are a few of the lesser known tips:

Phantom Power:
You may have heard the term before. It is also referred to as vampire power. Your appliances/devices consume power even if they are powered off. For example, your television needs to be constantly ready to receive a signal from the remote to power on. Appliances like microwaves and ovens need to be ready to go at the push of a button. If you have several devices consuming phantom power (consider your television, cable box, DVD/Blue Ray player, gaming consoles) this can add up to a fair amount of power. You can measure this phantom power draw using a cheap and easy to use Watt meter, like a Kill-A-watt. This device will tell you in an instant how much power is being drawn whether it is powered on or off. Some models will even let you input the cost of electricity in your area and convert the power consumed into dollars. To avoid wasting unnecessary electricity and reduce your electric bill you can install a surge protector with a built in timer. A timer will allow you to automatically shut off your devices at night or while you are away.

Hot Water Heater (on-demand or timer):
An excellent solution for reducing the power consumed by your hot water heater is to install an on-demand hot water heater.  Most of the power wasted by your hot water heater comes from storing large amounts of hot water. Heat is slowly lost due to poor insulation or through the pipes. The water must be re-heated periodically to replace the heat lost. You can reduce this loss by insulating your hot water heater and hot water pipes. An on-demand hot water heater nearly eliminates this problem. With an on-demand hot water heater (also called a tank-less hot water heater) water is heated as it is used and you do not face heat loss. The disadvantage to on-demand hot water heaters is that they must either use natural gas, or a very large current if electric. The current required for an electric on-demand hot water heater ranges from 25-113 Amps, which is not feasible in most households unless the circuit has been specifically designed for this high load. Personally, I don't see natural gas as a sustainable fuel. Peak oil is rapidly approaching and peak natural gas is not far behind. Today, it may be cheaper to use natural gas, but what happens when that resource runs out? What happens when there is a natural disaster and the gas main breaks? If you cannot mine the natural gas from your own property then it is not sustainable. So, unless your home is already wired to support a high current an on-demand water heater might not be the best solution for you.
A good alternative to an on-demand hot water heater is to install a hot water timer. Just like a programmable power strip, you can set your hot water heater to turn off while you are away, on vacation, or asleep. A typical hot water heater only takes 30 minutes to warm up, so you can set it to turn on 30 minutes before your shower then shut off. This will not only save electricity and on your electric bill, but it will also extend the life of your hot water heater. You could also install a smaller capacity (cheaper) hot water heater since you will be heating the water just before use. Larger hot water heaters are better at retaining heat, but this is not necessary when you are only heating the water when you need it. A common myth about water heater timers is that more electricity is required to fully heat a cold hot water heater than to maintain a constant hot temperature. This is simply not true. The electricity required to provide a given amount of hot water depends on the heat lost between the time you heat it and the time you use it. The greater the difference in temperature between the water and the outside air, the faster the heat loss from the water heater. Thus, the more energy wasted when the tank is kept hot. The trick to using a hot water heater timer is to identify the best heating schedule that works for you. No one wants to be stuck without hot water just because they decided to wake up earlier or later than usual.

Thermal Mass:
Water is excellent at storing energy. It is slow to change temperature, so it will absorb heat during the day and slowly release it at night. Storing large amounts of water can be a great way to reduce your heating bill at night. As the temperature drops, the water will slowly release its stored heat to help regulate the temperature in your home. Warning: water can get pretty heavy. Before storing large amounts, you should add up the weight and see if it is reasonable for where you are planning on storing it. Water weighs 8 lbs per gallon, so a 55 gallon barrel of water weighs over 440 lbs. Storing a couple barrels of water in a high rise condo might not be the best idea. When possible, distribute the weight or add support beams if necessary. Storing water to help regulate the temperature in the garage is an excellent option. Thermal mass is an added benefit of aquaponics, which we'll discuss in future posts.

Hopefully you learned a few things from this post. I look forward to sharing more sustainability tips with you soon and hope to hear your sustainability stories and feedback in the comments. Thanks!



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