Things have been moving forward slowly over the last few weeks. The first house is basically done, and we are now working on the balcony rails and mosquito screens. For the pond, it has been slow going washing gravel in 2 cement mixers and laying it down. Unfortunately, the cost of trucking in washed gravel…
First in-water test of axial flow water circulation pump
I’ve previously blogged about this simple experimental circulation pump I designed out of a 12″ PVC pipe and a long-tail boat propeller. Well, it took a bit of time to get the motor mounted and everything ready for an in-the-water test. The two slowest parts were machining the coupling between the sprocket and the motor…
Ultra cheap water flow sensor
Here is a picture of our ultra-cheap and easy water flow sensor fully built and ready to use: Fully assembled water flow meter The rotor is nothing more than a cheap propeller purchased from an RC toy shop nearby mounted on the end of a stick. We then attached 3 small magnets between the blades…
Pond update: laying out the pipes in the regeneration zone and rethinking the flow rates
Here are a few pictures of the status of the pond development now: You can see that the 12″ PVC pipes are mostly laid down, and two out of 3 of the regeneration zone walls are done. (These are near and far in the middle picture above. Unfortunately, I now have a fair amount of…
Pond update: building the retaining wall for the planned regeneration zone
We have begun building the retaining wall between the swimming zone and the planted regeneration (natural filter) zone: Building the retaining wall To the right of the wall is the regeneration zone. To the left is the swimming zone. The large PVC pipe is part of the water circulation system. If you imagine gravel and…
Designing a crazy floating house
I’ve been pondering the idea of making our house a floating house. We have a big pond. A floating house doesn’t need pilings. And I have this crazy idea that the house could be made disconnected in the sense of an autonomous propeller driven vehicle. So it could rotate to track or avoid the sun….
Prototype axial flow water circulation pump
Here are some pictures of a work-in-progress prototype for a simple axial flow water circulation pump: After my test of the “pump payanak”, I kept thinking about the fact that it is pumping the water up 1.5m, making the water do a 90 degree turn and then dropping the water back into the pond. I…
Fixing the problems with the pond level
Here’s the process I’m working on to fix the problems with the pond level: Dig some clay soil up to build a temporary water wall. Pump the rain water out of the part we are fixing the level problem and behind the temporary water wall. (This step is because I would like to fill up…
Testing out two water pumps
We purchased a “pump payanak” from a local agricultural machines shop. (This maybe translates to “naga pump” in English. Because of the shape?) It has a 2.2kW Mitsubishi motor mounted to a belt that drives an impeller. The impeller is mounted vertically inside an 8″ stainless steel pipe. Thus, when the impeller turns on, it…
Measuring the water level
Here are 2 pictures of how we are measuring the water level. Using the bunyip water level from my previous post, we are now able to choose a water level based on being a bit lower than the lowest “shore line” point of the pond and mark it all around the pond using red ribbons…
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