The 2013 entries have been minimized and consolidated to the text on this page. If you are interested in the photos during this period, they are available, in reverse chronological order, on our website construction page: PICS HERE

November 30th: Finished rebuilding a few leaky hydraulic cylinders on the backhoe and was then able to complete the re-trenching (11/2) to finish burying the LAN line from the newer barn to the first Aqua house. A camera is now functioning although the FTP snapshot uploads continue to have problems with the hosting site.

October 29th: Installed Normally Closed timers on the air and water pumps to allow me to turn them off temporarily and eliminate the possibility of forgetting to turn them back on when I leave the building.

October 24th: We took delivery of lumber, plywood, and LOTS of foam insulation panels yesterday. Some of the lumber will be used to build concrete forms for the new trough area and work areas. Some of the foam will be used for more rafts, with most of the remainder used to build the walk-in cooler.

August 18th: The insulation installed on the end walls and most of the solid roof is pretty much completed.

I cut a vent in the roof and will begin building a housing to eventually contain an exhaust fan. A custom shade cloth has been ordered to use whenever the sun is out to protect the plants (otherwise they start wilting in the direct sun). I'm currently trying out some 1" PVC to make curtain tracks that will attach to the bows to raise and lower the shade cloth and the insulation cover in the winter.

August 13th: We still have 55 Pumkinseed Sunfish and the last one we lost was on August 8th.

The bio filter functioning and the latest measurements have shown a little more than 5ppm nitrates. The water has been circulating for over three weeks without adding fresh water.

We are waiting on Santiam Ranch to get back with us for an order of about 30 new fish. If those thrive we'll add more in a few weeks. We are still growing greens, but slower than it should take.

June 13th: ODFW confirmed that an outbreak of columnaris is killing the fish.

As we intend to get organically certified I am unable to use antibiotics to save them. We started dunking them daily in a salt bath (1/2C salt / gallon water) about two weeks ago. Of the approximately 300 original fish, 62 remain. We've only lost a few during the past week or so, so the outbreak may be coming under control.

I've been transferring the fish to a new tank with fresh spring water after each bath and dumping and cleaning the other tank. I've also been adding a bit of salt to the new tank water (a couple of ppt). The plants in the rafts are growing very slowly since there are almost no nutrients (still have some mosquito fish in the troughs and the spring water has a bit of nitrates in it).

I am still building the bio-filter box and hoping to get some good bacteria growing in the troughs and the unused large tank soon. I'm also dumping new water into the troughs and large tank almost every day, exchanging about half of the volume.

May 31st: We are continuing work on the remaining rafts that need to be drilled and painted. Our new fish are dying off for some reason. We have lost thirty or forty sunfish already, and the numbers seem to be increasing. I've exchanged at least one and a half volumes of water and added three different products of nitrifying bacteria (update: never, NEVER buy nitrifying bacteria from a pet store). Ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates remain low. Nitrates still seem to indicate a minute amount, so transplanted about 250 seedling starts into the system trough rafts.

May 20th: Shade cloth arrived and does wonders with the area overheating from too much sun. I still have to line the fish tanks with insulation.

I've added a sink and drain at the far end that required trenching and digging under the footer. A second hole will allow a pipe to go under the footer and down to the creek where it can run through some heat exchange pipe to keep the system water cool if/when needed.

I, unfortunately, ended up draining all of the water from the system (siphoning through hoses) and then refilling due to adding some bleach that was perfumed. A bit irritating :-).

We started about 500 seeds on the nursery table in expectation of the fish arriving. They arrived on Thursday, the 16th, courtesy of the Santiam Valley Ranch.

Nitrifying bacteria has been added, and system values (ph, DO, Ammonia, Nitrites & Nitrates) are being monitored.

May 2nd: All water pipe connections are complete. The trough liners are installed, trim boards attached and bulkhead fittings connected (using hand cut food grade silicone gaskets).

Misellaneous chores are getting completed including additional vents (hit 103 even with the fan on when the sun was out). The fish tanks and growing troughs are all filled to capacity with clean water. One cracked fitting and a couple minor leaks were fixed in the process. The circulation pump and air pump are installed and running. All of the rafts are in the troughs. Only half of them have had the net pot holes drilled and painted, but won't be needed until we get some plants growing.

April 13th: Finished the roof over the fish tanks except for the metal covering that has arrived, but will not be installed until I'm done with the film covering.

Trenched about 250 feet for electric and water lines from the barn. I Installed a 3/4" water line, a second 3/4" poly pipe with an electric supply wire running through it and a third 3/4" poly pipe with an ethernet line. I re-covered about half of the trenches.

The breaker box, pump outlets, heat mat connections, and several general outlets are installed. Finished the sill plate on the south wall using another six bags of concrete.

The interior support pillars were surface bonded.

Both fish tanks were moved into the building and set in place.

Both troughs are completed except for the liners. The north wall of the sunken aisle greenhouse had the concrete blocks filled with sand and as the weather warmed and dried, it was also surface bonded on one side. I also finished surface bonding the Aqua house outside north and south block walls.

ETFE film and hardware has been ordered and paid, but will not come in for some time. Untill it arrives we'll use standard 6 mil poly. Attached the regular poly greenhouse film, mostly finished closing up the walls and installed the door.

Installed a one-third horsepower squirrel cage fan (that I already had lying around) in the lower east wall to improve air circulation.

February 15th: The north concrete block wall was dry stacked with about 600 pounds of concrete to tie the first row to the footer, and about 10,700 pounds of blocks manually put in place. The inside surface of the north wall was covered with surface bonding cement and all of the wall cavities were filled with sand. The top sill plates were attached with anchor bolts into concrete placed in a some of the cavities.

The south concrete block wall got tied in with concrete, dry stacked, and surface bonded on the inside.

More construction materials arrived (I was WAY off on the surface bonding cement quantity). The internal support pillars were stacked, filled with concrete and the top plate was connected with J bolts. Two truckloads of sand for the wall cavities arrived, followed by another large truckload of gravel to cover the muddy areas between the Aquahouse and the greenhouses.

I found that the paint over the epoxy on the small fish tank did not adhere well enough after it got wet outside in the rain. I decided it was due to the epoxy surface being too smooth. So I ended up sanding it back off and redoing it.

February 5th: Pipe placement was completed and the house was leveled with sand. Mirafi geocloth was then placed over the sand. The concrete forms were removed.

January 18th: While the concrete was SLOWLY curing in the colder than expected temps (it has some spalling on the surfaces, see pic), trenches were dug in the partially frozen rock and the water circulation pipes were placed in the ground.

The largest tank was moved out of the barn workroom to make space to construct the nursery table in the insulated room.

Concrete block, cement glazing, insulation, and lumber arrived courtesy of Copeland Lumber in Newport.

January 16th: Two truckloads (16 yards) of concrete were poured and pumped forming the footer for the Aqua house and several ancillary greenhouses (courtesy of Newport Ready Mix and Van Leuven Construction of Alsea).

Huge thanks to my neighbor Tom Swinford and Mike Tyler (and of course my daughter Anjia and wife Stephanie) for their robust manual labor that made the pour possible!