Christmas Giveaway

Win an efergy Shower Timer

Would you like a Christmas gift from the Trafford Eco-House?

Thanks to ecooutlet we’ve got an efergy Shower Timer to give away. To be in with a chance to win you just need to signed up to get our updates by email – if you’re not already getting email updates from us just click here to subscribe. 

We’ll draw the competition on December 23rd, and you’ll need to pop in to the Trafford Eco-House to pick up your prize – good luck!

We’ve currently got one of these on test too – expect a review soon!

 

Welcome to the Trafford Eco-House

Hi there, and welcome to the website for the Trafford eco-house, our little patch of 3-bed pre-war eco heaven in sunny Sale, south-west Manchester. To ensure you don’t miss any of our successes or failures you can click here and get updates by email or follow our eco-nattering on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TraffordEco.

You can find out what the Trafford eco-house is all about on the About page, and don’t forget to have a look at what our partners are up to: Urban Grown and Trafford Council.

 

Aquaponics Polytunnel “finished”

I know that is an optimistic title for a post, but it feels like we are getting there. Hopefully the leaking sump joints are sealed, and we can get on with it!  Here are the latest pics:

You can see my beautiful brick path – good thermal mass to help with moderating the polytunnel temperatures, and much nicer to walk on than the mud! The large buried sump at the back has a timber deck covering it that the kids can stand on to reach the back beds – so I think those will now be their spot for planting.

And here’s the right hand side:

The timber “paving” is over the new link between the two shallow sumps – designed so that I can lift it up to check for leaks.

Now it’s all “cycling” again – building up the bacteria that’ll clean the water. Soon I’ll start planting – but in the meantime we have our first Aquaponics workshop on next week, so time to tidy up!

 

Transition Town Altrincham, Hale & Bowdon

I’m a big fan of the Transition Town movement, so it was great to be invited to be a part of the new Transition Town Altrincham, Hale & Bowdon. This is all a little bit south of us (we’re right on the border between Sale and Altrincham) but it’s the first Transition initiative in Trafford so how could I resist!

At the moment we’re just starting to get a core group together, and tentatively planning our first film showing, to start getting the word out. We’re hoping to piggy-back some of the great events that Action for Sustainable Living are doing locally, and our next group meeting is February 1st – full details here. If you’re concerned about the environment, climate change and peak oil, or just interested in building a stronger local community then do come along – the more the merrier!

 

A chilly aquaponics system

Sorry I haven’t been posting much recently – been too busy with aquaponics / filling gaps in house walls & other draftproofing / aquaponics / Transition Town Altrincham, Hale & Bowdon / being on BBC Radio Manchester / changing lightbulbs / saving 1.5 kWh per day by buying a new freezer / aquaponics / and some Christmas and New Year stuff too!

Anyway, let’s resume normal service with a pic from the polytunnel – looks like we might need some heating in there next year:

This is the ice on the top of the fishtank. To give you an idea of scale, the thickest bits are 2-3 inches thick. The water temp is down to 2-3°c and the polytunnel itself got down to -4.5°c at its coldest.

 

Testing Manchester’s water

Ok, now this post is going to be really techie, feel free to switch off unless you’ve been passionately following our Aquaponics system development. Before we can put fish into the system we need to make sure that the environment they’re going into is safe for them.

This means it needs to have:

• The right pH – not too high or too low, it seems 6-8 is about right.
• Enough Oxygen in the water – Trout need more than 5.5 ppm.
• No ammonia – any ammonia added needs to be converted into Nitrite & Nitrate by the bacteria in the growbeds.
• The right temperature – for trout this is less than 25°C and warmer than frozen solid!
• No chlorine or chloramine (often present in tap water)

With that in mind I set about testing the water that we’d just filled the tanks with – Manchester tap water. If you’re interested, you can see the test results below:

 

Come & see Ed Miliband in Manchester

We’ll be there!

 

The big Aquaponic growbeds are in!

Hot on the heels of starting the ‘cycling’ of the Aquaponics system using the small beds around the edge, the big central growbeds are going in. Here’s how they have progressed:

And final one for the night – the growbeds in place, drainage fittings all complete, and the gravel starting to go in. They are going to need a LOT of gravel – I foresee a week of shifting gravel coming up

 

More Growbeds done & Aquaponics is ‘cycling’!

There we go – the growbeds on the long side are all done, the drains are all connected, and they’re plumbed in to the fish tank. And we’ve finally taken the plunge – the pump is now running automatically, once an hour:

Now I just need to start keeping an eye on the Ammonia readings to see how our bacteria are going – I guess they’ll be growing VERY slowly this week wth the frost we’ve been having.

 

Frosty Polytunnel and Allotment

No problem with mud in the garden this morning, it went down to -1.7°C last night in the garden, and even the inside of the polytunnel was down to -1°C.

The ground in the garden is pretty solid now, but has remained a little soft in the polytunnel. The cold snap has seen the water temperature drop from 9°C down to 7°C.

Here’s how the ‘allotment’ is going:

The onions, garlic and purple-sprouting  broccoli should be all frost hardy, so let’s see how they go!

The frost patterns on the inside of the polytunnel are pretty amazing, not sure I’ve ever seen anything like this:

 

 

Free Shrubs!

As we get ready for our new orchard there are a few casualties of our new planting – all the attractive, but ultimately unproductive, shrubs at are in the way. They’ve got to go and so far I haven’t found any takers – if you want one just let us know on the contact page and you can come down and dig one up to take away. Now is the  perfect time to transplant shrubs, so what are you waiting for!

Here are some piccies to tempt you: