Keller McKowen

I made what I think is a finalized design which I call the Lotus Pond. I made a new thread discribing it's features. Thought I'd post it here as a conclusion to this thread.

I am sharing this pond design with you all, that I have made, named for the beautiful geometry imparted to it by the septfoil  current channel accented by 12 Tesla valves.

The purpose of the design is to harness thermal energy to produce or maintain a current. The design splits the pond into two ponds, one deep, small, and cool the other large shallow and warm. They are connected by a circular channel which employs Tesla valves to encourage a unidirectional flow. The direction of the current flow is counter-clockwise in order to synchronize with the gravitational  Coriolis effect (northern hemisphere). The heat differential between these ponds is what powers the flow of the current. I am not sure if this concept will work, but did some calculations that are reassuring. It takes around 30kWh to heat 10,000 liters. There is a lot of energy warm water that could be harnessed.

Why would you want a pond like this, assuming it works as presented?
1. Better nutrient cycling  and oxygen content
2. More intensive aquaculture. With these two connected ponds, you could raise different types of fish that required warmer or cooler water or that eat different food types.
3. Natural swimming pool. With the big pond to keep it healthy I think the small cool pond would make an ideal swimmin hole.
4. A S T H E T I C maybe I am too full of myself, but I just think it looks awesome!

Some practical considerations for construction: The channel must be deep 2 meters was suggested in order for a healthy current to form. The big pond will be the same depth as the channel at it's deepest point (the intersection). The deep pond has to be very deep like 10 meters in order to benefit from geothermal cooling, I think this is important to maintain a temperature differential that the current will be constantly undermining.

Big thanks to users Myron-Platt for the tesla valves, and to s.-ayalp who gave wonderful insights into the construction of such a pond.

Thanks for listening! Hope one of us builds something like this one day soon. I will be constructing a model soon as proof of concept, will update when I have some results!

-Keller

Thanks Myron for the awesome concept of Tesla valves. Also Thank you ayalp for your detailed and constructive criticisms of such a design.

I realize that such a system may not be the most the most practical in implementation, but the design is so cool and interesting. This would be an awesome "fun project" to implement even if it doesn't perform well in the end.

My new design features two ponds a deep cool pond and a shallow warm one. They are connected with equally sized tesla valve channels to promote a unidirectional flow. Attached is another crude diagram.

I plan to have a livestock guardian dog, or several to protect my stock on my permaculture farm.

As a goal I want to reduce inputs as much as possible. As such I'd like to produce food for them, and a natural raw food diet just makes sense. Small fish (such as minnows and shinners) would be easy to culture and can be safely feed to dogs after being frozen for 2 months to kill any parasites. I would trap or net the fish a few times a year and then freeze them in buckets to use as feed later on.

So what are your thoughts? Has anyone ever tried this?

Thanks.

-Keller

Chris, thanks for the detailed reply! I suppose this design is only beneficial if one was able to stimulate a flow using the passive natural approach I described. Otherwise like you both stated just using a pump directly would have the same action. If the natural method works I expect it to be a very slow current, maybe so slow that its useless : (

An additional benefit to the loop is it would create an isolated area to contain plants that propagate via root suckers such as timber bamboo.

I would like to hear your thoughts on this concept. Adding a closed loop to a pond to mimic a stream and to create a current in the pond. Ponds are typically stagnate and a current can help distribute nutrients and increase oxygen levels. To do this I propose adding a looping ditch to the pond. To encourage a current to develop I have imagined two designs. (1) Natural design: one half of the loop is cold (deeper channel shaded by trees) the other half is hot (shallower channel on the sunny side). (2) Mechanical Design: Use a motorized pump somewhere in the loop to stimulate flow.

What do you think? Would adding a current to a pond system be worthwhile in terms of pond health and fish production? Do you think the natural design would work to generate a current?

I was doing some research into nitrogen fixing plants in my growing zone and was surprised to see SUGARCANE on the list! I went to wikipedia to learn more..... Apparently it has been shown that a N-fixing bacterium (G. diazotrophicus) can colonize the intercellular spaces of the plant and function there to produce usable nitrogen for the sugarcane.

One of the references points to a research paper published in 2005 in which they got G. diazotrophicus to grow inside several other crop plants (corn, rice, tomato, wheat, rapeseed, and white clover). They did this by germinating the seeds in the presence of this bacteria.

I don't know the extent to which this research has progressed since 2005. Hopefully it has been expanded, but either way this could be a great topic for ambitious permies to explore! The technique seems simple enough to replicate in a home lab. Anyway hope someone finds this intriguing!

-Keller