Our Newest Tilapia Hatchery Facility is Taking Shape

[kellenw]

A bunch of you guys have been giving me a hard time for being somewhat "absent" from the forums for the last couple of weeks. Well, I figured it was about time to explain myself. :-) I've been working on several aquaculture projects that have kept me away from home for much of the time, and I've also been working on the construction of our newest hatchery building. Oh, and we broke ground on our new home last week as well. Forgot about that. hehehe.... So.... I may have bitten off a little more than I could chew, particularly with the 6 month old twins as well. However, things are starting to take shape, and the aquaculture projects are completed, so I should be getting back into the "normal" swing of things, I promise! :-) I thought I should share a little about the hatchery building with you all.

We now have the dry shell completed for our newest building addition at White Brook Tilapia Farm. This building is roughly 2,000 square feet. It will house most of our tilapia breeders and will result in a substantial boost to our output capacity. The building will be highly insulated and incredibly efficient. It will hold over 200 aquariums of various sizes, along with numerous larger holding tanks for trials we conduct with our tilapia strains. There will be about 16,000 gallons of water under roof, all said and done.

From past experience, we elected to add oversized overhead doors in order to move tanks and equipment around, as needed, with ease. Accessibility was always a problem with our other buildings, so this will help a great deal. Being able to run a pallet jack or forklift down the aisles and directly out of the building is a huge convenience and time saver. The "old" building will be used for growout only, and once we get the breeders transitioned into the new building we can begin working on the "old one" to improve on some things that, over time, we found to be quite inconvenient.

Some pictures are below. :-)

http://tilapiasource.com/offsite/building1.jpg

http://tilapiasource.com/offsite/building2.jpg

http://tilapiasource.com/offsite/building3.jpg

[Mean and Green]

50ft x 40ft?

[kellenw]

The building is 30x50 (1,500 sq ft footprint) with a ~480 sq ft mezzanine in the rear (about 1,980 sq ft of floor space). It will be packed extremely tight. Additionally, a 50 foot long by probably 12 foot wide solar greenhouse will be placed on the south side, but this will be done in the Spring most likely. The greenhouse will provide us with some demonstration space in addition to the other intended uses. We also set the building up so we could easily expand it up to about 8,000 sq ft if the need arises.

[ande]

Welcome back
congrats on new excpantion, it's primary a Tilapia aquacult set up(?),with seasonal posiebilety for AP trials in the green house extention?
Looking nice

cheers

[kellenw]

Hi Ande,

Yes, the building will be our primary breeding facility when completed. The greenhouse will house a larger AP system as well as some smaller demonstration systems. The greenhouse will be used all year round.

[GaryD]

Congratulations Kellen......a great looking facility. I look forward to seeing more photos as they come to hand.

Gary

[gRobot]

Congratulations. And thank you for proving the States with excellent fish.

[Shane]

What an exciting time for you all,
Good luck with it all Kellen, keep the photos coming as you progress.

[GaryD]

Hi Kellen,

What a great facility. Keep the updates and photos coming.

Gary

[kellenw]

Worked on electricity this week and trenched the water line yesterday. Trenching was extremely hard work and took all day. Temperature was over 100F all day.

[Pseudoreality]

Looking good. I'm curious about the building construction. What kind of foundation does that building have? I see posts disappearing into the ground and not sure what's holding them up. Is the building insulated and how much energy will it require to moderate the temperature (including water heating)?

[kellenw]

Hi Pseudo,

The shell is just basic "pole barn" construction for the most part. It's how the majority of industrial and agricultural buildings are constructed in our area. I assume snow load in your area would require much more substantial trusses than we used with this building. You can't see it in these photos, but the posts are anchored to concrete footings. Later, any plumbing pipes/drains/etc. you want in the floor are laid out and a layer of gravel is spread throughout the interior, and a concrete pad is poured.

The building will be heavily insulated (for our area... would probably be too little for yours). We actually go in after finishing the dry shell of the building, and frame it out inside. This adds additional rigidity to the structure and gives us more "space" for lots of insulation. It also helps prevent water damage to the vital support structures that would normally be caused by the high humidity inside. We lose a little bit of floor square footage this way, but believe it to be a better method for our needs.

For the most part, the water will not be heated or cooled. However, there will be supplemental/backup water heating in place. The building will have a modern HVAC system, so will run at a very consistent air temperature year round. When we add the greenhouse to the south side of the building, it will further offset heating and cooling demands due to some thermal storage techniques that will be employed, but the greenhouse is not planned until Spring of next year. Utility costs will probably run about $100-120/mo (more in the winter, less in the spring, summer and fall) for everything.

Typical for a build of mine, most aspects of the hatchery are controlled and monitored by a computerized system. We have the ability to manually override anything if needed of course. The system alerts us via email, text message, page, phone, etc. if anything is out of normal range. This gives us a lot of protection against problems that might pop up when we aren't around to see them. Nothing is 100% safe of course, but this is about as close as you can get. That's important for us, considering the substantial investment we have in our fish.

[Pseudoreality]

Cool, thanks for sharing. What do you consider heavily insulated? New regulations in my city require R30 in the walls and R60 in ceiling.

[kellenw]

Walls will be a layer of R19 batting plus a layer of R8 or R10 foam board. The ceiling insulation will be blown in material, and will be roughly R60 equivalent at the thickness planned. Wow... I guess we are insulating to NWT home construction specs (almost)!

[sonelin]

Grats on the new building. BTW the 52 fish are still all alive and well and getting fed 3 meals a day.

[kellenw]

Thanks Brad! We're pretty excited about the expansion. We are REALLY in need of the extra space.

Great to hear the tilapia are doing well too! You'll have to share some pics of them soon. I bet they've grown quite a bit already.

[kellenw]

Quick update...

Due to a bunch of other commitments, both professional and family related (the twins are a handful! hehe), progress has slowed quite a bit at the new hatchery. However, we've completed the interior framing, insulated the walls and ceiling, finished building the center aisle of tank racks, drilled and installed bulkheads and standpipes in about 100 tanks and completed about 80% of the system plumbing. I'm hoping to complete the project within the next 3-4 weeks. It will be a bit of a race to the finish line... hehe

[bigdaddy]

Looking and sounding good Kellen,

Keep the photos coming

Good luck.

[Mean and Green]

Hey Kellen! Do you have any updates? New pics?

[kellenw]

I will try to get some new pics up soon. I've been slacking on that, huh...

I've been so busy lately, I've been struggling to keep up with everything.

[Pugo]

Yeah ! Everyone has been waiting a long time to see whats up with your hatchery project.. That huge building dying to see what you put in it..:)

[mopa]

any updates? please!!!