A major goal for the boys home that we work with is to make it self-supporting. This can be accomplished through systems that offset operational costs, such as solar electricity and water, or by systems that provide food both for use at the home and selling of any additional products. Hope House already has a chicken coop for raising chickens. Other systems can include standard gardening for produce or hydroponics, growing produce in water. Also, aquaculture, the growing of fish in tanks, is attractive. However, a combination of hydroponics and aquaculture is a system known as aquaponics. In this system the fish fertilize the water with nutrients and the water is pumped to the hydroponics portion and the produce extracts the nutrients as fertilizer. The cleansed water is then pumped back into the fish tank. A very neat closed loop system. A year or more ago we began considering building such a system. So we had a dream and prayed that this dream might come true.
Over the next year following our dream, we began networking with various people. We found some people in Guadalajara that were considering installing aquaponic systems in orphanages in the area and they had already constructed some, such as barrelponic systems. They visited our facility and from what we envisioned they came up with a design. So now it was a matter of funding and, to minimize cost, find volunteers to help build the system. We had materials in the workshop that we could repurpose plus we had a large aljibe, which is a large underground tank, that was no longer used. So the first step was to cut the aljibe in half providing us with two tanks that would be perfect for fish. Our friends in Guadalajara contacted a group called "Adventures in Missions" or AIM, that sends out teams to various countries for 14 month periods to help in projects like this. Six of them were available to help. The group included someone from New Zealand and another person from Mexico City, so it became an international endeavor. Three days prior to beginning the project a gentleman from TN retired full time in our area. He too joined us. To help with Mexican construction we hired a local contractor to assist, which was a real Godsend. The team became even more international when a friend of ours, Phil Wang, felt led to bring a missions team from The King's Academy in Sunnyvale, CA, the week prior to Spring break. Phil is on staff at this school. This team consisted of 8 high school students and three staff. At Christmas we talked to our son Andrew and he indicated that the company he works for, Duarte Design, Inc., was looking for a place where the employees could participate financially to help an organization that takes boys off the street and gives them hope for a future - where else, but Hope House. We sent a planning document that went to the president of Duarte Design and the company not only committed to help but reached their goal in a very short period of time. We now had the volunteers and funding to see our dream fulfilled for the aquaponic system itself. However, we still had one item - the greenhouse to provide shade. St. Andrews Anglican Church one of the local churches in our area, has generously donated the funds for this last piece. So now we are complete. We are planning on building two systems but to educate ourselves on operating such a system, we chose to build only one and then operate it until we become comfortable. After this learning period we plan to build a second system comparable to the first.
Below is a sketch of the system we built.
A "single" system consists of two grow beds, one with gravel for plants such as the non-leafy variety, tomatoes, radishes, onions and so forth, and the other a free flow for leafy plants, such as lettuce and spinach. The free flow bed will hold upwards of 200 lettuce plants. There are two fish tanks, each of which are anticipated to support 400 fish. The "Bell Siphon" is a unique mechanism to control a fluctuating water level from full to empty in a cyclic pattern. It has no moving parts and operates solely on the siphon principle. The greenhouse is shade material supported by a structure. This part still needs to be built. The rest of this blog will be a series of photos and videos showing the construction as it took place. Needless to say, given how a dream of a year or more ago became reality, God was in it the whole way - bringing a team together and providing funds and completing the dream in a period of one month. God is awesome! God hopefully is working on bringing another team sometime in the future and AIM has a new crew coming to Guadalajara in May for 14 months. We have several volunteers trained to maintain the system. Plus several other people have expressed interest. So God is again at work getting things ready for completion of this project. We are anxious to see how part 2 will go.
Day 1: Construction photos and video of taking repurposed pallets apart for concrete forms and felling a tree.
Day 2: Construction photos and video of Hope House boys and The King's Academy team mixing concrete Mexican style. Also testing the "goodness" of the concrete and then The Kid's Academy guys doing what they couldn't do in the US - riding in the back of a pickup truck.
Day 4: Construction photos only this day.
Day 5: We took The King's Academy crew to see the Passion Play in our village of Ajijic. This video shows Jesus carrying the cross, which he does half way up the mountain.
Day 6: Photos of the final wrap-up meeting and what was accomplished while The King's Academy team was at the Passion Play.
Day 10: It is coming together. Status photos.
Day 13: Plumbing has gone in as seen in these photos, including the infamous Bell Siphon. This video shows the first operation of the plumbing system. Here is a video of the Bell Siphon working, give it a couple of minutes as it sets up and then it will be seen in its full glory. There are no mechanical, electrical or moving parts, it operates entirely on the siphon principle.
Day 34: The intervening time was spent making the area look professional and culminating in a "planting party" with all the boys of Hope House and other visitors present. These photos and this video show the current status and first planting.
