Insulating the pond fish winter tank

Hello, steemians! Welcome to my page, eh!

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about getting my pond fish out of the pond and putting them into a 100 gallon stock tank in my greenhouse for the winter. In a post previous to that, I had described the process of setting up the tank and insulating part of it. The purpose of the insulation around the tank is to help hold a bit of heat in the water so that the water doesn't freeze in the tank. Since I had only insulated the 2 sides of the tank that were up against the greenhouse walls, I still needed to insulate the other 2 sides of the tank. The problem that I had with that is that I didn't have any more insulation board to use. I wasn't too worried about it at the time because the greenhouse was still gaining a bit of heat during the day.

Once the daytime temperatures started being below the freezing point, I knew I had to get the rest of the tank insulated. I went to the local big box store and bought a sheet of inch and a half thick insulation board to finish the job. I had to cut it in half at the store to get it home because I can't get an 8 foot long sheet into my vehicle. I got it home and put the 2 pieces in the greenhouse to wait until the next day to work on the project.

This is how far I had previously gotten on the insulation project a couple of weeks ago.

I had scrounged up another piece of insulation board from the basement to use on the tank when it started getting cold, I also used my old packing blanket to cover the end of the tank until I could get the sheet of insulation board. I had pulled the blanket back a bit before I took this picture.

After cutting and fitting all the pieces that I needed to finish insulating the sides of the tank, it looks like this. You can see the top of the clamp lamp that I have over the water to provide some heat to the water.

I still need to get another sheet of foam board to insulate the top of the tank. The pieces of foam board that are on top of the tank won't be enough once it starts getting really cold outside. I also need to get a bigger bulb to put over the water to provide more heat to the water. I'm going to buy a new clamp lamp with a ceramic socket so that it will be able to handle the heat of a larger bulb. In the past when I've done this, I used a 100 or 120 watt flood light bulb. I thought about getting a heat bulb, but that hasn't been necessary in the past. If the flood bulb ends up not being enough heat to keep the water from freezing when it's really cold, I'll get a heat bulb at that time.

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While I was out in the greenhouse working on that project, I decided to take a picture of the current state of the front of the greenhouse. Because I can't grow anything in the greenhouse in the winter, it becomes storage area for stuff that needs to be out of the weather for the winter. As you can see, a lot of the strawberry plants are still green, even though it's been below freezing in the greenhouse at night for several weeks. The strawberry plants in the planting towers aren't doing as well, a lot of red leaves. It will be interesting to see if the plants survive the winter in the greenhouse.

While I was out in the greenhouse, I also reconnected the stovepipe for my little cast iron wood burner so that I could fire it up to get some heat to make it a bit more pleasant to work in there while cutting the foam board. I had to buy a new piece of stove pipe to replace a rusted out piece from last year.

I had to move a bunch of stuff around in the back of the greenhouse to be able to use the heater, I had piled stuff on top of it and around it all summer. I got everything cleared away so that I can use the stove when I get the urge. I stacked the concrete block half wall there last year to use as thermal mass in the spring and fall to help hold some heat in the greenhouse at night. The south facing side of the wall is painted flat black to absorb the sun's heat. When I burn the wood stove, it also absorbs heat from that and holds it for a little while.