Hello, I want to thank all those that participated in my posting regarding the an affordable building material for a 40,000 sq. ft. fish hatchery in northern Indiana.

Anyways, I read all the posts and everyone had great ideas. However, I felt that placing the building deep into the ground might be my best bet. Basically, I'm envisioning a 40,000 sq.ft. basement and I'm curious as to what types of floor, wall and ceiling material might best suit my needs?

In particular, I'm wondering if I could just coat the walls with some form of Silicon rather than spending a great deal on cement? In addition, I mentioned in my previous posting that I'd like to keep the building at ~75 degrees. Thus, I'm wondering if it'd be easiest to achieve that temperature by placing a double glazed roof overhead and have all the windows double glazed and facing the south? Or, would I be best served, as one poster mentioned, just pouring columns of cement in my structure, and putting a cement slab overhead, and just having windows on the south facing of the building? Next, what type of active heating system should I employ to maintain a 75 degree temp in such a cold climate? I figure the passive solar, and possibly the double glazed plastic roof my help considerably, but would they bring the temp up to 75 degrees on a frigid winter day? So, should I consider maybe a large version of the Hasa? Do you have any other ideas.

Basically, please share with me all your ideas to keep a gigantic basement warm(~75 degrees) year round with the least possible expense? Thanks so much for your great help!! Steve

-- Steve Woznick (Jamma74@yahoo.com), December 06, 2001

Answers

Steve, this building is about 3/4 of a football field in square foot. That transulates 40,000 sq ft equals (devided at 81 square feet of 4 inch concrete per yard) to 493 cubic yards at a consevative $50.00 per yard ffor the concrete only just shy of $25,000.00. Not including labor, site setup, rebar, mesh wire, ect. If in the event your base material has an angle of repose in the 85 to 90 degree range, ie. solid rock, a few drums (drums, not buckets)of paint is all that would be needed. What kind of base is under ground in your area?

Do fish hatchlings bring an adequate profit to support this kind of cash outlay? You will need seperation capabilities, prosses facilities, major water filtration equipment, and where are you going to get all that water?

Go to your search engine, type in ATTRA, they are a free service of the ag dept. and they have intense info and a check list for people doing start ups.

-- mitch hearn (moopups@citlink.net), December 06, 2001.

Steve, If you're going to go in ground look at Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF's). Essentially, they are styrofoam forms held in place by plastic straps on which you can place your reinforcing bars. You pour your walls much as you would with conventional basement forms but leave these in place when the concrete cures. You'll have an effective insulating value of over R-50. Do a search for Insulated Concrete Forms or ICF and see what you learn. I hope this helps.

I'm just curious where in northern Indiana you're planning this, if you don't mind saying. I'm in Fort Wayne.

-- Gary in Indiana (gk6854@aol.com), December 06, 2001.

I can't say much more than I have - except that the water temperature you're talking about is way above average soil temperature, so you'd get really significant condensation on your underground walls. If there was any way you could drop your water temperature (like using trout instead of tilapia) you'd save a lot of heating money, a bit of construction costs, and probably a fair amount of running costs.

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), December 08, 2001.