after much thought

[livelymc]

been looking at all these forums of custom made tanks a was thinking instead of a pond outdoors how about making a 2000 litre plywood fibre glass tank. lining it also with pond liner. and on the outside where the supports are filling the gaps with insulation and boarding over that aswell. then i could put it in one of our stables. there brick stable.

would this solve alot of the heat loss

 

[Oughtsix]

There are two major sources of heat loss for tanks like this. The first is obviously through the tank itself into the cold outside environment and ground. The second source not to be underestimated is through evaporation from the surface. Water takes energy in the form of heat to evaporate. It pulls this heat out of the water itself causing the water to cool.

How do I know this? I have a 20' by 40' above ground pool that was almost impossible to keep warm enough to swim in. I put one of the solar pool covers on every night. I immediately noticed a big difference in less heat loss during the night and a big difference in the amount of water I had to add to the pool.

Insulated walls should help with the heat loss. Insulating the floor from the ground should probably help more. Adding a semi sealed roof would help a lot too. If the air above the tank is trapped it will become saturated with water vapor and reach an equilibrium greatly reducing the amount of evaporation from the tank and hence heat loss.

 

[captainahab]

I am nearing the end of a 200gal plywood/epoxy build. 1st point, if done properly you don't need fiberglass. I am a professional cabinetmaker/carpenter and work with epoxy quite a bit. Epoxy on plywood is perfectly fine, you just have to reinforce the corners.
As to insulation, I built mine to be kept in my Iowa garage all winter! The garage will only be heated to 50 f during the winter. The floor, 3 sides and top of mine are built as stud walls and filled with 2" dense foam which is R10 rated.
I seriously doubt you have the type of of winters that we do, but....is your horse barn heated?