All year greenhouse
I have been given an evacuated tube solar water heating system and am thinking of how to incorporate it into a climitized greenhouse system.
I'm planning to buy a 13M2 greenhouse so would like to try to get the whole thing built at the same time. My idea is to use the solar water heater to collect heat during the day and to have it connected to an underfloor heaing system in the greenhouse to maintain the soil temperature overnight and during the morning. The heating panels would be covered with soil in raised beds. I'm also thinking of using a temperature/humidity sensor coupled to a processor based control system and (if I can work out how to construct them) motorised roof windows. The controller will control the heating/watering/windows to maintain an optimum growing condition. Has anyone done anything similar to this? Any pointers/suggestions; soil depth/optimum temperature/humidity? Nigel |
Sounds like it will should work depending how much solar collector area you have and your local climate. At the very least it will increase the growing season.
I'd also suggest at least insulating around the perimeter of the green house, and if you can insulate the bottom of it and then dump soil into the insulated box you've made. |
It would be intersting to know how much of a storage tank you would require in order to heat the greenhouse in the coldest winter days.
My friend has a large greenhouse business and grows only part of the year. He said that he needs to always maintain about 70F in order for his plants to grow healthy. He grows strawberries, squash, tomatoes and some other vegtables. He said his major expense is heating. After I explained about the ground source heat, his interest became apparent and wants to know more. But the idea of using evacuated tube solar heating and storage tanks may be less expensive? Geo |
Our neighbors have two greenhouses that are of fair size (not gigantic) on their 2 acre lot. They're made of two layers of plastic and they blow air between them creating a baloon effect and an air barrier for some insulation value. With this setup and some foam insulation around the perimeter they're able to grow year round. In winter they grow lettuce and spinach which can handle mildly freezing temperatures down to the high teens (degrees F).
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Spinach is cold hardy to around 0F. The cold hardiness of lettuce varies greatly depending on the cultivar, but the cold hardier lettuce cultivars can take down to 5F.
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getting greens to survive the winter isn't overly difficult. Getting them to grow through the winter can be hard. They need to warm up during the day to grow. A greenhouse can help with this.
For kicks last winter I planted lettuce, carrots and beats in a front garden where I knew they would be sheltered from the worst of the weather and should survive. The did survive but didn't grow a bit from mid october until late march. I think with a small poly tunnel they'd have kept growing at least another month probably right through. |
Low Cost DIY greenhouse design
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http://userpages.bright.net/%7Efwo/g.../southwest.jpg greenhouse |
I was thinking of the same thing myself. I was going to DIY the collector and use an old 75 gallon water heater for storage and lay PEX under a 2' raised bed garden. Collector would be drain-back. I didn't think about insulating the sides of the bed though - good idea. Does the composting need a minimum temp to start breaking down? Anyway you might be able to get some 12v pumps to circulate though the collector and the radiant tubing and use a panel to charge the battery. You could EVEN get an 80 gallon electric water heater and just wire in the bottom element as a backup.
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