Storing Energy in Your Greenhouse

Discussion in 'Designing, building, making and powering your life' started by 9anda1f, Jan 9, 2015.

  1. 9anda1f

    9anda1f Administrator Staff Member

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    Geoff has a new video out: How to Build a Geo-Solar Greenhouse

    https://permaculturenews.org/2015/01/09/how-to-build-a-geo-solar-greenhouse/

    I've recently completed the first stage of something quite similar and hope to post photos soon!
     
  2. Terra

    Terra Moderator

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    Really good

    The green house would have cost a lot

    Im guessing on a funding grant helped , the actual heating component is very simple and low cost

    Here a dual system would be good , store heat one end to extend growing season (No Frost)

    And draw cool air from the other end to offset the real nasty hot days .

    Has me thinking a re design (AGAIN) of my imminent greenhouse is required.
     
  3. andrew curr

    andrew curr Moderator

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    Im sure you could do it on the cheap!!
     
  4. sweetpea

    sweetpea Junior Member

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    So that has a cement floor, and then everything would have to be in containers. Here's another description, and it's a 10-month only growing system, it doesn't do it in the coldest months.

    And if you are planting in February (northern hemisphere late winter), the earliest you'd get food is greens in April, tomatoes in July, so it's really an 8-month food supply.

    https://33.media.tumblr.com/20d523ffd0ce36fdfc18958c115d90da/tumblr_nexs4gpeij1u27p5vo1_500.gif

    -------------------------
     
  5. songbird

    songbird Senior Member

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    some greens will do ok in cooler temperatures as long as they don't get a hard freeze. i think a cold frame in our area would add 15-30 days on the beginning and end of the season, but Ma doesn't want to make any large changes to the site.

    you can grow a lot of sprouts fairly quickly and then thin them out and eat most of them while the larger and stronger plants are left to grow out. within a week you can have sprouts of some plants.

    the difficulty here is that the mid-winter cold can also come with week long spells of no sunshine and winds which strip heat away from any exposed surface.

    i keep daydreaming of various methods of raising and lowering super insulated walls around a greehouse or the entire house as conditions warrant. like if you built your entire house on a hydraulic lift then you could tuck it underground at night or when the cold comes and then raise it up when the sun or the warm weather returns. other ideas would be to make ice sheets in the cold that can be lifted into place to be a wind break during the winter which would then melt when the warm weather returns, but such things are pretty heavy. or building a wall out of snow/slush, but we've not had enough snow to do that.
     
  6. sweetpea

    sweetpea Junior Member

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    I saw a program on TV where a guy in Alaska showed how good air is as an insulator. He made a cabin out of two layers of clear plastic 1 inch/2.54 CM apart and it stayed above 50 F/ 10 C. The ground was not frozen, and there was no cold wind coming in under the edges at ground level. So a double PVC pipe skeleton would support the second layer of plastic away from the first.

    We have mild winters here, it sometimes gets down to freezing at 4:00 AM, but not during the day and the ground never freezes. I build compost piles, 3 ft/1 m square every 6 feet/2 M inside the greenhouse, and they give off heat inside. They are easy to turn to keep them hot, and come tomato planting time in early spring, when there is still the occasional drop down to freezing, I haven't lost any plants, and I plant 200 tomato transplants minimum. I haven't done the double plastic layer, but it would be a relatively inexpensive experiment in a tunnel-style greenhouse.
     
  7. Terra

    Terra Moderator

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    Extending the growing season is a big help each end , but I wouldn't spend 20 thousand dollars to achieve that , better to dry and freeze and preserve what you can .

    My Aquaponic system in my little greenhouse gives us tomatoes 2 mths earlier than the ground garden I can raise the rootzone temperature by running water through a 100m of black poly on sunny days , and last year picked the last of the tomatoes in mid july (mediterranean climate) so a 9mth season , I would get pretty frustrated living with ice and snow .

    The double skin greenhouses look fantastic some keep them rigid by pumping air into the gap .
     
  8. sweetpea

    sweetpea Junior Member

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    Terra, is your 100m of black poly on the ground?
     

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