New greenhouse project

[Darren Wright]

I had notice over where the lines come to the house from the wood boiler, we had flowers popping up when we still had snow on the ground. Figure it would work in the greenhouse as well with the pavers as a heat sink for the sun and thermal mass for the heat from the lines.

 

[Darren Wright]

Kind of stalled on this with the summer heat and fall chores. I finished cleaning out the rest of the excess dirt today, about 15 wheel barrel loads and got the rest leveled and compacted. I put down the geo textile fabric., which will run under the walls and around the outside perimeter.


My wife has started picking up decor too, so she’s ready to get it functional.


Edit: I guess I never posted the before pic. I had backed the backhoe up to each door and broke up the first 4” of soil.

 

[David Johnson]

This reminds me of my greenhouse years of 18 years ago. Sometimes they were'nt happy days.
David

 

[Dave Hawksford]

This will be my green house project.

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[Darren Wright]

Very nice Dave! I’ve looked at a couple of vertical units to save room in the green house. Many of them have so many fittings of different sizes and the main complaint is cleaning/sanitizing them. I’m leaning towards using buckets at first.

 

[Dave Hawksford]

Very nice Dave! I’ve looked at a couple of vertical units to save room in the green house. Many of them have so many fittings of different sizes and the main complaint is cleaning/sanitizing them. I’m leaning towards using buckets at first.

The gym I go to has one and it's productive. Jimmy will like it since she likes greens. LOL

 

[Darren Wright]

This morning I started by sorting through some of the old studs from the little house and removing nails. All but one was oak. I ended up building a potting bench for the green house, 6 foot long, 40" tall. The 1X's are all rough cut, left over from the garage build in the early 90's.

The height is where my wife wants it, so her back is comfortable, 36” was too low.


I had some help this afternoon, she mostly supervised.


Lastly I drilled some holes and hung up the sign outside.

 

[Brent Dowell]

Nice work!

 

[Darren Wright]

We had some 60 mph gusts last night. No apparent damage to anything other than a tarp covering the osb for the guest house, which is all dry still. The greenhouse stood up just fine through it all.

 

[Darren Wright]

I haven’t updated this for a bit. We did find time to start some seedlings this season. We also have picked up dwarf lemon and lime trees to try and kill.

I added some 12v radiator fans, one at each end of the greenhouse to help vent it out on warmer days. The fans are thermostat controlled. I went with 12v as I’m planning to run the greenhouse off solar eventually. Also added those magnetic doorway bug screens, which work well, but we’ve had trash panda visiting lately, so will have to see if it keeps him out or we move to more solid screens.


We also added a shade cloth over the top to help keep it a bit cooler in there. I need to move the shade cloth further over the top and over the top vents. It stretches easily enough they would still open, but it would help keep the bugs out. Also did some lawn edging around the outside to seal off the gaps at the bottom, I’ve added another border of weed cloth and am currently adding rock around the outside to keep things out.


Tonight I reworked the irrigation lines and added a 12v solenoid valve to automate the watering for when we’re out of town. I still need to run some pex for a more permanent water line, which I’ll mount the electric valve at that point.

 

[Ryan Mooney]

If you find it's still overly hot in there once the sun really starts cooking it, an air gap between the plastic and the shade cloth may well help a lot.