Fixed up my 6 year old hoop house greenhouse with a new door, gravel floor and a new vent system I put together with dryer vent parts. My husband put in a thermostatically controlled exhaust fan. I have a few plants overwintering inside. Still have to put in a couple barrels for heatsinks.
On sunny afternoons it's really nice to sit and get warm.
by No-Range-2365
1 Comment
Owner/operator of a small sized family run greenhouse operation here. I like your little setup! That’s a nice, inexpensive little greenhouse that can really help to extend your growing season if not make it possible to grow the entire year. Good idea to install the ventilation fan the way you did. In the warm weather months you have to have ventilation of some sort or it gets way too hot. Actually, with my greenhouses we will run a few exhaust fans in the middle of winter on sunny days that have mild temps.
Just wanted to make a comment about the barrels for thermal mass. To be honest, they will just take up space without providing any significant heat value for the greenhouse. The only way they would give you any significant heat value would be if they were filled with hot water and that water could be kept hot all night. It doesn’t get hot enough for long enough inside the greenhouse on sunny winter days for there to be any significant heating of the water in the barrels. What little bit of warming does take place will be long gone well before sunrise the next morning. You also have a lot of winter days that are extremely overcast and on plenty of those days it is raining or snowing. On cloudy days you get some heating inside the greenhouse but not as much. I am able to turn off the heating system for our greenhouses during the daylight hours if it is sunny or if it is overcast but the clouds aren’t extremely thick. If it is raining heavy or snowing and cold, I will have the heat on even during the day because there is very little solar radiation that makes it down to the surface on days like that.
So the point I’m making there is on those really cloudy and cold days you will have no significant heating of the water barrels at all during the daylight hours. If the lows the next night are going to be well below freezing you will have no heat source heading into that night. If you live in an area where the temps get below freezing most nights during the winter and you want to grow in your greenhouse all winter long, it’s pretty much a requirement that you have an active heating source of some sort. You can always try the barrels and see if you have any luck with them. It’s a cheap experiment to try out. If you do, let us know how they worked for you! Good luck and again, nice greenhouse! Thanks for sharing it with us.