can you link me on your thread please?I'm building a greenhouse well expanding and fixing it up for all year growing check out my thread on wind turbines it's not inexpensive but it's a hobby that you could make money from what part of Canada? with a well built cold frame you can grow to dec,,,
I tought about the solar panel with a heating unit but I don't know if I would be heating the greenhouse for nothing. I mean if the heat would be excaping trough every window hahawould it be a stupid expense to try and couple a solar panel and battery of some sort to provide power to a heating unit?? i have no idea of expense or anything about solar power at all.. just a thought...
Clear Silicone Caulking tight screws and tight plastic with some light bulbs for heat and lightcan you link me on your thread please?
I tought about the solar panel with a heating unit but I don't know if I would be heating the greenhouse for nothing. I mean if the heat would be excaping trough every window haha
For me it did not make sense to buy 100-150ft of PVC pipe to protect the power cord from the lawn mower in the spring and snow around the connectors in the winter run 3 extension cords and run 1500watt or even 1200 watt space heaters plus I would still need to run lights....HPS was the way to go but in the spring and summer what can I do with that power? charge drills and other items saving on the electricity bill.your not going to use solar to heat a greenhouse, it just too expensive. even a 12Volt ceramic heater is going to draw way too much power.
i was in costco today, and they are pushing their new line of solar equipment. to use a 12 volt heater was $1,499. that gave you the 1200 watt generator and 2, 15 watt solar panels, the rep said that should be enough to keep the batteries charged, he said you would be surprised at how the panels keep that batteries charge.... . but, my simple calculations don't add up.
that is one expensive heater. i could just run a power cord to my 1200 watt, quartz heater and let it run all winter and that still wouldn't come near $1,500.
A LOT of solar etc. depends heavily on what you are using it for and the location-climate etc.
My parents house has been off the grid since the early 80's.
Dealing with climate etc. has a LOT to do with what you can or cannot use.
Snow on my parents cells cuts down on juice if they don't keep the panels clear in the winter.
Their panels do now ,follow the sun so the only thing they really have to keep snow free is the solar water heaters in general.
Their house was built to be totally solar.
Dad was a Mechanical Engineer and worked with mostly Heat Transfere(Mercury heat shield up to the shuttle craft,then geo thermal wells before he retired).
When the house plans were OK'd they asked him if his house was going to be on the moon or something...
Solar doesn't mean just electricity.
Could mean just sunlight and needing less heating or whatever.
Placing your greenhouse in a southern exposure with the proper materials goes a long way to saving $ on heating etc. if you have to resort to other means(heaters etc) to make it work.
Depending on the size of the greenhouse,there are a lot of ways to make things either work or cut down on some of the expense of getting things worked out that will work for whatever your conditions call for.
Also buying stuff and recycling stuff is a lot different in cost.One takes $ and the other takes a lot of original thinking and trial and error.
I've seen pretty big greenhouses that were heated with wood stoves that a water line was wrapped around the stove to pump hot water underground(floor area) and through the walls and roof beams with a thermostat tht kept the greenhouse producing veggies year round.
Wood stove was an airtight model (fisher)that used about 2 cords of wood a winter and needed stoking 2 times a day during the winter.
The greenhouse was mostly made from salvaged materials.
I like this but the problem is if you open the door for 3 seconds on a day around 0C all the heats gone.Here is mine with the heater, stays 80 degrees, could also make it hotter.
I'm told you can find this heater at Home Depot closer to winter weather for $20-$30. I picked mine up for $50 shipped. I have about $200 in the entire greenhouse but a lot of it was stuff I wanted to do to make it aesthetiacally pleasing.
Well in a larger space without a space heater it would take longer to get that heat back...but still I would not take the chance...Probably not as I won't open it at night and during the day you're looking at solar energy, then again it takes about 10 seconds to make it 80 degrees on the low setting. I can't see 3 seconds of 0 degrees doing much of anything.
Well where I live the overnight temps can reach -29C (rare but can happen) and daytime high can be -10 during the winter. In the winter it rarely dipped below 0 in my old cold frame Tomatoes would likely survive but super hot peppers probably would not....Anyway I have a heat source and a storage area being built onto the greenhouse so I can enter without letting cold air in or warm air out. In Canada we have a shorter growing season so if we had to restart we would probably be growing indoors all year. Either way Sunshine will pay for some electricity for light and heat and either build or buy some things for his setup the difference is the greenhouse will get some light/heat from the sun so you would not need to heat or light your grow area for a few hours and when spring comes you can stop using the lights sooner. If Sunshine has a large yard or permission to use his parents yard he could more than double the number of plants he plans to grow and maybe sell some. Sunshine needs to decide how much time/money he can spend and is it worth it for just him (Electricity supplies watering bulbs) he could build a cold frame from old windows and add two or three CFL bulbs for under $75 can. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhzJZye_nKIWell either they grow of they die, if they die they would have died outside before that happened and I'd be waiting until the next season anyway. I had an unheated greenhouse a few years ago that grew tomato plants year round without an issue.