need help with GH setup

I will be opening a small backyard nursery next year and i'm working on getting grants to help with the startup cost. I go next month to see how much grant money will i be getting and to get the max amount of money i have to make a list with prices of everything i will be needing.
I have never had a greenhouse so this will be a first time growing in one for me so i'm clueless.

The plan is to buy 2 of the 10 x 12 HF greenhouse. At this point i'm not sure if we will try to connect them somehow. I would like to but need to do more research to see if its posable.
I'm thinking about putting 18 power outlets between the 2 of them, again this is just a guess so far.
We are on City water so my water supply will come from a hose. I don't know if i'm going to do hand watering mister or both.
I have a growers supply catalogue that i'm looking threw for some ideas but if your not sure what you need its not much help lol.
I know i'm getting help with the grants but i'm also looking for the cheapest way around all this to make my money go as far as i can.

In this catalog they have redi portable heating mats, if i use them do i still need a heater?
In this list i need everything from A - Z. Needs, wants, wish, and everything in between. Thermostats, timers, monitors, soil testers, shade, heating, cooling, watering, ECT.

Any and all help is wanted.
Thanks,
Kristy

Welcome to the GH forum!
I'd suggest you review the many posts made here over the last few years. There's tons of good information on many of your concerns. 18 outlets sounds reasonable (most people just put in one or two.) City water is safe to drink, but that said, varies considerably. Go get a water quality report from the city and see just what you're dealing with. You want to pay attention to the hardness (often high if groundwater from limestone formations), pH (usually high due to anti-corrosion additives like lime), dissolved metals like iron and manganese, etc.

Misting is great for humidity and cooling but you may need to remove the calcium/magnesium hardness if you plan to do a lot of misting. I had a post here a year ago or so on misting. There are many reverse osmosis systems available at reasonable prices.

What heating you will need depends entirely on what you are growing in the winter, i.e. what temperature do you need to maintain, the minimum outside temperature, and the heat loss through the GH. In zone 8a you won't need a lot of heat but it still freezes in the winter. Look for a past post by "stressbaby" in this forum on heating costs. (He will probably reply to this post.)

Dave.

Thanks Dave.

It never crossed my mind about the water quality so i will be looking into that. I know we have hard water.

To be honest with ya i'm not sure what i'm going to be growing. This business was something i decided to do because i got tired of driving 1 1/2 hours to the bigger town to get plants. So if you just decided one day you wanted to play in the yard unless you took a road trip it was not going to happen. At first the plan was to grow a few plant to sell hoping that would keep myself in plants. I went to the City board and asked for a variance to do this nursery in my back yard, once it was granted they put it in the paper. Since then tun's of people have been asking me when i'm going to open and they can't wait. Now i'm thinking i will need a lot more plants then i was first thinking of or i'm going to be sold out soon.

As far as heating the GH goes i'm sure i can get away without heating it but for the grants i need to think of now and future needs and with me not knowing what i'm going to be growing i would like to cover that avenue. I have been pondering not connecting the 2 and having just one heated.
We do have a flower shop here but she has been trying to sell and so far no takers. She only does house plants and cut flowers and i'm not into the cut flowers. But if she closes down i can take over the house plants part. Her biggest sales in house plants are for funerals and i will do what she does. When they have a funeral she goes to her supplier and gets what she needs then.
Kristy.

Kristy, welcome to the GH forum.

It is always said that the first thing you should do when thinking about a GH is decide what you will grow. This often determines what you need. For example, if you are just raising spring bedding plants, you may need a GH will less winter insulation and the water quality may not be such a big deal. I know a commercial grower in Iowa who does without heaters, every spring. For me, growing containerized tropical fruits, and for digital_dave, who collects bromeliads, winter heat and water quality matter a great deal.

If house plants are part of the picture, water quality matters. There are a few ways to handle hard water. One is with a potassium-based water softener. Another is reverse osmosis, that is what dave and I use. Rainwater collection is more economical, I would add this to my grant if I were you. Tigerlily uses a rainwater collection system which stores the water in a tank and recharges a bladder tank when it draws down. Nautical will be using a similar storage/recharge system, but in his case it is supplied with RO water. Thanks and acknowledgement to both of them for the help with the diagram, below. The parts for this system will run roughly $200-400, more if you use RO water for the supply.

Heat mats won't be adequate for heat in the winter. Here is a greenhouse heat calculator: http://www.littlegreenhouse.com/heat-calc.shtml If we assume the lowest temp you will have is 15F, and that you will want to maintain at least 55F in the two greenhouses attached end-to-end, you will need just under 19000btu of heat. You will want to play with the numbers a little bit using the calculator.

I wonder whether it would be better for you to go with a larger double-layer poly hoop style greenhouse. Two 10x12 HFGH sounds awfully small for a "nursery" operation. That is half the size of my hobby greenhouse. It is possible to connect two HFGH end-to-end. You should probably decide this issue early on, because obviously if they are not connected you may want to have two exhaust fans, two sets of intakes (intake shutters), rather than just one.

I would advise you to go to ebay or amazon and get two books: The Greenhouse Gardener's Companion http://www.amazon.com/Greenhouse-Gardeners-Companion-Growing-Sunspace/dp/1555914500 by Shane Smith http://www.greenhousegarden.com/ is an excellent overview of greenhouse gardening and is really the beginner's bible. So You want to Start a Nursery by Tony Avent is a book I haven't read, but is highly recommended http://www.amazon.com/So-You-Want-Start-Nursery/dp/0881925845 He owns Plant Delights nursery and writes with a great sense of humor.

Post back with your questions and we'll do our best to help.

Ack, the diagram has a mistake, it should look like this:

As always, SB has great advice. There is only a few changes I would make to his diagram if you are going to use catchment tanks, and that would be to put a ballcock valve shutoff (not sure of the exact name-once these things are in place-they are out of mind!) right at the base of the tank ( I have two in case one cracks in the winter as I have 2200 gallons per tank and I don't want to take a chance on losing that water) so that if you have to make repairs to any of the equipment, you can shut off the water at the source.
The other is that I have a very small bladder tank-it is only 1.5' long, and from SB's diagram, his looks very large-not sure what size the water tank is in comparison. The point being though is that this is very easy to set up-but you have to have it near a roof to catch any amt of rain for a nursery operation.

Right, TL! Doh! Shutoff valves never hurt, anywhere along the way. You also should have one after the bladder tank.

Now the diagram looks like this:

Lol....forgot another thing. It is good to have a way to drain this whole line-from the first shutoff next to the tank for the winter in case you have freezes, as I do. I have two small shut off valves that allows me to drain everything except the tanks. Before I had that, I had the bladder tank crack in the winter because there was water in it and it froze. Now I drain the whole system in the winter when it is going to get cold.
One more thing-I have a filter that I can clean out, that is before the bladder tank, as the water in the tanks can get gunky with algae etc. I also unscrew and drain that as it can freeze and crack in the winter. I also clean it then.

Thanks, you guys have been a great help.
I'm thinking i will need to go with some sort of water softening system cause of the lack of rain we get in this part. The last few years they have not let firecrackers to even be sold in this town or popped do to how dry we are.

I realize my GH are on the small side for what i'm wanting to do. But i'm also in a very small town and i'm not sure how well this is going to go yet. I'm also having to deal with a space issue, My yard is small and the GH is about as big as i can go. On the other hand my mom and dad just bought some land where they live about 1 1/2 hour from me and the land was a landscaping business so they have a water well and sprinkler system on the property. If i can plant things like cannas, daylilies, hostas, ECT that will multiply i can harvest from there also. The only thing is she knows nothing about plants so i'm not sure how hard it will be on me tending my place and hers. The other plan is to buy ready to sell plants. I know that option is going to be a big expense and not much profit margin with it but it goes back to space, experience, and the fact that i will be the only nursery in town and need a good assortment of plants.

i know i will be growing veggies, herbs, cannas, hostas, vines,hardy hibiscus, datura, annuals ECT. just not sure on it all yet. The more i try to learn the more i realize i don't know S!@# and i'm starting to wonder if this was a good idea or not. I'm a fast learner and have a great support system behind me but is that enough to make a business out of it?

Kristy

Stressbaby,
I just ordered the book The Greenhouse Gardeners Companion. I have the book So you want to start a nursery and i enjoyed reading it but its been so long since i should do a refresher course on it.
We went to Hastings the other day and i could not find any books on greenhouse gardening. I forget about Amazon, com.
Kristy

Okay i have read up on the cattle panel hoophouse and with my space issues this may be the way to go.
I'm not sure if this is reasonable or not but here it goes. Since space is a very big issue for me. at first i was trying to think of a way to use the greenhouse during the summer, but with us getting in the triple digits for the most part of the summer i just can't see this happening with the Harbor freight GH.
Now if i go with the hoophouse can i cover it with plastic and it be taken off during the summer and replaced with shade cloth?
Now on the other hand with using plastic i have another issue that will come up with it. We get lots of wind around here. Most day a calm day will be wind gust around 10-20 MPH and its nothing for it to get up to 20-40 MPH. Can the plastic hold up to the wind or will it become a big expense?

It will easily hold up to winds in the 40's if put on correctly, i.e staple the crap out of it at the base where it attaches to the wood. You can also take the plastic off each summer and put up shade cloth
Can you postition the grhouse so that the ends are west/east and the length runs south/north? That will give you maximum sun exposure

Also,if you get a gas 'forced air' heater, you will have the bottom heat to germinate seeds (annuals and perennials)-esp if you get it a little bit bigger than what you need.

TL is right, the cattle panel hoophouse is supposed to be very rigid once it is put together.

I don't think I said the position of the grhouse right. Help me out here SB! lol the gable ends are on the east and west side, one long side of the grhouse faces south and the other side faces north


edited to say that I take the plastic off if I think we are in the direct path of a hurricane-but that would be the only time that I would worry about winds, and we get strong winds here at times as well.

This message was edited Jun 18, 2007 9:03 PM

I have my own, very unscientific thoughts about greenhouse orientation. I tend to keep those thoughts to myself...they don't seem to be very popular. ;-)

I have 3 places i can put the GH and each with its pros and cons.
I can put it on the EAST end of my yard with the length of it running North and South i should be able to make it wider. With the gable ends also facing North and South i will get the best air flow threw it during the summer. We have a 6' privacy fence around my back yard so with the GH facing this way unless i pull it away from the fence i will have the east wall of the GH shaded in the morning. If i pull it away from the fence i will be losing that much width of the GH.
Then there is the South side of the yard where the length of it running East and West, this way it can be longer but not as wide. Again some shade on the South wall of the GH do to fence and 2 fruit trees.
The North side of the fence gets the max amount of sun but i have my pond on that side and if i tell hubby it has to be moved and filled in i know there is no way he will ever make me a new one LOL. It can be done with the pond there but it will be wider than longer. The gable ends will be facing the East and West.

Okay SB i ment on the East side with the gable ends on the North and South.
I'm thinking this would be the best and i can be way off cause i will get the max airflow threw it during the summer.



This message was edited Jun 19, 2007 7:52 AM

I think that from what you tell us, I would go with the south end of the yard.

This is a dumb question and if i had not woke up from sleep to find this out at 3 am i may know this.
From what i read on constructing a hoophouse i did not see any mention of roof vents.
The only thing i have seen for a hoophouse is the exhaust fans with shutters.

there aren't any roof vents in a hoop house-only the shutters (2) on one end of the grhouse, usually on either side of the door, and then a larger fan at the other end that pulls the air thru the house. You can also suspend fans in the center of the house off one of the ribs at the top. This seems to be the best way to move the air thru the grhouse. When you take the plastic off in the summer, you probably will not use the fans, the shadecloth will be enough to cool down the grhouse. In fact, depending on what you grow-you may not even use a shadecloth, because shadeclothes encourage the stretching of a plant, and any annuals or perennials that you grow that like full sun will grow better without the shadecloth. They will probably need to be watered twice a day though in the dead of summer if sunny, unless they are in gallon containers and aren't rootbound.

Your saying ceiling fans along with exhaust fans and shutters.
I was thinking i needed a shade cloth to help with the water on my smaller pots. I plan on selling a lot of the veggies and herbs in 4" pots. My larger pots will be in roles on landscape fabric out in the yard.
I could just cover part of it so that i get the morning sun and afternoon shade.

TODAY I WILL get out and decide where i'm going to put this GH in the yard and the size i can go.

We did get out and measure everything out yesterday and the biggest i can get the greenhouse is 19x24.
By the time we get the workshop, greenhouse and the small shed we have now that i will be turning into my shop all back there i'm going to need to get very creative with the placement of my containers.

I guess i pouted enough that hubby is now going to help me with the construction of the greenhouse. At first he was telling me to do all the research and then just tell him what i wanted done. I have been so stressed and making my self sick over all this that has to be done in a short amount of time. I was not getting the understanding of the GH and i'm sure its do to to many irons in the fire and lack of sleep.
Now that i know the size i can go i'm not even sure i can make the cattle panel hoophouse with that width.
The hoophouse was perfect, sturdy enough to hang fans from and the fact that i could remove the plastic and use shade cloth for the have to have summer use for space reasons.
I know i don't have to take the plastic off and still use the greenhouse to sell out of cause i have been to a many places that do that. The thing is its so hot and humid in them that i do the walk real fast and hope i can spot something i can't live without on the fly by. I need to make it as comfortable as possible out there so they will stay and gander. We all know the more we gander the more we spend LOL. That 19 x 24 has to be selling space also if i'm going to have the variety of plants to keep the customers coming back.

So could you creative people PLEASE help me figure this out. At this time i feel i'm all out of creativity LOL.

You can pretty much make the hoophouse as large as you like. Another thought would be duel hoop houses. put them side by side and make them half as wide. although you would need a gap so you can get between them. GO to a farm supply website and look at the sizes that cattle panels come in. That will tell you what you will be able to do size wise on your greenhouse

Thanks,
I was thinking they only came in one size. I will go look them up now.
Kristy

As long as the cattle panels came longer than the 16' we have a plan on how to build the GH.
We will be going to town for the weekend next weekend to decide on the material we will be using.
At that time i will have a chance to price a lot of stuff.

So what is your take on hanging baskets? Lowes, walmart, and so forth seem to all have 10" and that should be fine for single plant baskets. I would like to have some 2 and 3 different plant combination baskets and i'm thinking 12" or 16" baskets will be better for them. I would also like to do some wire baskets with the coco liners, this way i can plant some plants in the top and sides on the planter. Has anyone used the grow bag planters? I'm wondering if i should try some of them also for a price difference, for the people that don't want to pay the price on the wire baskets. Hanging baskets are going to be a big profit here. You should see the 10" pots that the garden club get $17.00 or $20.00 for here.

Okay here we go again, a few more questions.
First off i had the plan of covering the GH in plastic so it can be taken off every year so i can use it to hold the plants for sale. Hubby has decided to build it from wood and cover it in PVC panels cause he thinks it will look a lot better. Now i need to know if there is any way i can cool it down with it covered in PVC panels enough for it to be usable during the summer. The only thing that comes to mind is a swamp system and that will make it so humid and sticky in there now one is going to stay in there long. Any other ideas?

We looked at Lowes and found the PVC panels and i'm wondering if yall have any comments about that stuff. And comments about getting it from Lowes.
Kristy

PVC? Do you mean polycarbonat panels? I didn't think PVC came in clear?. But hey I am willing to learn something new. When he is building the greenhouse, if he makes frames for the upper panals so that they can be hinged on the upper end and raised ont he other it should give you some good air circulation. You can still use a shade cloth on it and that will help also

well what i found at Lowes is Palruf clear corrugated PVC panels

hmm. I learned something new today! :) Dh brought some clear corrugated plastic home with him to fix our greenhouse once but it was polycarbonate. It didn't work to fix ours because of the corrugation

well i just went and looked it up and i don't think its going to work all that well. So back to price more LOL.

rats.. I can't remmber, are you going ot try to overwinter stuff or just start seeds and grow annuals for sale?

Looking at the Palruf PVC panels i'm not sure if they are intended for GH. The price on them is $10.99 for a 3' x 8' panel. They also have the Suntuf polycarbonate panels that are the same size but cost $16.99 each and i think they are intended for use on a GH.
The only thing is they are thin, What i find on line is a double wall poly.
I think here i should have no problem over wintering perennials outside, and i will be starting a lot from seeds and liners my first year and buying to sell what i don't grow my self. I'm going to go ahead and have it setup for year around growing so as my experience grows and i makeup my mind on what i want to grow it will be setup for anything.
I'm not sure but it looks like the double wall poly panels will not work on a wood framed GH.

I have been doing more reading and i think i should go with a double poly cause it looks like it will cut down on the heating of the GH by 50%. With that said will it help with the cooling of it also?

I'm wanting to use this to house plants for sale during the summer also so what type of cooling should i be looking at. I'm looking at 98-102 during the summer here. I was planing on having an exhaust fan and shutters along with a misting system but should i look into evaporative cooling instead?

Yes.. if you are concerned at all with insulation then the double wall is the way to go. You want roof vents and exhaust fans.. not sure you need to cooler but I will let more experienced voices speak to that

SB where are you at i need your help.
How would you go about cooling the GH for summer ues?

Is using a misting system just about the same as having and Evaporative cooler but much cheaper?

Hi TXSWETIE,

Did you decide on twinwall PC? Have you decided on the frame?

SB

I have decided on building the GH from wood. Hubby got some building books from Lowes cause he was not sure how to build a gable roof. The only issue with a wood GH is rot. Hubby and i agree we do not want to use pressure treated wood. We built a fence out of it last year and the wood was still wet. we even painted it and it bowing like crazy and looks like crap now. The only thing i can think of doing is painting it to help with rot. Any ideas?

I'm truing to keep the GH cost to $1000 but i'm not sure if i go with the double panel glazing if i can.
Lowes caries 2 brands of panels one is Palruf PVC corrugated panels @ $10.99 for 3' x 8' , Then they have Suntuf corrugated polycarbonate panels @ $16.99 3' x 8'. Both of these are single panels and as far as cost goes this is the way to go. I do know if i go this way i will go with the Suntuf.
On the other hand is the twinwall panels going cool and heat the GH better? If so then i will need to go with them. The only thing is they run about $41.00 a panel from what i have found so far, then factor in shipping and i'm way over $1000 GH.
I have decided i want to heat the GH, The first year i'm not sure i will use it heated but i do know later down the road i will be trying to grow a lot of the plants i sell and i will need it then. I'm going to go with a gas heater. I'm also trying to decided if i need heating mats as well. We have very mild winters and i'm thinking heating mats will help me get a head start on growing without having to heat the whole GH. This could be over kill i'm not sure.

Cooling is going to be my biggest issue,. I got the book Greenhouse gardener's companion and from what i gather evaporative coolers work the same as a fogger and misters. I guess it just depends on how much you want to spend. And here we don't have an humidity issue so either will work just fine. But with the cooling system, shade cloth, fans, vents, will it still be enough to lower the temp enough to keep plants in it during our long hot summers. If not then i need to look at the plastic covers again that can be taken off every year. But doing that will be a big cost its self. If i can't use the GH during the summer then i need to just not do this. I'm going to be a very small nursery but without the GH space i'm not going to have enough room to have the amount of plants to keep people coming back.
As much as i hate to and trust me its breaking my heart i have to fill in my pond. That will give me a lot more display space. And it comes down to what i want more, the pond or nursery.

TS, let's start with heating, because, yes, it is easier than cooling, it may also be more expensive.

Assuming a 19x24 GH, 5' sidewalls, 8' height, min temp of 15 and holding 55F inside, using single layer PC, you'll need 46K BTU of maximal heat output. You need to consider the cost of the heater(s) in your construction calculations...I'll come back to that.

If you are willing to do that, then look at the heating costs...I couldn't find average January temp for Big Lake, but I did find it for Odessa/Midland, and it is 43.2F. Using the same assumptions, you'll use 13834BTU/H in January. Assuming you heat with propane, that's 108gal of propane in an average January. Last year we bought at $1.69/gal, so you would have been looking at a typical January heating bill of $183.76 for the GH. You can do the conversions for electric using your KW/H electricity costs and the methods in this thread: http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/644362/

Change all of that to twinwall PC and what do you get? Using 4mm twinwall instead of single layer, your largest heat consumption will be about 27000BTU instead of the 46K. Your average hourly BTU in January drops to 8070 and so your average January heating bill with propane drops to $107.

The GH is 977ft^2 in surface area. Assuming no waste, you'll need 30.5 4'x8' panels, that's $1251, a difference of $559 over the single pane PC @ $16.99/3'x8' panel.

To get your payback, we have to guess a little bit, here...let's assume that your heating bill in December and February is conservatively about 1/2 that of January, and the total of November and March (first and last frost according to NWS data for Midland/Odessa) is about 1/4 that of January. Then your total annual heating costs, using all of the assumptions above, is $187.50 cheaper with the twinwall PC than with the single. This means your payback on the twinwall PC on heating bills alone is about 3 years. It may actually be a bit better than that when you factor in the lower cost of the smaller heater initially, but I just priced a Modine Hot Dawg, and the 30K BTU is only $30 less than the 45K BTU ($619 versus $649) so there may not be a lot of savings there.

Save early, save often...next post...

On the wood, I suppose a rot-resistant wood treated with either a good penetrating primer and paint, or covered with a stain would be best. Those who have built wooden GHs insist that it is easier to paint before construction. I would definitely use PT wood for the sills.

Heat mats...good idea, I love mine.

Since you will be building this yourself, you have some other cooling options. Consider this...build the sidewalls into frames which can be removed in hot weather...you wouldn't have to do all of them, but at least half. You could remove them in the summer, cover the roof with shade cloth, and you would have a shadehouse in the summer.

If you don't like that idea, then you'll be looking at exhaust fan, shade cloth, misting/evap coolers, etc. I would say that for this house you would want up to 6000cfm of exhaust. That's double your GH volume. That and the the other methods theoretically should keep you down within 4F of outside temp.

HTH

Thanks SB that was a big help.
Okay i'm sold on the twin wall panels.
We are a lil warmer than Odessa/midland but that was the closest town to us that i found also.
I'm going to go with gas for heating cause that is what we use to heat our house and its going to be cheaper to use that then to have a propane tank put in.
What would be the best gas heater to use?