going full time into the greenhouse bizz this year.

Our neighbor heated water for his pool by simply running a long black hose up and down his roof, then to the pool. Perhaps you can warm water in the same way?

"pagancat" haven't started on it yet but was going to build a bed like the heating bed and lining it with plastic putting two to three inches of construction sand and where the shelf is on the heating bed put a row of misters and cover the whole thing in plastic. should be started on it this week and i will take pics. "no problem piggy backing".

LOL - just call me Sheryl.

Thanks for the ride!

I heated water for my wringer washer for a few years with a long black hose laying in the sunshine. 400 foot of hose laying in the sunshine gave me water too hot to handle anytime outside temps were above 40 degrees F. By the time the cold water ran thru the hose long enough to finally cool the hose down the washer was full and by the time I was ready for the next load the water was hot again.

I wish I was smart enough to figure out a way to heat my small greenhouse with that hot water without any other power source.

That is the common desire, to be able to heat the greenhouse without a powersource. That would mean minimum cash output for heat. I suffer the same cold weather as you suffer. For me, I do not see any alternative than wood heat. If I had the funds to put up a greenhouse I would use an outside wood furnace for heat.

I do have a small submersible pump that doesn't take much electricity. I'm wondering if I could have a tank on the inside to catch the hot water, and the small pump at the bottom to push the water back out to the black hose that is in the sun. I can afford to run the pump, I use it in the summer and barely notice a blip in my electric bill. It would be a bit more of an active collector than a passive tank inside the GH. I need to learn a whole lot more on how this works.

From my experience there was nothing to work. I lived in a mobile home that was on a basement and I ran the hose across the roof in a kind of loopy fashion because of something I had read in Mother Earth News. I had no plans, just ideas. The magazine had suggested a similar thing for hot water for showers and they used a water tank mounted high in the air. I had no money but did have hose. It worked well for my small amount of hose and I decided to get more hose hoping for more hot water. It worked! I washed clothes in hot water in the back yard. The washer was on wheels and I pushed it out of the basement. I washed clothes in the backyard so that I could watch my young children while I did laundry. It gave them the opportunity to play outside with supervision and I was still able to get laundry washed and hung on the line. I also used the hot water to fill their wading pool. By the time the pool was full the water was less than bathwater warm but warmer than it would have been straight from the tap.

if you look in the middle of this thread there is a pic of my solar water heater. same concept as the black hose in the yard. in fact you could use a garden hose and would take up less space. cathy4 i think your idea would work you would need to watch it the first time you ran it to see that the catch tank didn't run out of water. the one problem i am facing with using the solar water heater is the water is too hot for the cuttings will need to figure a way to add cooler water or cool the water down before it gets to the misters.

here is the idea i am going to try. from the hot water heater to the car radiator where the fan blows threw cooling the water and heating the greenhouse a little then on to the misting bed for the cuttings. kathy65468 i loved mother earth news have a lot of old ones their the best. i have read each one about 20 times the covers are falling of. the newer ones aren't as good you almost need money to do the things they write about now instead of reusing stuff still some good info.

I agree. I stopped reading Mother many years ago. Originally, you could do most anything in the mag using scrounged stuff. Now, you need a padded checkbook and a good retail supplier to accomplish the things in the mag. You cannot make much money off poor folk so there are many businesses who have upscaled to attract the less poor.

I'm really glad you all said this. I just let my first year of Mother expire, I was not impressed. I need very basic, cheap help, and it has to be for a beginner, because I'm just learning. It seemed the mag assumed we have high technical abilities and money. Haha, I have none of the above, just taking baby steps to become more self sufficient, eat my own food and not waste.

If you can ever lay your hands on issues from the first 10 years they are a gold mine of info. I think Mother is where MacGyver learned to go into a forest with a pocket knife and a qtip and build a shopping mall. I am positive I saw the plans on how to do it in Mother LOL. It really was almost that good! Mother cannot make money off garbage dumps. It does no good to tell us how to build a greenhouse with stuff you can just scrounge up. Mother does make money from advertisers. Advertisers sell greenhouse kits and not the keys to the landfill (dump in my day)

check out the garage sales and auctions i've gotten a lot of them there and buy doubles if you can i ware mine out. on one of them i'm on my third copy read it to death.

And do not let the looks of them fool you. In the beginning Mother was a sorry looking excuse for a magazine. It had few pages and not a lot of glossy color. It was printed cheap! It was very thin and not much to look at. It was a definite example of "do not judge a book by the cover".

and those are some of the best ones to!

You got that right!

I think I've read enough that I won't have to worry much about heat during the day, just in the evening. My GH isn't big like yours, just a little one in the back yard.

did you read that one thread where the guy used bubble wrap to insulate with that would help with heat lose at night. if you could put some rocks or cement stepping stones to help hold the heat and of coarse milk jogs with water in them for solar mass. these would help some.
i was thinking later when i have some time haha that it would be cool to dig a hole and build a greenhouse under ground with only the roof above ground to see if that would hold heat at night. "to many ideas and only one life. i needed to be a cat.lol

Totally underground would probably never be warm enough. Built into a hillside with south face and only north and back half of east and west walls covered with earth would work to create heat and retain it.

maybe just earth berm the north west and east side with south face for heat grabbing

All ideas to consider....

well got about 2 hours to work on the small greenhouse so this is what i got started. here is what i have to work with.

cut the 2x4s in half with a 18 degree angle and cut the gusset.

put the glue on.

screwed the gusset on

turned over and screwed the other gusset on the other side.

and the first joint is finished only 24 more to go weeeeeee. i will try to get two trusses done tomorrow and set them up if i can. oh i think my friend is going to bring his tractor over and level the area for the two big greenhouses tomorrow. i hope i hope i hope!

Totally underground would probably never be warm enough. An underground greenhouse is actually one of the most efficient types of GH that there is. A fellow I know on another forum is an international greenhouse consultant and he has shown me pics of "greenhouses" in colder, undeveloped countries which are basically huge channels dug into the ground, covered with plastic. The folks cover the plastic with straw or hay at night and uncover during the day.

What kind of wood is that you are using?

those channel greenhouse sound cool would love to see pic of that. the wood is just pine. i am going to paint with a water sealer. i only need it to last me until i get the large greenhouses up. then i will use it as a seed starting house until its ready for the burn pile.

Im watching and waiting for your greenhouses to go up.

I know another person who does the aquaponics. HIs is hobby size. In a greenhouse. Interesting but I cannot talk myself into doing that.

My first Heat tables were like yours with the soil heating cables. It worked good. I converted to heat pads cause it was quicker and I could move them around to where ever I needed them.

I wish there was an easy unexpensive way to have solar heat at night for large greenhouses.

that is the million dollar question. can wind power produce heat?

hay criket i've been watching your thread and love it i'm going to try some of the big boy this year. i'm getting my new breeding stock of tilapia this week. the male is one type and the females are another so when you cross them you get 95 percent or more males like a donkey and a horse. the male grow a lot faster the the females hopping by the end of next week to get the two big greenhouses up. if the weather will let me.
cathy4 the only way i know of producing heat from wind power is to make wind powered elec. and use a elec. heater. there is one guy that is using a motor to turn a metal disk which rubs on 4x4 blocks of wood making friction and heating up the disk then water is dropped on the disk and makes steam for heat or power a steam engine. you could run the motor with the wind power.

here is the truss with out the legs

here is the pile of trusses with legs. hoping to put them up in the next few days. don't think i can tomorrow have to take my oldest to the hospital to get ready for his surgery on the 6th of march. they are going to take out an inch of bone on both sides of his jaw. ouch. i'm going to have to make him smoothies for 6 weeks.

My son had the surgery to make his jaw bigger, good luck on keeping him full. If they can, have them leave his jaw open with spacers about 1/2 inch, then he can use a small spoon in a couple of weeks and have stuff like mashed potatoes, scrambled eggs, things he can mush with his tongue. My son liked chili and thick soups make into smoothies.

This message was edited Feb 18, 2009 7:17 PM

thanks cathy4. he has about 3/4 inch under bit that this will fix. he's been going threw a lot of smoothie idea and my sis is big on herbal supplements and protean shakes so she is getting in on the act.

Docs wanted to do that surgery to me when I was a kid and Mom wouldn't let them. Long, long time ago though...had to wear braces for 2 years instead to fix the bite problem...I wish she had of let them do the surgery 'cause I had 2 teeth pulled (one on top and one on bottom) last year and now they've all shifted back into the empty spaces to where they were before I wore braces.

Sending positive wishes to your son.

thanks for the positive wishes threegardeners. the doc said if we didn't get this done that he would grind his teeth to nothing before he was 25. they said his was the worst they ever saw. they are going to do a paper on him. i asked if this would get us a discount. they just laughed. its going to cost 58,000 dallors, our part is about 7,000. ouch

oh my goodness. so sorry for your son. and the rest of the family too. and ouch on the $ too.