New Greenhouse Finally and going s/h

[Bob2741]

I have both I took the Ideas from our 5th wheel camper. My furnace (shown in the first picture lower left hand corner.) is a 40,000 btu forced air propane furnace it is 14" widex24" long 6"high and runs off 12volt dc. I also have a computerized water pump which is also used in campers and motor homes. It puts out 5 .5 gal a min at 60 pounds but only pumps what is needed in other words if Irrigation system is on it will pump enough to supply those heads, If i use a single faucet it will see what I need and slow down but maintain pressure. (My daughter the english teacher is looking over my shoulder saying I'm getting wordie) This runs off 12Volt

I have a bank of 4 12volt deep cycle battries these are hooked to 2 things, a converter in good times (Power From the Grid the converter (idea also from camper) and a array of 4 solar panels =60 watt solar panels for when we have the frequent power outages that Duke power supplies us with. The greenhouse will continue to cool, heat, and water for 67 hours off the battries with no sun it will run normally off the solar power charging the battries if we are lucky enough to have sun during the outage. If after god forbid Duke is still scratching their head I have a 6 kw gen that also runs off propane it will charge the bats through the converter and run the greenhouse as long as the 500 gal propane tank is full.

Chapter 2 My daughter and I built a solar flat plate collector as a school project several years ago and of course I thought lets build this thing so we can help heat the old greenhouse. We did it is controled by a differentaul thermostat when it senses that the temp at the outlet of the panel is warmer it opens a damper and a vary small 12v fan from a computer comes on and pushes the air through the collector into the greenhouse. This works so well that Im thinking about adding a second collector. They are easy to build at a cost of about 100.00 for a 3X 8 ' collector and really helps with the heat bill (this post was not corrected for grammer and spelling by the English major)

[BlakeeBoo]

Cool thanks for this info I was wandering and searching a lot for info about solar collectors.

[Bob2741]

This is a very good collector and is easy to build I used western red cedar as the frame. Just size it down a little 2X6 2x8 Should be good
Glen's Solar Heater

[BlakeeBoo]

This is a great article that i think i want to apply to my future green house.

[ericst11]

Bob it's good to here from someone near my neck of the woods i lived in dayton for 19 years till a year ago. But about the solar heat collecters do they cut down on heat cost and how much do they heat the green house. I've been looking for some thing of the sort because i want to build a green house this spring and would like to cut heating cost as much as i can . I live in nebraska now and it gets cold.

[Bob2741]

I do not have any vast piles of data to prove they do but I can tell you in the winter on sunny and p-cloudy days the collector runs heat all day and hot heat on a sunny day from about 10:00 am till 4 pm the thing puts really hot air.

over the past 4 winters when it heated only the old greenhouse 8X12 (in the pictures at the start of thread the picture on the left looking back into it. ) the furnace would not come on, to me something that warms the greenhouse continually for the investment of a hundred dollars or so is very good. I'm probably add two more to help the new greenhouse section 9x14

The thermo in the collector usually reads about 97 -100 by 10:00 and can get up to 165 thats was its peak and remember I have a 22 cfm fan pulling heat off that along with the things own thermal action you can do it without blower or fan through normal convection but i like the fan Some times the thing amazes me ATTACH]22837[/ATTACH]

By the way your suppose to move south not accross I think you might have moved from the frying pan right into the fire in the winter.

[ericst11]

Well i live in omaha and we're in line with cleveland if you look at a map .You wouldn't think that but we are. Your right about the frying pan hot in the summer cold in the winter. I'm just tring to do my research before i build and make it as cost effective as possible .The heating and cooling.So if you have any input on this i would love it. thanks.

[BlakeeBoo]

Hey from the Dayton area as well!

[Bob2741]

This is the principal we used ours is 2'x8' works great and cheaper than one with pipe


Mobile Home Repair- Building an inexpensive solar heating panel

[salviaman]

Wow! Very impressive. I am jealous. I am relatively new to the whole orchid thing with only a dozen or so plants. S/H is appearing to be slightly superior in SoCal. If I can get around to watering every day. I use Hydroton. Great job! I'll be there somday.