Ok so my fiance and I are building our first house which means I need to take ALL plants to our place. I have a collection of ~45 orchids, ~10 broms, ~15 succulents/cacti, several large houseplants, and a lime and orange tree. I have been ponderring the idea of adding a sunroom or greenhouse; but the cost, home owners association, and heat bills have me worried since my dad and I built one a few years ago at his house and that is my current primary growing area. Good news the new house is pretty big (and there is only two of us) but I am not sure I want 20 plants in each room all winter (most of these go outdoors for the summer - but I have no landscapping either).

Anyway, I went to the Chicago Flower and Garden show (bought no plants!!) and saw a new lighting system using LED lights specifically to grow plants and I was impressed. They do not get hot like mercury or metal halide and only emitt light in the red and blue spectra - which is nice. They use 80% less energy than similar set ups and each ballast would cost ~$150. I figure instead of building a greenhouse or sunroom to primarily grow plants, I could partition a portion of the basement to make a greenhouse IN the basement, using the growing lights and bring the flowering plants out upstairs whenever they decide to bloom. The nice thing is that I could control the "day" length for the various plants, and increase humidity which are the two most difficult parts of indoor plant care in the Midwest. Even if I had a greenhouse, the winter gray days do make a difference with winter growing orchids - this set up would also eliminate that.

There was an artile in Orchids a few months ago where someone did something similar - anyone have experience doing something of a large walk-in orchidarium in the basement? I have a stack of old windows from our old home that could be used to keep in the humidity, as well as some old fans. Instead of venting warm humid air outside I would vent it into the house which would help in the winter. I would like to use part of the basement for a "man cave" but a quarter could be devoted to plant growing with less hassel than a sunroom (for the time being anyway) for a fraction of the cost. I think it would also make watering easier to, since drainage would be easy (I could build something to chanel runoff water)from the benches right into the home's drainage system.

I don't know if I can specifically put the website I am referring to, but they are online.

thanks and any comments/suggestions would be appreciated.