Freedee: Yes, I have a BC greenhouse, am very pleased with it and it has held up to the mfg. claim that it would withstand the worst a Canadian winter could throw at it. I am in the midwest, about 40 miles south of Chicago and while we have thus far had a mild winter, we did experience a severe ice storm in November that took down power lines and trees all over the place. My BC never budged, as winds whipped across our back pasture, right at it. However, I really suggested them to you because they custom mfg. every order and don't charge an arm and leg for changes, which are usually the wallet busters on any project. They also make GHs and conservatories for commercial applications, in polycarb or glass, so depending on the style of your house, a BC greenhouse can be had to fit right in. The desire for your additions to finish looking as if they were part of the original design is presumably why you engaged an architect? If so, all you really need to do is determine where your GH will be attached, and its size. As for getting your permits: Once you decide on the size and style of a BC, they will send you the schematics as a PDF file, to attach to your permit application. All you would need then, is to have your builder install a solid foundation for it, using the BC specs. for size. If you are interested, I would again again urge you to contact Kyle at BC. He is the kind of expert you need right now, and works with architects all the time. Also and again: check out their online catalog, if nothing else; for some design ideas.

well,i've often thought about setting off a bug bomb-with the greenhouse cleaned out for the summer-but polycarbonate can be effected by chemicals.i bought my greenhouse used-when i disassembled it last year-i found at least 25 live,healthy blackwidows inside.it did have a shade cloth on it-but the automatic ventilation was not hooked up.so-despite extreme summer heat it went through-the black widows thrived.i wonder about the aphids,and spider mites that i battled last winter....

I set up a spreadsheet much like the sunnyjohn calculator, and ran some numbers for my climate, Edmonton, Alberta. I came to the conclusion that in this climate I needed to double the depth of the layers. E.g. 6-8 foot deep. This starts getting awkward, as they don't rent ditchwitches that do a narrow trench that deep. Ballpark calcs: The worst case is a 'frozen fog' weather cycle. Cloudy days, so minimum heating, coupled with temps of -20C (-30F). Given an R2 greenhouse (typical for 2 layers of poly with an inflation fan, then every square foot of surface has a 90 degree temperature differential across it. Because of the sides of a hoop house, I am going to make the approximation that there are 2 square feet of outer envelope for each square foot of ground. This is pessimistic. It's somewhere between 1.57 (pi/2) for a very long green house and 2. So each square foot of greenhouse floor has to store heat for 2 square feet of R2. With a 90 degree F temperature differential, it takes 45 BTU/hr x 2 square feet = 90 BTU per hour. Again, being pessimistic 5 day operation = 120 hours. So 90* 120 = 10,800 BTU The heat capacity of dirt is about 1/3 that of water on a volume basis. Call it 20 BTU/cuft/F If we are willing to let the greenhouse temp drop 20 degrees, then each cubic foot can store 400 BTU. That would mean 25 cubic feet of dirt per square feet of floor. Ouch! If we are willing to go 2 days, it's easier. 2/5 as much heat = 10 feet. Saving grace: If we are are going for long term heat storage, the tubes can be further apart. Sunny John estimated on the basis of storing 1 days heat, so his pipes were a foot apart. If you want 5 days heat, you can put them further apart. It starts to make sense to drill vertical holes instead. E.g. Drill a 1 foot diameter hole 20 feet deep every 5 feet. Each one gets a loop of pipe going down and up. This does make for a less efficient heat exchanger, as the air going down will transfer some heat to the air coming. Worst case, the air out will be the average of the ground temperature and the air going in. E.g. With 50 degree ground, and 80 degree air, you will get 65 degree air coming out of the ground. This ignores the latent heat factor. You might be able to get better efficiency with concentric pipes, but this makes the plumbing complicated. A cheaper way to do this may be to dig a pit 3 feet deep over the entire interior space. Put barrels in the space, filled with water, with a bit of space between them. Put in a lightly insulated floor. (R4 should do.) Barrels are about 22 inches. Put in a 2 inch space, and you have 1 barrel for 4 square feet. A barrel has 480 lbs of water. A 20 degree temperature variation is 10,000 BTU, plus whatever heat goes into the ground below the barrels. But that's for 4 square feet, so it's 2500 BTU/sqft Would do for a day and a bit of our worst case. Lets look at a different solution: Natural gas. Winter gas prices are about $6/GJ and a GJ is about a million BTU. So our one day worst case is 2000 BTU/sqft. That .002 GJ will cost us about a cent a day. How much digging are you prepared to do to save 3 bucks a year? That's worst case too. It's not always that cold. Actual greenhouse operations are worse than this. When plants are actively doing their photosynthesis thing, they will use up the CO2 in a greenhouse in about 10 minutes. So you need an air change, or another source of CO2 every 10 minutes. Air has about the same specific heat as water on a weight basis. A cubic yard of air is about 2 lbs. Your square foot of ground with a 15 foot ceiling has about a pound of air to heat. Heating from -30 to +60 takes another 90 BTU. Every 10 minutes. So the air heating load is 6 times the building heating load. However, no sunlight, no photosynthesis. And when there is sun, it's providing even in winter about 600 W/m2 which is 200 BTU/sqft/hr One greenhouse operator near here heats water in the day, pipes the CO2 into the green house to help the plants, does an air exchange every few minutes on top of that, and uses the stored hot water at night. They claim energy costs of $3.50/square foot. Conclusion: It's a cool idea. If you are off grid, it's a great idea, especially if you have sunny winters. Is it practical as a 'best solution' at current energy prices for a cold climate? I don't think so.

After doing some more research on humus it's very interesteing. It's my understanding that humus isn't fully understood and very difficult to explain. Just to help understand I've broken it down a bit. Humus by deffinision from Websters is " a brown or black complex variable material resulting from partial decomposition of plant or animal matter and forming the organic portion of soil" comes from "New Latin, from Latin, earth" From Wikipedia is close to the same deffinition "Humus (Latin - "soil ") is the organic material in soil lending it a dark brown or black colouration" And the deffinition for Colloid from Websters is "2 a: a substance that consists of particles dispersed throughout another substance which are too small for resolution with an ordinary light microscope but are incapable of passing through a semipermeable membrane b: a mixture consisting of a colloid together with the medium in which it is dispersed" And from Wikipedia "A colloid is a type of mechanical mixture where one substance is dispersed evenly throughout another." " A colloidal system may be solid, liquid, or gaseous" Aparently if you can let any organic matter decompose basicly with out any dirt it will form a jelly like substance once fully decomposed and in a stable condition. Depending on how well you create humus you could actually end up with nothing. If your humus becomes so stable that it will not provide any help to your plants. I would say this guy just did some research and took what nature already does and is just trying to sell it. I would like to see him actually product this. He may have theroy behind it but no experiance or ability to actually produce this. Take a look at Wikipedia I think they do a very good job explain humus. As far as our own compost. Well keep it cook'n we are still breaking down organic matter into stuff that helps our soils and plants and will eventually allow mother nature to create her own humus. Here is a link that might be useful: Wikipedia Humus