Presuming your water lines are below your frost level- once you have run out whatever was in your hose and supply line, the water temp ought to be the natural sub-surface 55, not 40 deg. 55 will feel quite cold on 98.6 body temp., but may be better tolerated by many of your plants than you think.

Otherwise, if memory serves; you have a gas line to your GH and surely ran a water line to it, so a small point of use water heater installed next to the tap may be a way to address the needs of those plants that really are particularly cold sensitive.

Actually, for all you have spent on your wonderful GH, one of the nicest and most useful things you can add to it, that would offer a more than fair exchange for some growing space and not cost an arm and leg; would be a utility sink, with a small WH tucked under it.

Trust me on that one: When it's bitterly cold outside and you've been puttering in your GH, having warm water to wash you hands and perhaps rinse out some pots, will bring you far greater joy than a few more ft. of bench space.

Well I have not run water underground as the run would be very very long. I had thought about a system I saw somewhere that had a heating element wrapped around a hose setup which would keep water running year round. I guess I will have to be patient for now and develop a plan for the fall as we do plan to run this year round. Thanks for the great tips once more !

Okay. No water faucet in the GH. In that case, like it or not, you will either have to haul a hose from your home, possibly in the midst of a blizzard, or have water storage in the GH that you can fill, then use regardless of the weather.

You would have to give up some space beneath benches, but a horizontal leg tank would work, with enough capacity to allow you to store as much water as you will need for as long a time as you want to avoid hauling the hose out again.

But then you would have to pump the water out, which isn't really a big deal. All you need for that, is a small utility, or good sized submersable pond pump.

The GH heater will keep the water at the same temp as the ambient air in the GH. You could also mount a horizontal tank on a tall rack and as they all come with drains, you could easily install a standard garden hose faucet on it and use gravity to drain it, although if you want enough pressure to use a sprayer, you would need an inline pump.

Or, give up a corner and install a good sized vertical tank. A tall, vertical water storage tank no more than 2 ft. in diameter will hold at least 90 - 100 gal.

I can't think of what else you can do, short of lots of buckets.

I have some extra heat tape that you put along your roof line and I am thinking about wrapping that around a hose and then covering with pipe insulation. I'd also have to wrap it atound the outside faucet as well... Might work but I'll have a big mess if it doesn't...

I hate to say it, but....

For what you put into that GH and what you will end up spending after you finish with the accessories, considering where you live and your plan to use it in winter, failing to run a below frost water line out to it was a serious error.

You may want to step back- NOW before it's really too late, and start calling excavators, to see how much it would cost to have one bring in a small trencher/back hoe. Once you have the trench, if you are handy, you can do the rest yourself, even if it means some shoveling to fill it in. In relation to the total, the materials are cheap.

You can keep a GH going in the dead of a sub-zero winter sans a water faucet in it, but it would seem an exercize in self abuse and a hobby GH is supposed to be a pleasure, not a pain.

I don`t think trying to heat the pipe with tape would work too well. Considering how fast the frigid water would be flowing in the pipe (feet per second) you`d need an awful lot of heat to warm it up or alternatively a very long length of pipe covered in tape :)

This may do the trick....

http://www.charleysgreenhouse.com/index.cfm?page=_productdetails&productid=6188&s=hose&cid1=-99&cid2=-99&cid3=-99

There would be no easy way to run a line underground. I do have access to water outside about 25' from the greenhouse (across a patio).

Here is a link that might be useful: Product at Charlies

If you believe that heated hose will do the job for you, then by all means, go for it. You might want to do a web search for it before you order it though. I've found very few products sold by Charlie's that weren't cheaper from other vendors.

But also think about how you will get the hose into the GH in the dead of winter. Your heater will be trying to overcome the blast of cold air coming in while you walk around watering plants with the door ajar.

Something we did in my GH may solve that issue for you. There was already a freeze proof faucet in the back of our garden, installed many years before I got the GH, so we erected the GH over it, setting the foundation to have the faucet end up just under the sink inside, which worked out very well.

However, that left me without a faucet in that corner, particularly in the fenced in patio directly behind the GH; a space I use for potting and cultivating aquatic plants in summer.

So we drilled through the kneewall on the end wall of the GH facing that area and installed a freeze proof pipe with a faucet on both sides and in warm months, I have water outside and during winter, the outside hose is disconnected and the water supply cut off inside, just as it is on the exterior faucets on the house.

You could do the same and once your heated hose is connected and the water turned on, you would have a water faucet inside your GH.

I hope that heated hose works for you. If not, then eventually, you may still need to look into trenching to the most accessable water connection, even if it means going around the patio.