I think if you put some polystyrene under it that would solve your problem, plus it wouldn't rot like cardboard.

What would be the difference? I have a ton of cardboard boxes though if they lasted only a month I'd be happy. Is polystyrene the stuff they put in heavy items when it is shipped to keep from shifting in the box like those styrofoam bumpers?

Aren't they made with petroleum products though? Last thing I'd need is for something like that to self ignite and start a chemical fire.

I think you would get tired of replacing decrepit cardboard every little while. Also, heavy wind is apt to lift any sheet materials such as cardboard or plastic foam.

Used pallets are sometimes available cheap or free and will stay put without being fastened down or ballasted. Just set them in place. They provide ventilation and they shade the roof underneath, keeping it cool. They will last for years.

Jim

I can't see littering my pool deck with pallets though, how bout small squares of wood under each pot? I have probably 50-70 pots and pallets wouldn't work for a practical reason anyways. Would a wooden block act as a heat sink or would it block it from the ground?

I like the styrofoam idea easy to cut to pot size

You could even cut a large slice of styrofoam and float the peppers around in the pool. That would keep 'em cool:)

How thick of a piece of styrofoam would be needed to not transfer heat? Why wouldn't cardboard or wood work the same? I have tons of both on hand and I don't want to have to go out and buy styrofoam just for the purpose of protecxting the plants from heat and then be pissed if it doesn't work.

If anyone has an idea how to configure something to utilize all the styrofoam packing peanuts to use in this fashion let me know. Those things are evil, I probably have an entire room filled with them. Would put them to good use.

Sorry. I read your original post too quickly and somehow got it mixed in my mind with another case where someone was growing peppers on a roof. No, I don't recommend littering your pool deck with pallets!

Cardboard deteriorates quickly when wet. I think it would be a mess and not even an effective insulator as soon as it was wet.

Wood has fair insulating value, but not nearly so good as an air space. Anything which will raise the pots off the pool deck, leaving an air gap underneath will be a good solution. Visualize a trivet, whose purpose is to prevent conduction of heat from a hot dish to the table under it. If you were to have squares of wood with feet or wood strips to support them off the deck, it would be a pretty effective solution I would think. These could be designed to hold several pots if you wanted and could be made of an attractive type of wood with edges machined to an attractive shape. There may be ready made metal or ceramic items available at nurseries or home centers which would serve the purpose. The point is to get the pots out of contact with the deck.

Keep in mind that sun shining on a pot will heat it directly, so lifting the pots off the deck is only part of the solution.

Jim

I just checked the temperature with a meat probe on several of my potted plants. The current ambiant temperatur when taking readings was 90.1 degrees.

Terracotta colored plastic pot with several tomatoes with a layer of cyprus mulch 97 degrees.

Black nursery pot with chili pepper 108 degrees.

Blue 18 gal Rubbermaid tote 99 degrees.

White plastic pot with Veteran's Honor rose (full afternoon sun 98 degrees)

A black nursery pot next to it was a scorching 114 degrees but strangely the pepper plant looks only midly heat stressed.

Black nursery pot with 3 tomatoes in shade and off the decking in the grass 92 degrees

Red Terracota pepper plant (the wilted looking one) mostly shade but still contacting the polypebble 94 degrees

I even tested pots in my lanai that were in full shade and the temp was around 89 degrees in the pots I tested.

I bare ground (sand) that was in full sun was about 94 degrees.

That is interesting and useful data! I manipulated the data a bit to bring out the useful information. First I replaced the actual temperatures with the difference from ambient. Then I rearranged the temperature data in rank order of difference from ambient. I also edited out some of the detail from the descriptions for easier readability. Now, take a look and see if you notice any patterns. Keep in mind that there is more than one factor at work. There are pot color, pot location (more than a couple of those) and one or two others.

Black nursery pot (+18 degrees).

Black nursery pot (+14 degrees).

Black nursery pot in shade and off the decking in the grass (+12 degrees).

Blue 18 gal Rubbermaid tote (+9 degrees).

White plastic pot in full afternoon sun (+8 degrees).

Terracotta colored plastic pot with a layer of cyprus mulch (+7 degrees).

Red Terracota mostly shade but still contacting the polypebble (+4 degrees).

Bare ground (sand) in full sun (+4 degrees).

In lanai in full shade (-1 degrees).

Maybe contact with the polypebble deck is not the most important factor. Maybe it's not even worth bothering about. What do you think? Could the solution to the heat problem be simpler, cheaper and nicer looking than we imagined?

Jim

The black nursey pot with the 3 tomatoes off the deck in mostly the shade should be +2 not +12, but yes I do notice the color is a big factor.

Ideally the solution would be putting them all in the lanai haha. Seriously though, I'm not sure if the soil in the pot would ever get -10 or -20 degrees from abient temperature like someone mentioned in another thread, stating that roots prefer 55 degrees to 70 degrees and anything more is stressing the plant. Just not possible here in Florida and I guess maybe all white pots might be the best short term solution perhaps with added shade cloth.

"...roots prefer 55 degrees to 70 degrees and anything more is stressing the plant. Just not possible here in Florida..."

Not possible anywhere that I know of. Yet, as can be seen on this forum, peppers are grown in pots all the time with great success. My garden soil regularly exceeds those temps, at least the top few inches does, and I suppose the soil of the great chile growing regions must also.

Good luck. I can see white pots in your future.

Jim

Hey,i'm having similar issues,tho not as extreme,ever thought about spray foam insulation?Once it dries it can be cut,drilled,etc.

Yep. I thought about spray foam. Just didn't want to take the discussion off on another tangent. But let's do it.

My thought is to take two plastic pots, one a couple of inches larger in diameter than the other, making sure the larger one is white of course. Hold them concentrically together somehow (Inverted and fastened to a flat surface?) and spray the foam between them.

There are other possible ways to make an insulated pot, including the use of not-so-elegant foam plastic ice buckets. But I'm not sure how the thermodynamics would work out in the end. Heat is gained by the pot some of the time and lost some of the time. Insulation slows the heat flow in both directions. I haven't figured out if the insulation would so anything other than smooth out the highs and lows, and I'm not certain it would do that. An experiment with a foam ice bucket would be the easy way to resolve that question.

I do know that a white reflective pot will lower the heat gain from the sun and not prevent heat loss to the night sky. So that is a winner. And oh so cheap and easy.

Jim

"...not prevent heat loss to the night sky."

Hmm. I suddenly remembered a basic physical principle which says that is not true, so I will correct that before any sticklers jump on it. White pots will not radiate heat quite so well as black ones. Overall, I think we are still ahead of the game with white pots.

Jim

A possible use for your packing peanuts:

Get a pot about 2 inches bigger than your plants pots all the way around including taller.

Put peanuts in the bottom of the big pot and set your plant on top of them inside the pot.
Stuff peanuts around the side of the big pot evenly around your plants pot.

Maybe it would help insulate your plant and also let air get to the plant pot too.
Try it with 1 pot and see.It'll only cost you whatever the bigger pot costs.
If you have wood you could make boxes with drain holes to do the same thing.
You could even make the boxes with bottoms that hold the plant off the ground a few inches.

If you wanted to go crazy with it you could route the boxes with a design or use a wood burner to decorate them.

Make a Stencil to use to spray paint/stain/waterproofing a design or whatever on the wood so they all match.
Shouldn't be hard to cut a bunch of them out at once.
Like making a birdhouse without a roof or bottom-just sides of a box.
Don't really need a bottom,use a couple screws that go through the sides to set the pot on and staple some fiberglass(non metal) screen on the bottom to hold the peanuts in.
Wood would probably insulate the plants some and peanuts between should be better than airspace.
They don't conduct heat well and might allow for a limited amount of air to curculate so the wood dries out and doesn't rot from gettig watered and rained on etc.
If you have a tablesaw you could rip a bunch of sides out of plywood pretty fast.Thats if your pots are pretty close in size to each other.
Some places cut the wood for you for pretty cheep-so much a cut.
Might be easier to pay acouple bucks to get them pre-cut rather than taking all the crap off of your saw or clearing all the junk out of the way so you can work on them and just decorate or seal the wood and slap them together.

A stapler or nail gun would make it real fast too...if you have access to those kinds of toys.
Better yet someone who could show you how to use theirs because you want to borrow it....Could ya show me just one more time? :)

Re-read your post to see if I had missed something since I can't seem to find anything stating that the plants are suffering. Have they shown any signs they are not happy?
I live in FL and have many plants in black nursery pots. Although not around my pool deck, they are situated in full, unrelenting sun. They seem to be thriving. Certainly they are doing as well as the ones in the ground, which, I will assume are having a cooler time of it. If you are sure that the deck is causing your plants a problem maybe you could give your pots a patch of lawn to sit upon?
BTW, the assorted plants I do have in pots on my pool deck
never complain. I have them planted in porcelain, clay and terracotta colored plastic.

That's a great observation, sunkisst. If there is anything we should learn from this thread it is to be sure we aren't solving the wrong problem. I was quite happy to work out a way of preventing transfer of heat from the pool deck to the pots. Then, thanks to the data collected by pkapeckopickldpepprz, it became apparent that the deck was not the primary cause of heating, it was direct sun. Now, you say that heating of the pots may not be a problem at all in this case and I think you are probably right. Still, if I were to choose a pot color in this situation I would choose white, if only to lessen evaporation and the need to water.

Jim

Sunkisst and Jimster, well a couple of Hot peppers were definitely suffering from heat stress and by me just moving into more shade they have recovered somewhat. My main reason for starting this were my tomatoes that were suffering and they have both started to green up now they are not in as much direct sun.

I know I'm a day late and a dollar short here, but in case someone else reads this thread... Should anyone want to elevate off the pavement you can buy milk crates in a lot of different colors at craft places and such. Also, Wal Mart sells different colored 5 galon containers so one could create a fun, colorful arrangement of containers. If milk crates clash with your containers you already have, some craft stores also carry unfinished wooden crates (much nicer than pallets) that you could flip over and leave as is or paint for a unique look. A.C. Moore is actually having a sale on them this week (should they be in your area). Anyway, it looks like problem solved but I love crafts and colors and thought I would interject on the fun side.

I might as well jump in as well. Buy a length of 4 inch PVC pipe. cut it at 1 inch intervals. Place the little donuts under the pots to create a gap. No one will see it, it is very strong, it will rot, and if you have large pots, use several. My containers seem to keep pretty cool, but they have water in them. chuck,

Here is a link that might be useful: containers with water in the bottom, peppers above.

Just wanted to throw this in - be careful with the packing peanuts. Many of them these days are made with corn syrup, so they are water-soluable and will degrade in landfills without a light source. Having those in a pot, over time, I would think would make a big sticky mess.

Excellent point, hawkfish. That type of peanut dissolves in minute.

How does one tell if packing peanuts are foam or made from corn syrup? I might have a huge source of greens for my compost if they are the corn syrup type.

The PVC donuts sound like a great idea. I think I will try that as it is cheap and I like that the roots are not in direct contact with the hot pavement.