need help with greenhouse design
mohammad dana
8 years ago
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mohammad dana
8 years agoRelated Discussions
Need Help Choosing a Greenhouse
Comments (7)Two general comments from my experience long, long, ago.......Get as large a house as you can afford. (without over doing it) The more air you have trapped inside the more efficient the house is to heat and cool which, of course = $$$$$saved. Also as mentioned above use framing that allows you to easily double wall the house. 4" of trapped air between the outer and inner walls is the best insulation you can purchase. Bill...See MoreNeed help deciding what is needed in a greenhouse we just built
Comments (2)Reading lots of posts (and not just the Harbor Freight posts) is a very good idea, because you're starting on a fun adventure, but there really is a lot to learn! First, most importantly, if you get 60-70 mph gusts at times (we have bad winds too) you'll definitely need to reinforce your HFGH to withstand the winds. Also, you'll need to secure the poly panels with more than the clips provided in the kit; I recommend adding a few screws per panel, going through the polycarbonate and into the greenhouse frame. Some people use caulk to secure the panels. If we hadn't read about these modifications here, 8 years ago, our HFGH would definitely not have survived. These kits are a great value, and mine has served me well for years, year round. But you do have to make modifications, or the structure will almost certainly sustain wind damage. There are many sad older threads in this forum from people who were not aware of the needs to make these modifications, and sometimes they lose the entire greenhouse. That's why the Harbor Freight kits are not widely respected among many hobby greenhouse owners, to be honest. Building it only as per the manual is usually not enough. You may have already read about this weakness of the kit, and taken care of these steps, but just in case, here's a link to my blog about building our own 10x12 Harbor Freight greenhouse. I gathered these ideas from other Gardenweb members when the 10x12 kit first came out, and wrote the blog to share them with others. Building our 10x12 Harbor Freight Greenhouse Your needs for heating and cooling depend a lot on how you plan to use the greenhouse (keep plants in there year round?) I live in southern New Mexico. Our highs are higher than yours, and our lows are lower. But I would imagine you'll need shadecloth of some kind for the roof at least, and also an exhaust fan to aid with cooling, and probably other fans to help keep the air moving, 24/7. I use two small electric heaters for winter heat. I don't believe you will be able to power electric heaters or an electric exhaust fan with only a solar panel, however. This website has two different calculators to determine the heating and cooling needs for your greenhouse, depending on your climate and glazing materials. I used it to start to get a rough idea for what we needed, when we built our greenhouse. (Your HFGH uses 4mm twinwall polycarbonate, when you input the type of glazing into the calculator.) There are likely much more sophisticated calculators on the web, but these might get you started: Greenhouse heater size calculator Greenhouse fan size calculator First, please make sure that your panels are safely secured to your greenhouse frame, and I hope you'll consider some of the additional interior bracing as shown in my blog (I hate unhappy endings.) There are other wonderful blogs about the HFGH online too; just do a Google search, to see what folks have done. Then, you can start working on the more generalized questions (heating, cooling, shadecloth, benches, etc) that apply to any type of hobby greenhouse. Some things you can figure out ahead of time with careful reading, and other things will become apparent through trial and error, as our greenhouses, plants, and climates all differ. I hope you have fun along the way!...See MoreNeed help with flooring of my in home greenhouse
Comments (2)My greenhouse sits on a large deck floored with pressure treated 2x4s. I used polystyrene boat carpet to floor the greenhouse. It 's relatively cheap, tough, drains water, not damaged by water or sunlight, and dries fast. It's hard to stain, but it can be done if you're a klotz like me. I just laid it over the decking and tacked it down along the edges with pressure treated 2x2 screwed into the wood greenhouse foundation. Commercial grade aluminum sills hold the carpet in the 4' wide doorway on each end. No underlayment, adhesive or anything like that. The carpet has been there going on six years and shows no signs of deterioration. The picture was taken when the greenhouse was a year or so old:...See MoreOur winter greenhouse garden, and Succulent lovers, need help
Comments (21)Trail, i'll try to get a pic later when I'm feeling better. I'm on day 4 with a low grade fever because I have a tooth abscess and the dentist won't see me in person until Jan. 6th after the antibiotics have worked. Covid, you never know. Dear Lord the pain. Have any of you had an abscess before? I thought I've suffered every dental pain out there, until this. The dentist gave me only 8 pain pills, Lortab low dose..woo.. and it took two of them plus 2 tylenol and 2 ibuprophen to make the pain stop 30 min. later and for only an hour. Outside, Crassula sounds familiar and I do think they grow like an Ivy. Thanks!...See Moremohammad dana
8 years agomohammad dana
8 years agomohammad dana
8 years agosteve333_gw
8 years agoUser
8 years ago
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