green house to be built around the House, back yard and front yard

2 years ago

last modified: 2 years ago

So I have a 60 acre farm, That I want to do 2 major things one day. First would be to build the green house structure around a house with a walk out basement and the yards that probably would be half an acre to acre I would guess. I am very interested in doing this for multitude of reasons. Such as having a deck that adds basically a 2nd floor to the green house for vertical growing ease etc. Also would like to enjoy a pool/hot tub situation year round as well as lights and would like the "Roof sections to be all solar panels) not sure how possible this would be. Goal is make winters super cheap, make summers super cheap, make electric costs go buh bye. and hopefully get on starlink and have that easy living.

My big questions are price, how to make it summer safe with vents/winter safe for wood burning. How to add in a deck/extended garage area safe for my dually truck and skid steer tractor etc etc. Also I am in colorado so i would want wind resistant set up as well. I bassically want to do a super glorified sun room but super sized.

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Comments (13)

floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK
2 years ago
You might get better feedback posting on a site specifically devoted to passive or carbon neutral home building, rather than greenhouses or landscaping.
Christopher CNC
2 years ago
The answer to your big question is: have you won the lottery or are you a tech millionaire? You are talking about building a biosphere and regulating the interior environment for humans, not plants. That will take industrial engineering and systems which won't be cheap. Solar panels on a greenhouse roof are not likely to work. They will have to go out in the 60 acres somewhere.
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Hi Midnight, Welcome to RMG! Any of the dead stems and foliage you don't cut down will be there all summer, so if you don't want the dead stuff showing, they should be cut down. Is that the south side of the house? Did you water at all over winter? When to cut them down is up to you, but if you wait till the new growth gets more than a couple inches high, it's hard to cut the dead stuff down without cutting the new growth too. And how far to cut them down depends, again, on how much dead stuff you want left in there. There are as many different opinions on when and how far to cut perennials down as there are people! I like things neat looking so I cut them down "all the way," as in, about an inch above the ground. And with only a few exceptions (like grasses), I cut mine down in fall or over winter when we have a HOT winter like this one! If you look closely at the base of your plants, are you seeing any new growth starting yet? With the warm weather, you should be seeing something by now! If you do, I recommend cutting them down soon before the new growth gets very big. (If you're not seeing some signs of growth by now, and you haven't watered all winter, I highly recommend you water them DEEPLY. That means not just going over them with a hand-held hose and watering the top couple inches. I mean to either water them for and hour or so with a pretty fine spray sprinkler (if water starts running off the soil, do it in 15 minute stretches), or laying the hose in the center of each plant on a trickle and leaving it run at each plant for about a half an hour. The soil needs to be watered deeply enough that it's moist/wet BELOW the deepest roots. I can't tell for sure what they are. but from what I see it looks like stuff that can be cut down "all the way" if you decide to do that. (When they start to grow, if you post closeup pictures, we can probably tell you what you have!) I'm not sure, but I think the one behind the big rock on the right side may be a lavender---sniff it! If it is--and if you enjoy quietly sitting out there "doing things," I recommend going thru it and cutting out each old flower stem, cutting them back a little further than just to the base of the stem, and cutting just above where you see new growth. If the old foliage is crispy--again, can't tell for sure from the pic--cut it back further to get rid of the dead foliage and to let it break lower down and fill back in with fresh, new foliage. How far you cut back lavender depends on the look you like! Some people like to leave them grow into big, woody looking plants. I keep mine cut down most of the way after each bloom, so when it blooms again it's a nice, compact plant that's covered with flowers! If that's not lavender, do you have any idea what it is? Is there any tag at the base or anything? Here's an example of how I cut mine down in my main perennial bed in my backyard. I'll just post thumbnails, but you can click to make them bigger! February 24 with the switch grass and blue fescue not cut down yet. And the same area--from a little bit further back--on May 12. And here's a pic of some of the lavenders blooming in July. They reseed all over the place, and the smaller ones are the newest seedlings. The bigger ones were cut down to 2-3" the last time they bloomed. I never let them get to the "woody" stage! One or two of the oldest ones usually die each year when they get cut down, and they might not if I didn't cut them back quite so far, but there are always fresh new ones to take their place, so I don't have a problem with that at all! Your grass--I assume it's 'Karl Foerster'--is looking really great! If I raised more questions than I answered, let me know! Happy Spring, Skybird
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Could you do something that looked like an old fashioned basement bulkhead that would be open instead of having doors on it? In your location it might still be odd to have something like that on the front, but it could at least possibly look original. In my city most of the houses are row houses and many of the 18th or early 19th century houses have a basement bulkhead on the front of the house next to the stoop. Some of the houses retain the old bulkhead with doors, but a good proportion have converted the bulkhead so that there is a large window in the basement wall and the top of the bulkhead is open, acting as a skylight of sorts for the basement. In my location most of these are topped with metal bars or another window like Plexiglas because they are on the sidewalk and people could fall in. However in your yard you might be able to keep this open. I don't know how this would look without seeing a picture, but in general the more it looks like it could be a part of the house, the better, even if it would be an unusual location for a basement entry .
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Thanks all - these responses are so helpful! I love the idea of referencing older houses. I’ve driven around the historic homes in my neighborhood here, and it’s true that there aren’t many foundation plants besides the occasional boxwood - likely put in more recently than 1907! The pecans are actually part of an orchard. I always thought it was odd that we had these 2 perfectly placed pecans, similar to how builders put in a starter tree on either side of the sidewalks in new tract homes! Turns out that the trees were here well before the house! I suspect they were planted in the mid-1800s. Good info about the bulbs under pecans. I though about agapanthus as well, but I think that would require a lot of digging and....ugh! Clay soil and rocks are breaking my back! Love the 2 renderings! I wish I could bump my tree out farther to the right, but the electric lines run right over that corner, plus that’s our drainage area for the backyard. Eventually we may do a dry creek situation over there. Not authentic to the house, but sometimes preventing standing water wins out. ;)
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Not landscaping suggestion, but the first thing I would do is paint the garage doors the same color as the house so they are not the glaring focal point. eta: I just spent a little time googling pictures of homes in Galveston. I found many pics of homes with lots and approaches like yours, but very few with any real landscaping. I don't know if it's because beach homes are more vacation homes so low maintenance, or frequent storms/flooding or maybe the sun/heat, but almost all of them simply had planted a number of palm trees with no other beds at all. I did see these that might give you some ideas: This probably wouldn't work with your offset garage and shorter driveway, but I thought it looked great:Here's a similar one with offset garages that kind of breaks up all the concrete and makes a walkway to the front door, along with a nicely planted side yard:
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Seabornman
2 years ago
Try greenbuildingadvisor.com Someone there may have some insight. What humidity is a greenhouse kept at in winter?
User
2 years ago
last modified: 2 years ago
The billion dollar biosphere? Won’t happen on an amateur design forum. Spend your first million on a design retainer to the right commercial architectural firm. It won’t be the last million spent, by far.
Sarah
2 years ago
I saw something similar in Dwell magazine a few years ago. Check it out- believe it was built in Finland.
3onthetree
2 years ago
last modified: 2 years ago
"You are talking about building a biosphere and regulating the interior environment for humans, not plants."

Could not have summed it up any better than this.

Back to the drawing board.
ben limback
Original Author
2 years ago
I am not talking about a billion dollar biosphere, guess people just assume the worst. An actual greenhouse would cost 200k to 300k tops. not billions x.x . I dont want a sphere i want more of a sun room type 360 degrees around with solar and vents on top.
Christopher CNC
2 years ago
All assumptions were based on the description you provided. A two story greenhouse over a house, pool, extended garage etc. that covers an acre of land is a biosphere if you plan to spend any time inside of it with your fire pit. Have you spent much time in a greenhouse?
3onthetree
2 years ago
I read the same things. The greenhouse engulfs the house, but yet the human living is part of the greenhouse that also includes the pool, wood burning, and combustion engines. And the sun is blocked by the roof solar panels, which is fine for vertical farming using electric light but "greenhouse" infers natural light. If you live in Nova Scotia even trickier.

Also a generic 20' house deck length (to access the upper part) of a two-story vertical farm could yield enough of a crop to supply a small town. And you are talking a greenhouse to cover about an acre footprint. Not even mentioning the water, labor, and energy requirements.

Your goals surely come from a good place, and many on this forum probably share similar goals in various degrees of reasons and purpose. It might be better to start at solar with passive design attributes - it's difficult just to accomplish that. And work on your program requirements for farming - maybe just a grow shed is sufficient.
symbiotic_horizons
2 years ago
When we were researching home ideas, we found a geodesic home company that offers a donut shaped home you could create a green house in middle. Monolithicdome.com
Sigrid
2 years ago
last modified: 2 years ago
Greenhouses absorb heat in the summer, but glass has lower insulating properties than walls. So, any room that is going to get enough solar gain in the winter such that it is not expensive to heat will be boiling in the summer and require extensive cooling or air circulation. If you are building a passive solar house, that is not cheap. You have far more expensive windows, for starters. This is why other commenters think your house will be expensive.

That said, in some climates that never get that cold in the winter or that hot in the summer, a typical greenhouse gets you a usable room most of the year and plenty of plants will do fine in winter when your greenhouse is 45 degrees.
kitasei2
last year
I have no expertise to contribute to this discussion but want to share something I learned about Colorado that suggests there it may be unique. Here it is: MOST COLORADO TOWNS DON’T PLOW ROADS AFTER SNOW STORMS BECAUSE THE SUN MELTS EVEN DEEP SNOW BY NOON! As s New Yorker, I am just bliwn away bh this… OK back to regulsr programming..
Christopher CNC
last year
@kitasei2 In Colorado elevation matters. Rest assured they have plenty snowplows there. I suppose there are places in Colorado that don't need snowplows. Other farm equipment will work in a pinch.

green house to be built around the House, back yard and front yard

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floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK

Christopher CNC

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green house to be built around the House, back yard and front yard

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