This video is about my plans to build an affordable, solar seasonally heated greenhouse.
I built a 200 sq foot geodesic dome metal Frame for about $130 and as I go forward this
is my vision for it.
Several People have already done geo air greenhouses on youtube, ldsprepper most notablely but
no one's able to get the inside temperature much over 2-5'C, just above freezing with
stored solar heat.
I'm going to show how using a liquid instead of air can add about an extra 10' C bringing
the inside unto 12-15' at night so you can grow things like tomatoes and strawberries
year round in northern climates that get -30 temperatures.
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ok, to get summer solar heat to use in the winter affordably, and I stress affordably
as anything can be done with unlimited money it requires a few systems to all work together.
first is insulation, in three ways.
The first those is a double inflated poly cover, two sheets of greenhouse plastic are
blown up like an inflatable Christmas decoration to give an R2 to R5 level of insulation.
better than triple pane glass due to the thickness of the air gap.
next, because the sun rises low I the southern sky in the winter the northern part of the
greenhouse has styrofoam pressed against the double polly for an additional R10 on 1/2
of the greenhouse.
The third insulation is 2 inches of styrofoam placed under the floor fo an r10 level of
insulation from the ground.
pex tubbing, which costs about $300 per 1000 feet, is run above the floor styrofoam in
concrete to create a radiant heat delivery system.
radiant heating is upwards of 30 % more efficient than ducted air heat delivery systems.
Of course I'll pour my own concrete to save cash.
First it requires something called an evacuated tube solar collector.
These devices can heat water to 80'C or higher it works by connecting the pex tubing and
a small water pump heating the liquid circulating through the system when the sun is shinning.
That heated liquid is then transferred to a water container.
The best container I could think of is in ibc container.
you can find used ones on Kijiji or Craigs list for about $50 each.
they hold about 250 gallons, enough heat in water to last several days to week for a small
greenhouse that takes about 3-4 days to heat it to maximum temperature capacity with a
30 tube collector.
3-4 days is great but what happens f its cloudy?
evacuated tubes still generate heat on cloudy days but way less than a sunny day.
you could run out of heat, now here is where this gets interesting! summer is obviously
longer than 3-4 days, the IBC container is buried in the ground and if we use the ground
clay itself as a heat storage device we can then heat all the material around the abc
container during the summer to act as an additional heat storage device.
the ground around the container be brought u to 40-50'C by insulating the area above
and below the ibc container the heat storage of the ground will allow the water tank to
keep providing heat to the greenhouse over extended periods throughout the winter.
heat moves so slowly through the ground that the ground will act as an insulator and heat
sink for the water container.
Radiant heat is delivered via pex and a thermostat to the greenhouse at levels capable of heating
the greenhouse to 15'C even on the coldest nights.
that's my plan, I'd love to hear your comments on if you think this is possible or not.
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