These days, everyone talks about passive and active solar heating for greenhouses.
Most use a solar greenhouse design, north wall insulated, and charge a seasonal thermal
battery to heat the greenhouse with internal heat or external evacuated solar tubes.
This works, but only achieves slightly above freezing in the winter.
There is another option, one that doesn't require an expensive excavator, can be
added to most any existing greenhouse, isn't weather sunshine dependant and provides free
heat 24/7 all winter long.
Sound Impossible?
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So I came across this idea of compost heating.
Basically using the heat from decomposing plant material to heat your greenhouse in
the winter.
The modern science of compost heating was originated by a frenchman named Jean Pain.
There's links below to his research.
It's extraordinary!
Jean pain took brush and made wood chips from it, He then created large 50 yard piles, ran
plastic tubing throughout those piles, and achieved piped heated water, 24/7, up to 140'F
or more for periods of 7 to 10 months from just one pile.
The down side is it takes 2-3 days labour to create one of these Jean Pain compost heating
piles.
But the upside is, a year later you have over 30 yards (the volume shrinks as it heats)
of valuable compost.
Literally 500 plus 40 litre bags of compost to sell, which can offset the labour cost
and even make the heating project profitable.
Also worth noting, when running a commercial greenhouse, making your own compost, a material
you control production of, from start to finish, is a huge advantage for the entire
operation.
A fertilizer far better than any corporate chemicals for your plants.
Now compost heating gets better, wood chips are great, but you can make a big steaming
pile subsutiting HAY for the wood chips and achieve similar results.
Meaning you can heat your greenhouse simply by cutting and collecting nothing more than
long grass aka Hay.
The implications for northern communities are enormous.
Northern communities experience extreme cold in the winter, and two factors limit greenhouse
use.
Heating and lack of light.
With useable sunlight often down to 4 hours or less in the winter many northern communities
are forced to truck in fresh produce.
Using wood chips and hay, something that can be harvested locally around most northern
communities changes EVERYTHING!
Now a greenhouse can heat itself all winter with local materials.
That leaves only electrical power for additional light to help the plants grow.
Power for supplimental LED lighting to lengthen the growing day in winter can be generated
from windmills, with no expensive batteries or energy storage needed.
Building the pile is easy, but some steps must be taken in it's construction to ensure
it provides enough heat to last the entire winter.
I'll show how to build a Jean Pain pile in the future with a video when I construct mine,
for now just check out the links below.
Compost heating isn't just cheaper, active solar heating needs multiple evacuated tube
arrays at $1000 plus each and both active and passive solar heating need an excavator
to dig and install the thermal battery, which is a hugely expensive endeavour.
Compost heating provides heat 24/7, all winter long with no thermal battery needed and can
be easily added to existing greenhouses with little modification.
Does it work in an urban setting?
No.
But Real commercial food production should be done just outside of the city where the
land and property taxes are cheaper and it's properly zoned.
Please comment your thoughts below, I'd love to hear your ideas on this.
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