[Community_garden] winter greenhouse heating (Miles, Naomi)

[Don Boekelheide]

Good question, Naomi,

I like ATTRA's stuff, here is their basic greenhouse
info (this is just basics, to help you figure out your
own solutions based on solid technical info, ATTRA is
the best I know for that).

http://www.attra.org/attra-pub/solar-gh.html

Have you checked with the folks at Golden?

U.S. Department of Energy
Golden Field Office
Mail Stop 1501
1617 Cole Boulevard
Golden, Colorado 80401
Main Number: 303-275-4700
Main Fax: 303-275-4788
http://www.eere.energy.gov/golden/contacts.aspx

My wife, an engineer working on thermal efficiency,
was there for a summer doing consulting - great
outfit, good folks, good ideas. Also, they are not
Extension, but there's lots of opportunities to
partner there.

Since you are so high - 9000 ft/2700 m ??? - yeeeha! -
I don't think we've got much locally. I just heard a
very good presentation by someone who designed a solar
greenhouse that works in the winter in Boone, NC, in
our mountains (about 3000 ft). Can't find their site,
sorry. One very nice thing they did was 'harvest' the
therms off snow reflection.

The keys, as you probably know - forgive me - are
siting the greenhouse properly and getting the
collector/window angle right; getting lots of thermal
mass (cheapo way is 55 gal water drums); and good
insulation (your cover/"window" material, and then the
walls).

Can you increase insulation on the back (non-sun) side
by piling up bales of straw, snow, waterbags? My
totally uneducated guess would be that increasing
insulation efficiency would be your starting place,
whatever supplemental heat source you come up with.

I'm looking at trying to recapture building waste heat
for a greenhouse here in Charlotte, but practical
problems outweigh the likelihood of success, at this
point for me in my situation.

Last thought - ask Shane Smith. He's successfully run
a greenhouse in Wyoming for years, and he's an old
friend of ACGA. He's trying to make a living being an
expert (which he is, actually), so, heck, hire him! He
is at:

http://www.greenhousegarden.com/author.htm

shane at greenhousegarden.com

Good luck - and Extension support of community gardens
is always good news.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Don Boekelheide
Urban Ministry Center
Community Gardening Program
Charlotte, NC

> Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 16:56:09 -0700
> From: "Miles, Naomi" <MilesN at co.teller.co.us>
> Subject: Re: [Community_garden] winter greenhouse
> heating
> To: <community_garden at list.communitygarden.org>
> Message-ID:
> <667D8CE9356D364A9AF2FB865941832EF03947 at molly>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
> 
> I am looking for economical retrofitting of a
> greenhouse for the winter months. Any ideas out
> there?  Elevation 9000 feet.
> 
> Naomi L. Miles
> Teller County Extension
> 
> "No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever
> wasted."