Serenity - The Ultimate Greenhouse

[Novelist]

Greetings. Thanks for taking the time to read my journal. As a background, I live in Westerna PA (Pittsburgh), and I have a home-build (read:ugly) greenhouse that is 20x10. I grow herbs and veggies all year round and love my little shack. My back yard has become a swamp, however, due to the subdivision that was built uphill from me. When they constructed the houses, they ripped out all the trees and vegetation above me and now I get rivers of water into my backyard. My old railroad-tie retaining wall is rotted away and I sink into a bog even in July.

I deceided to put up a new retaining wall higher up in my yard to push the water away when it hit me: an underground greenhouse that doubles as a huge retaining wall.

From there I went crazy in my mind. I now plan a fifty by twenty greenhouse constructed like an Earthship underground and with poly-carb and windows as glazing on the east and south sides. More than that, I plan on using geothermal air intakes, a 6,000 gallon pond (water gathered during the aformentioned floods) for solar mass, a convestion heating water tank and - if I can figure it out - a hydo generated at the botom of my ten foot water fall to power some of the lights in the greenhouse.

When it's complete I plan to grow fruit trees, vegetables, many, many herbs, flowers and anything else I can imagine. I also want to use zero grid power to do this - at least eventually. I recognize that at first I can only afford the relatively cheap things I already mentioned. That should take care of most of my heating needs. I have to worry about lights, pumps and fans next. For that, I will be reading lots and lots of information here and on the web.

It's funny for me to love sites like this. Many of you - I suspect at least - are of the more left leaning variety. I am a very conservative person and most of my ilk are uncomfortable with "green" words. I love them because they are almost magic. Grabbing energy from the universe and applying it to my needs without adding to polution is something I really like. I also like sovling problems and this certainly is filled with lots of problems.

I plan to break ground in June when my current greenhouse can be town down. Until then, I'll be writing my thoughts about various aspects of the project. Feel free to chime in anytime.

Novelist.

[Bruce S]

Novelist;

   Let me hopefully be the first on this post to welcome you :-)

I believe most here would be conservative of the type who care for the planet too. However in politics I have not had a problem with talking to people about going "green" and I am in no way a left or right leaning person. :-) I tend to lean when I drink though [;-}.

It is no secret that Rush L is from our great state of Missouri, but I'm sure everyone here would allow him to talk to so long as he didn't bring along his advertisements (:-).

That greenhouse sounds BIG!!

Have you possibly had the water from the run off tested? could be you could prove it's tainted and they then would have to fix the problem. Also It could give you a good idea of how healthy or bad the water drain off is gong to be to have around.

Best of luck !!

I look forward to seeing the pics of this

Cheers

Bruce S

 

[asheets]

"It's funny for me to love sites like this."

Actually, I think most of the folk you find on this particular site are moderate to conservative in at least one aspect of their political thinking.

[BT Humble]

Actually, I think most of the folk you find on this particular site are moderate to conservative in at least one aspect of their political thinking.

___________

Alan Sheets

Conervative?  Oh no, I'm a... a... err... hmm.

You know, I don't think I can pin myself down to a one-word description of my political philosophy.  It seems to be different on every day of the week! ;-)

BTH

[elvin1949]

BTH

 One word_How about  Independent

later

Elvin

[Novelist]

Thanks for the warm welcome. This place quite the font of information and I thank you all for sharing.

I have broken my greenhouse, Serenity, into several functional areas and I plan to use the winter months to refine all the aspects of each area before breaking ground. I have chosne to group things into: heating and cooling, electrical, water and watering, structural issues and things that make me smile.

They are all linked, in reality. Heating and cooling is direclty affected by the type of construction materails used, the placement of the greenhouse and how much water I use for solar mass. I am not trying to seperate these out as if they stand in a vacuum, but I need to plan each in detail so the entire system functions well.

Heating and cooling are my number one items because in my climate (Western PA - Pittsburgh) it gets very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer. This year I'm running a wood stove through duct work. It works well, but too many times my CO meter has gone off. My greenhouse is too tightly sealed and has too little incoming air exchange to accomidate the burning sometimes. My first thoughts with Serenity was to bury it into the side of my hill and use the insulation effect of the earth to mitigate hugh changes in temperature. Secondly, since I'm excavating 14 feet down to put my retaining wall (the "official" reason I'm doing the project. Retaining wall - not new greenhouse) I plan to lay hundreds of feet of plastic tubing in the ground. Some of it will pull in fresh air from outside the greenhouse and others will circulate existing greenhouse air to do heat exchange. Using a few inline duct fans I should be able to pull enough ground temperature air to keep the greenhouse in the fifties without any additional heating or cooling. The solar additions should increase that temperature and I hope to run my stove only accosionally during the coldest of times.

I plan to capture the water run off and use the gray water as my water source. I will store it in a filter tank then use gravity to release some of it into my waterfall shute and into the pond. From the pond I will pump it back up to the tank. This water will function as a solar mass battery, 6000 gallons stores a lot of heat. In the summer I can run some fountains in the pond to get mist into the air. I'll line the pond with fruit trees and put aquatic life into the stream and pond. This is part of the "things that make me smile" section, but they are linked to solar mass and thus the heart of heating and cooling.

I started collecting tires for the earthship portion of Serenity. I only have an suv so I get them a few at a time on the way home from work. I don't want too many all at once, anyway - don't want to worry the neighbors.

[Gary D]

 If you have your 6,000 system filled, why not put a diverter in line to direct the extra water to a waterwheel/generator? Adding cold water into your thermal mass (waterfall/tank setup) will defeat it's purpose in winter...

 Think of the water pond as a closed system mostly. It will need periodic additions due to evaporation though.

 If as you say, you get water runoff most of the year, most likely they have opened up a small spring. No harm harvesting some of that water that would have been run down a drain(overflow) after your system is full. It might be small, so it might not be worthwhile. Just a thought, what you originately proposed by pumping up to your waterfall and capturing it (no waterfall if done that way) is a losing no starter in my book....

 Welcome to the board, we usually don't pull punches. Most tell it as they see it, politically correct or not... Gary D.

[Novelist]

I plan to use an outside diverter to capture water that I will use to replace the water inside as I either use it or it evaporates. So, most of the time all my water will remain inside and go from conditioning/heating tank to waterfall to upper pond to lower pond back to the tank. It is that downhill transition that I am considering using as an energy capture loop.

The water I don't use outside will eventually end up in a man-made pond that I am creating out of used tires and pond liner. That pond will be used to capture gray water for watering my outside garden. In the summer I have a very large garden that takes a lot of water. I have rain barrels on the roof, but my wife is not all that fond of them. I plan on burying pipe and running it to my pond area.

Today I'll talk about my heating/conditioning tank inside of Serenity. I plan to have about 1,000 of the 6,000 gallons housed there at any one time. That water will be filtered and aerated in the summer, then alowed to flow out and back into the waterfall/pond loop.

In the winter I plan to heat it with convection heating. I have a small coal stove that I use now to heat my existing shack greenhouse. It has a lot of heat capacity, but it is old and has some leaks. A few times I've gotten too much CO in the GH and my monitor has gone off. That isn't all that good for either the plants or the cat that lives there (rodent management). I plan to build a small three wall cinder block room outside Serenity an dplace the coal stove inside that. I will use the blower to push the warm air into the duct system inside Serenity, but there will also be a large amount of heat in that little room that essentially is wasted.

I am going to put the heat room direclty opposite the wall that houses the heat tank on the inside. Then, I'll run copper tubes from the bottom of hte tank to the top passing outside into the heat room. As the pipes heat and hte water inside the pipes heats, it will draw from the bottom of the tank and dump it back int the top. This is a closed system, the pipes are opened only in the tank and simply pass through the heat zone of the stove room. I am going to do some heat capture/retention work on that room, but all the gasses iwll be vented outside.

I really hope not to need much coal/wood heat at all with hte earthship concept and geothermal air heating. But, when I do add heat, I want it to be efficient.

[BT Humble]

"Confused".  Or maybe "Erratic". ;-)

BTH

[Novelist]

I did a convection experiment this weekend with my existing greenhouse and stove. I bought a 12" and 8" cylinder of cardboard, the kind used to pour supports, and placed the 8" inside the 12". I then drilled three 1/4" holes low and three more high. Through these holes I placed copper tubing. Then, I pounred concerete. I now have a 12" cylinder with an 8" hole inside it. I put water in it and made certain the copper tubes ran right against the stove. I tested the water after a few hours of exposure to the heat of the stove and found a noticible difference in the heat in the top few inches of water. Convection magic! My boys were impressed that one of my experiments actually worked. I now have a working mode for what I want to do on a larger scale in Serenity. I plan to use a four foot wide, five foot tall section of 1/2" copper pipes.

Next up: dc generator motor experiements.

[Novelist]

It's been cold here lately. My old greenhouse is suffering in the cold. Heating with a coal furnace and ductwork is efficient, but can lead to plant damage if I'm not careful. It re-enforces my idea to limit the heat needs by going down deep into the ground. I can supply lighting a lot more eaily than heat.

I've started collecting more tires for Serenity. Right now I'm thinking of a 40 foot long back wall and a 60 foot long front wall. This trapazoid shape has about 1500 square feet of space. With 6,000-7,000 gallons of water mass and enough thermal air heating, I hope to keep the min temps in the fifties. Then, all I need to do is let the sun add heat in the day and store it for later use.

Spring can't come quickly enough. I need to break ground.