What impresses me is that with a massive application of ignorance, many, many nails and tons wood for starters something can actually be achieved. I'm neither a carpenter nor a plumber, have never spanned agri plastic and am not an cooler craftsman.

A contractor friend of mine stopped by the other day and laughed his head off. According to him I used twice as much wood, three times as many nails as is necessary and produced a monolith that one could anchor the Titanic to. Its solid as old get up, when the Santa Ana winds blow at 60 mph, this sucker is going no where. He had to admit that and begrudgingly told me that it is OK, not great, but definitely OK.

I plan to build my own evaporative cooler, simply a body of water with agri mesh above it where water perculates down while a fan blows air through it. No magic there, should be simple, only problem is I never have done this before.

But I am having fun which is what this is all about, right? I bang away at it when I feel like it, take a nap or watch a football or basketball game when I feel like doing that. I saw a T shirt the other day which said: "I'm retired, when I feel like working I lie down until the feeling passes." Good take on life!

Anybody have fun stories to share about amateur construction?

Nick

From experience I can say you will be impressed with what a greenhouse can do for you.  I have orchids doing things I could never get in my home.  I built a 10x12 Harbor Freight g/h a few years ago.  Although I am not impressed with their aluminium "powder coated" bases (which are rusting at a speedy rate), it was an inexpensive and continues to be rewarding venture.  Adding electricity cost me more than the greenhouse, but seems to be necessary here in Z10.  I would strongly suggest that you look into shadecloth, if you haven't already.  This time of year it isn't so critical, but it's surprising how the early sun next year can fry your plants if you aren't careful.

Regarding an evaporative cooler; four years ago I bought a second-hand Conair evaporative cooler on Craigslist for ~$50.00.  I have it tied to a humidifier which makes it come on if the humidity is <50%.  The instructions state that it requires fresh air to operate at its best.  I have a screen in the door next to the cooler for ~8 months of the year to provide fresh air (for the winter I put the polycarbonate panel back in the door).  This thing has worked like a champ with very little maintenance or headaches.  If you have power to your greenhouse, (which I assume you do, since you mention fans) I would really recommend it.  It has its own fan, and the operation is very simple.Good luck with your new greenhouse!

Ann

I started with orchids in 1996, by 1998 I had a greenhouse and am familiar with all that goes with it. 4 1/2 years ago I moved, at the same time had a, now resolved, health problem. For both reasons I elected to grow orchids in the backyard only, no greenhouse. This proved to be a very rewarding experience and I could go the rest of my life dealing with the myriad of orchids that do well in SOCAL outside.

Its probably the desire to have a new project that started this building activity as much as anything else. The thing that I'm relating is that I'm doing the whole thing myself. Trips to Home Depot followed by banging, then more HD and more banging. The ground is sloping to the street slightly, I have one square corner, all other corners are odd angles, just the lay of the land. Not being a carpenter yet dealing with all this one increment at a time made me marvel at the capacity of the human mind to deal with things.

I know the benefits of a GH and had a ready made one before, just find it enjoyable to build this thing from scratch, one piece of wood, one nail at a time. The agricultural plastic and the shade cloth came from American Horticultural Supplies in Oxnard who have a great selection of things needed for this project.

Nick

I have taken as many measure to keep it cool as to getting it warm. The shade cloth is elevated over a foot above the plastic on the roof. Too close to the plastic and it serves as a heat trap. The cool GH and the warm GH share a common wall with a door. On super hot days the air from the cool GH will be vented directly into the warm GH. The warm GH has a large panel near the top which will have 2 fans blowing the hot ceiling air out while at the same time sucking cooler air from the cool GH. I'm more concerned about keeping this thing cool on hot summer days than getting it warm on cold winter days.

The evaporative cooler will have a body of water with a pond pump elevating the H2O to a rain gutter like trough from which the water will flow down along some mesh made by the Ag people for this purpose. A fan blowing air behind it provides the cooling. If this is inadequate it can be simply doubled in size by adding a second fan and enlarging the cooling panels.

There are a few days now and then when a Mexican hurricane pushes humid, hot air up into LA. Then I'll be screwed as the evaporative coolers don't work when the humidity is high. Luckily we don't see that too often and then only for a brief period of time.

Today the last of the plastic goes on before the San Diego Chargers take to the field and after that I'll have heat available for the first time in 4 1/2 years and will start to rebuild the Bulbo collection.

Nick

The warm portion got completed this afternoon as the Chargers eked out a victory over the Eagles. Tonight my one and only NOID Phaeli which I rescued from the trash can of my internist, will sleep warm with the gentle breeze of a low volume fan wafting over its leaves. Since at this time I don't really have any hot growers, I will go through the plants and move small ones and borderline temp tolerant ones over. Have a bunch of Gongoras and Pescatore who maybe for once won't get the Botrytis they usually contract in Dec and Jan.

Nick

awesome idea right?

There will be a swamp cooler for the cool GH and on super hot days I plan to blow some of the air from the cool GH to the warm side.

Just feeling my way along at this point, no real challenge yet.

Nick

I have spent more time thinking of how to cool it in the Summer than how to heat it in the Winter. Last night the yard temp went down to 47F. The inside temp was maintained at 55F apparently using only one of the 2 electric heaters I installed. One had the thermostat set at 55F the other as backup at 50F. The backup was not in use at 5AM which should be the coldest time of the night. The permanent setup will be a natural gas wall heater which is not there yet.

Our cold spells can be a bear. 25F to 28F lows at night with only 45F or so during the day coupled with driving winds. That's the 'Yukon Express' where cold air from the North comes barreling down without interference from the usual jet stream which normally diverts it and sends it eastward. This only happens every few years, the last one was 3 years ago when I lost about 5% of my plants and others lost 90% depending on location and the type of plants. I remember being up and hosing them down with water every 2 hours all night long which paradoxically protects against freezing. Then we get the usual winter storms, 28F and up with driving rain, these happen every year. Easier to deal with but still a problem. Orchids can handle wet and they can handle cold, but both cold and wet for 3 to 5 days sustained puts a strain on them. Botrytis and other fungal disorders are the norm.

Should be interesting, so far so good.

Nick

I wish you great luck in getting everything put together and working, so you can get on with renewing some parts of your collection! I'd be very interested in seeing photos of the process, and of the finished and filled GH!

Glasshouse No.1 has a galvanised iron frame and lasted in good condition for about 35 years before the glazing bars rusted out and a handyman did a partial rebuild by replacing the roof glass with stuff called Lazerlite.

Glasshouse No.2 has an aluminum frame and will outlast me.

The shade-house is 29 x 15 is made of gal water-pipe. Part pictured on another thread.

Glasshouse Number 1 was purchased by my wife so that i could grow tomatoes in winter and the rest is history.

I'm with you Gary, my perfect would be three houses all connected with the entrance from the residence. Sadly running out of time so that is only a dream.

With all the supplies in place and the second half 90% complete, all that's left is some nail bending to complete it and the purchase of a swamp cooler and a gas heater. Craig's list offerings seem to indicate that this can be done for less than $500. When its all said and done with lights, humidity, etc), I hope the final bill will be under $2,000.

I think the danger of overheating in our SOCAL climate is so great that I'll probably install a swamp cooler in the 'warm' GH as a safeguard which will be set to kick on at 95F. Since the ambient temp regularly reaches 95F in the summer, only constant personal monitoring would guard against overheating. It's a double sided coin as one way would be to have all doors and hatches open with fans exhausting the hot air, the other way would be to close most openings with the swamp cooler going full blast. I don't know which way would be more effective. The other thing I'm contemplating is a misting system which can be set to mist for a few min every hour, or a couple of humidifyers . All of these things are available at places like 'Charlie's Greenhouse' at very high cost. Part of the fun is to duplicate this with low cost HD, WalMart or Craig List items. I also have a bunch of High Intensity outdoor lights lying around which I will wire in. Rube Goldberg is alive and well.

My daughter came by the other day and her only comment was a lament that grass and flowers would have looked nicer in that area. She needs to write a book and go on a book tour like Sarah Palin! Grass-- you pay someone to fertilize it so it will grow and then you pay some one to cut it when it does grow. Unless you have a pet goat, who needs it. What a bone headed idea!

The beat goes on but it is fun,

Nick

I have overhead misters in Napa, but don't think they are good for general use, especially around plants that need to dry out. The are great for mounts and Masdevallia.

Their suggestion was to install large hinged sections near the top of as many as three walls which can be opened and left open during our warm summer and fall. This should make it much easier to maintain the temp at no higher than outside temperature. We are not talking about a 3' x 4' window but to hinge the major upper portion of the walls. There are two 16' sides and the end of 12' which does not have a door as it abuts against a fence. The only door leads into the 12' x 14' 'cool' GH which when left open in the summer will also provide some cooling. Could only be left open if it does not raise the temp of the cool GH too much thus defeating it's purpose. The plan which is gaining traction is to hinge most of the upper 3' of these walls so that in the heat, the structure functions more like a lath house than a GH if these sections are all opened. Another suggestion is to make these panels removable so that once the summer heat has arrived they are permanently taken out and stored under the benches until winter arrives again. This would require special hinges similar to the ones used in chain link fence doors.

I like this idea, does anyone see a fly in the ointment?

Nick

I like the idea of under bench misters, they should be easy to install and I can only see benefits from them. I have had overhead misters before and did not like them for much the same reasons you mentioned.

Nick

Nick

I'm using the types of heavy duty hinges that have a massive bolt which allows complete removal. Once it gets hot the panels can be removed altogether, at that point the structure will have some of the characteristics of a lath house with hopefully enough ventilation so some fan activity and the misting system should do the trick to keep it at roughly the same temp as the surrounding area. When the Westerlies blow in the afternoon there should be no problem at all but they cannot be relied upon.

Nick

Also, if I remember right, you were doing a water wall for a cool room then a door to the next warmer room. The pressure difference from the cool to the warm is not going to agree with your idea that cracking the door to let the cool air escape into the warm house.

Warmer volumes of air means higher pressure. Lower temperatures mean lower pressure. Remember how those Santa Annas work?

A hinged roof would have been nice but exceeds my limited carpenter skill. How the 'Cold' and the 'Warm' GH will interact remains to be seen. Air will be forced into the cold side which has to go some where. On hot Summer days it will be encouraged to enter the warm side in order to help keep the temp reasonable.

For the last few days we have had 70F days, with both doors open but the roof closed the temp inside the warm GH did not exceed 80F. The other half is not completed yet. A ceiling fan and one bench fan are going.

Nick

"The rest of the time the plants would be fine on a bench in the backyard and the GH is actually a negative entity because it needs to be protected from overheating. Not completely true as there are other benefits but we were mainly talking about the overheating problem. "

Can you talk about what the other benefits are? I'm considering just removing my roof entirely during the warm months, unless there's a good reason not to. Humidity control?

Also, do you have any pictures of your greenhouse?

I'm going to heat it using the house water heater. Hot water will be brought to the greenhouse via a recirculating pump and a large, 5' x 2' industrial copper radiator with fans behind it will distribute the heat. I found the radiator at a recycle chop and got it for $50. One of the coils was leaking but since it has 6 of them we simply closed that one off. Normally a radiator like that is a several thousand dollar item so unless one can find a junk one it does not make sense. You cannot use a car radiator as they are only built to withstand 15 to 20lbs water pressure, if that, and will simply explode like a balloon under city H2O pressure unless you can build a pressure reducer into the system. The pipes to and fro the house water heater will be insulated with air conditioning foam. I used the set up in a previous green house and it worked well.

Maybe we could exchange visits and also plants while we are at it.

Nick

Just got a robocall from the National Weather Service warning of a potential tornado in my area, A TORNADO!!!! If I wanted to deal with tornados I would have moved to the tornado alley. This is SOCAL, fires, storms, earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, mudslides and riots are all things we deal with on a daily basis but TORNADOS?

If a greenhouse lands in your backyard please call me.

Nick

Nick

Ginnibug:)

Anticipating this, I had a swath of Aluminet (30%) ready and installed it this morning. Covering the structure now is agricultural plastic (13% shade), regular black shade cloth (50% shade) and now the Aluminet (30% shade). About 10" between each layer. That seems like a lot of shade but standing inside, it is still not possible to look directly at the sun so plenty of light is getting through.

With the Aluminet in place the temp today maxed out at 76F, 6 degrees better than the 82F of yesterday. 6 degrees in the right place make a lot of difference, I'm happy with the result. If I had been smart, I would have used 50% Aluminet to start with. This is my first experience with it and I would recommend it over regular shade cloth any time.

The warm greenhouse performed as expected. With three sidewalls open for the top 2 feet and the cool greenhouse discharging it's cool, moist swamper air into the warm house, the temp never rose above the ambient temp of the backyard. In the winter the walls will be closed and a heater will spring into action.

Nick

--Stitz--