www.SunAndWindy.bitz.me.uk

A site for some of my micro generation projects!

I should add, this site is not complete, and will be added to on an ad hock basis as and when I have time

Our Greenhouse

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  • Okay, this is not an energy generation project as such, but its probably of interest to people who are into the sort of projects found on this site!

    I always work on the theory that most things become available is you wait long enough. Anyway I discovered a chap who was giving away a greenhouse on the 'Freecycle Group'. Basically the one end had most of the glass broken as it had been too near an accidental fire. Apart from that, its okay. Its aluminium framed and measures about 8 foot by 10 or 12 foot.

    The idea with this project is to build a heat store in the ground and blow warm air in to it during the day, then during the night the heat will rise from the heat store back in to the greenhouse. I'm hoping to run some computer fans off a solar panel, thus the fans will only run when there is light and obviously solar heat.

    The project is like many other of my projects, not complete, but you'll see the development as I progress on this site.

     

    I've been saving all the off-cuts of 'Kingspan' (Polyurethane foam insulation) from various projects for years, so this project is an ideal way to use up these bits. Here is the basic base of our proposed greenhouse site with all the scraps of foam insulation.
    The 'boss' looking on! Oh and my wife!!

    After jig-sawing together all the scraps together, several lengths of 60mm perforated land drainage pipe was laid in to the base.

    Not shown is that on top of the hose, I laid old bulk sand bags, then over that I laid a couple of tonne of 75mm stone left over from another project. Hopefully with this loose base, the air will flow from the perforated hose reasonable easily through the stone and on to the soils above.
    Start of the support frame for the greenhouse. The space we allocated for the greenhouse was not quite big enough, so the frame enables the greenhouse to 'hang' over the stream.

    Greenhouse frame now bolted in place, also a small 'potting' shed has crept in to the area. The shed was made from a huge wooden crate, then clad with corrugated tin to stop it rotting away too quickly. The window is the back window from a Suzuki LJ80. The concrete slabs are going to be used to edge this end of the greenhouse frame as the soil in the greenhouse will be higher than the ground outside.
    Okay... I forgot to take some photos, so there's a bit of a jump to the next one.
    Well its now complete and even the start of some tomato plants on the bench

    Although it looks bare, we had a surprising amount of food from the plants we had in there this year (Its now the end of autumn) and Cathy has made loads of great chutney with all the tomatoes that was grown.

    It all looks tidier than it really is, but it'll be even better next year :o)