# My aquaponic greenhouse plans



## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

I'm planning to build a greenhouse this spring and my wife made a comment that if I could raise my own fish for food that we would be able to have pretty much all of our food home grown (I'm already raising chickens for eggs and meat, just picked up two pigs for pork, and have access to beef from her father's dairy farm, put a deer or two in the freezer every year for venison, we have strawberries and raspberries planted on our property already and plan to add blueberries/apple trees/pear trees/peach tree, so the greenhouse will help us grow more veggies, so really the only thing we're missing is grain foods and fish). So I started looking in to how to raise fish for food and discovered aquaponics!

So I quickly went from just building a greenhouse to building a winter passive solar greenhouse with aquaponics...

I have most of my plans figured out I think, but will share them here in case others want to give feedback or want to follow along with the build as I actually get started (sometime in March/April hopefully, depending on weather... need to be able to do some masonry work to lay my foundation...).


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

so being that I live in Michigan the number one concern for trying to build a greenhouse that I intend to run all winter long is how do you heat it? I don't want to add to my fuel bill or electric bill to try and heat the greenhouse, so I needed a way to heat the greenhouse passively. 

The first thing I came across for heating a greenhouse was to dig a big hole and insulate it, run some plumbing back and forth through it, fill the hole back in with gravel and run the plumbing up to the peak of the greenhouse where the warmest air is going to be and put a small computer fan in the pipe to draw air from the peak and push it underground. By doing this I should have convection where the heated air running through the plumbing heats the gravel underground and helps stabilize the temperature during the winter by slowly releasing heat back in to the atmosphere at night. 

The next thing I came across was using black 55 gallon drums full of water that will line the north wall of the greenhouse. The black barrels will attract sunlight which will heat the water during the day and then at night they will release heat back to the air to again help heat / stabilize the temperatures. This also doubles as a cooling mechanism in the summer time by making sure the barrels are in the shade. The air inside the greenhouse will be warmer than the water in the barrels, so as long as the sun is not hitting the barrels that will help cool the air.

A third method that I thought about for heating the greenhouse I already have a working example of is a solar heater. On my house there is a bunch of solar heat panels on the south wall of the house above my garage. The sun is attracted to the black panel and heats the air inside of it, once the air temp reaches a set temp it turns an air pump on to circulate air in to the house and has an opening at the other end that has a little flapper in it to help pull air out of the house back through the panel. I've seen some cheap DIY versions of this where people used cans or eavestrough downspouts to have the air flow through to be heated.

So that is my plan for heat, I am going to start with the first two methods of heat and will later add the third heat source if needed to keep the temps high enough to grow plants through the winter.

The pictures are where I'm at so far, I'll explain more in the next post, but I have the two IBC totes which will be my fish tanks for the greenhouse, and attached an iso view of the greenhouse.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

Moving on to the greenhouse design... I've read where everyone recommends that the greenhouse is 2:1 length:width so 20ft long:10 foot wide etc. My original plan was to build a 16x16 greenhouse with straight walls filled with windows, I played around with a few different sizes to try and get the 2:1 as recommended, but my costs just kept going up so I was trying to keep the same square footage as I had originally planned just with the 2:1 in mind... I really didn't like the layout that I was ending up with going any less than 16ft wide, so that would mean I would need 32ft long by 16ft wide... and that just got too expensive, so I decided to stay with my original plans of 16ft x 16ft and will build it in a location where I have room to expand later if I want to go bigger.

The next thing I learned was that I needed to give up on the simplistic straight walls... there is a small shed-greenhouse down the road from my in-laws is what I was trying to base my design off of, but they don't run their greenhouse in the winter from what I've seen, so I looked up the angle of the sun at my house on winter solstice and made the main glass wall sit at an angle 90 degrees to the sun position in the winter. This will give maximum penetration of the sun at the sun's lowest point in the sky. The upper glass wall will be located at an angle that coincides with the sun's angle at the summer solstice (highest point in the sky) and also positions the roof so the sun will not shine on the barrels at that point. I've been told that the upper windows need to be frosted, but all of the glass going in to the greenhouse I already have, so I am going to proceed with using glass up there and will scratch up the inner pane or just hang shade cloth inside if I need to reduce the amount of sun in the summer time.

The windows on both east and west walls the bottom three will all be able to be opened, the mid-wall glass will probably not open, but the windows in the peak on both walls I plan to frame them in a way that they can be opened even though they are just single pane windows that I am doubling up for insulation purposes.

The remaining areas of the greenhouse will be double insulated, I will have foam board insulation on the outside and probably have roll fiberglass insulation between studs on the inside, and plywood on the walls inside as well. Going back to the #1 concern being heating the greenhouse that makes the #2 concern making sure the heat stays in the greenhouse, no drafts...


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

As for not adding to my electric bill... I purchased a solar panel kit that I am working on soldering together the PV cells to build solar panels. Once they are all soldered together they should be about 500W, I am hoping that will be enough to power the few things that I need power for in the greenhouse. So far I only plan to have the pump for circulating water in my aquaponics system, a couple of LED bulbs for lighting, and a couple small fans for the air movement of the system that pulls air from the peak to underground and also the system to circulate air through the third stage of my heating if I end up using it... and small fans if I need to help move air through the greenhouse in the summer. I will hopefully keep it far enough under 500W that I'll be able to keep a battery or two charged to power things through the night.


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## stanb999 (Jan 30, 2005)

Good luck with your project. I wish you great success.


I question how practical solar heating is for your requirements. In a "perfect" system you will maintain the "average yearly temp"... You will find this to be too cold in your location. I've found heat to be very cheap, you can use wood, coal, or even propane. What's expensive is good growing light which we all lack in the north in the about half the year. I would remove all obstructions possible on the southern exposure and keep east and west as free of obstruction as possible. Light is the "engine" that will drive your growing system keep this in mind as you build.

The next thing Id do is bury the fish tank and insulate it well. The fish need warm water to perform. Heating this will be your largest cost by far. You can build a solar hot water collector to provide the heat. But it will take a lot of insulation to keep the heat during the long winter. Due note regardless of the fish you plan to raise. They all need water temps much higher than ground temperatures to grow well. A few things can help like covering the top of the tank with an insulated cover if you provide some light with water proof led strips. 

Your big power usage will be in water movement. Look into little 12v pumps. They use almost no power and run for thousands of hours maintenance free. I have two of these running on solar power for more than two years strait with no issues. 

http://www.amazon.com/Yosoo-Solar-W..._UL160_SR160,160_&refRID=1ZMK2TF2CKGD36QWW95V





keep us updated.

p.s. I know the pumps are small. moving only 1.7 gal per min. But note they only use 1/2 amp. or 6 watts each. Get 4 and your at nearly 400 gals an hour using only 2 amps. I wanted to note this so you think outside the box... for success!


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

I'm tempted to run to home depot after work and buy my cinderblocks to start laying out the foundation. Yesterday and today have been absolutely beautiful, unfortunately I started ripping apart my master bathroom on Saturday/Sunday this past weekend then ended up sick Monday/Tuesday so haven't had a chance to work on it and need to get it going back together before I get too deeply involved in starting the greenhouse. Fingers crossed that the weather stays above freezing now... looking at our 15 day forecast it's looking like the lows are staying above freezing but that can change at any minute in Michigan...

I'm probably overly ambitious to think that this will be ready to be used by next winter... honestly I just hope it's all enclosed by then, I may not have the fish tanks and grow beds ready by then, but if it is at least enclosed this summer then it will be more manageable to work in next winter... and only time will tell how realistic it is to try and heat it passively... I'm going to try throwing the kitchen sink at it and run everything that I've heard people use for passive solar heating... if I toss the kitchen sink at it and it's not enough then the backup plan will be to build an additional small room off the back/side of the greenhouse that I can put a wood burning stove in. That was my original plan before I started reading in to passive solar heating, so I am keeping it as a final option for heating the greenhouse if I need to. 

I've played around with LED fixtures a bit with my fish tanks, and I've torn a few of them apart and replaced some LED's and such, so I can probably come up with some supplemental lighting in the greenhouse that won't use a lot of power if I need to (I have a few hundred spare LED's that I ordered to have on hand to build a DIY fixture that I haven't ended up building that I could use for plant lighting instead)... but that's a long ways off right now.


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## turbonator (Jul 6, 2011)

subscribed, looking forward to seeing how you are going to set-up your fish tanks....:thumb:.. we are tossing the idea of doing our own fish here, and just gathering all the info we can...


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

it's not much, but I did officially break ground on the greenhouse! I started digging trenches to be able to level off the cinderblock foundation. I need to go buy the cinderblocks before I can go much farther, but this was the first step because my yard is pretty uneven. I'm almost done with my master bathroom remodel, it will be finished this week... then I'll turn towards working on the greenhouse more... I just did this because I was waiting on the wife to paint the bathroom before I could go any further with reinstalling stuff that would have otherwise been in her way.


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## 7thswan (Nov 18, 2008)

Can you get free block off craigslist?


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

not within 50 miles of me... I did see some on a facebook group a week or two ago, but they looked like they would be a lot of work to clean up the old mortar... the really crappy thing is that my work is demolishing a building right now and there are just piles and piles of good looking cinder blocks laying next to my building but my company no longer allows you to take old demo stuff because of liability issues if you got hurt or building fell down because of something wrong with the demo stuff they don't want you to sue them. Pretty bogus, but nonetheless... it should only cost me about $40 for new cinderblocks, so the time it took to clean them up probably isn't worth the time.


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## jwal10 (Jun 5, 2010)

We don't use a pump in our greenhouse. The water source is a gravity fed spring, We use a makeup tank so the water temp is preconditioned. A float keeps the water at an even level in all the tanks through a self leveling tubing system. We use floating mats made from rigid styrofoam with holes drilled with a hole saw to hold the pots. We use a media to grow the plants in. A tubing system also allows a small amount of water to exit at the other end of each fish tank, a collection tank with piped emitters water potted tomato, pepper and zucchini plants on the floor of the greenhouse 24/7. A faucet in the bottom of the collection tank allows us to fill a watering can to water hanging strawberry plants with this nutrient laden water. Any overflow goes to an outdoor pond. We raise Yellow Perch. We use Black plastic oval livestock watering tanks. These tanks also build heat, this also helps maintain the temperatures in the greenhouse. There is a rock sump 18" deep under the cobblestone floor built over a layer of sand, this builds heat during the day and radiates it back at night. This sump also raises the humidity in the greenhouse. We have a micro-hydro generator and the excess power, after charging the batteries, operates a tiny heat coil for some added heat when needed. The roof and walls are a double layer of 3-cell polycarbonate greenhouse panels, one layer inside, 1 layer outside of the 2"x2" cedar wall frame and 2"x4" rafters. Both ends of the greenhouse have a vent, a 6"x12" inlet with shutters near the floor and a temperature operated 12"x 24" outflow vent high on the opposite wall. We use a small 6v fan to move air over the plants. The greenhouse is leanto style on the side of my shop, adjoining wall is 6" thick concrete building blocks stained a dark brown to absorb heat during the day and radiate it back into the greenhouse at night. Same block makes up the foundation of the greenhouse to 18" above ground level. When the greenhouse is warm enough we open the hollow column of the blocks at the top of the adjoining wall, letting excess heat rise into the shop. We made 1" holes at the bottom of each column for air near the floor of the greenhouse to enter, warming as it rises, releasing heat into the greenhouse or shop. The foundation of the greenhouse is set up the same so the air collected in the open column of the blocks rises in the greenhouse. 
It is 65 outside right now, sun is shining, 96 inside with heat venting into the shop....James


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## Raeven (Oct 11, 2011)

*James*, you never fail to astonish me with your versatility, knowledge and work ethic.  Your setup sounds remarkable!


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

jwal10 said:


> We don't use a pump in our greenhouse. The water source is a gravity fed spring, We use a makeup tank so the water temp is preconditioned. A float keeps the water at an even level in all the tanks through a self leveling tubing system. We use floating mats made from rigid styrofoam with holes drilled with a hole saw to hold the pots. We use a media to grow the plants in. A tubing system also allows a small amount of water to exit at the other end of each fish tank, a collection tank with piped emitters water potted tomato, pepper and zucchini plants on the floor of the greenhouse 24/7. A faucet in the bottom of the collection tank allows us to fill a watering can to water hanging strawberry plants with this nutrient laden water. Any overflow goes to an outdoor pond. We raise Yellow Perch. We use Black plastic oval livestock watering tanks. These tanks also build heat, this also helps maintain the temperatures in the greenhouse. There is a rock sump 18" deep under the cobblestone floor built over a layer of sand, this builds heat during the day and radiates it back at night. This sump also raises the humidity in the greenhouse. We have a micro-hydro generator and the excess power, after charging the batteries, operates a tiny heat coil for some added heat when needed. The roof and walls are a double layer of 3-cell polycarbonate greenhouse panels, one layer inside, 1 layer outside of the 2"x2" cedar wall frame and 2"x4" rafters. Both ends of the greenhouse have a vent, a 6"x12" inlet with shutters near the floor and a temperature operated 12"x 24" outflow vent high on the opposite wall. We use a small 6v fan to move air over the plants. The greenhouse is leanto style on the side of my shop, adjoining wall is 6" thick concrete building blocks stained a dark brown to absorb heat during the day and radiate it back into the greenhouse at night. Same block makes up the foundation of the greenhouse to 18" above ground level. When the greenhouse is warm enough we open the hollow column of the blocks at the top of the adjoining wall, letting excess heat rise into the shop. We made 1" holes at the bottom of each column for air near the floor of the greenhouse to enter, warming as it rises, releasing heat into the greenhouse or shop. The foundation of the greenhouse is set up the same so the air collected in the open column of the blocks rises in the greenhouse.
> It is 65 outside right now, sun is shining, 96 inside with heat venting into the shop....James


sounds like a nice setup. I like the idea of heating my barn with the greenhouse, unfortunately my barn is on the south side of the property not far off of the property line so I can't build to the south of it. Would make it a little easier/cheaper to build it as a lean... do you have a thread someplace showing more info/pics on your setup? 

If you aren't using a pump to circulate water then how do you make the water actually move and not just sit in one place? Some sort of siphon overflow to use the gravity to pull water out? Or is it just by removing water to the potted plants that it pulls water through the system... then do you have an auto top off system in place to keep the water level constant?


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

A little more progress on the greenhouse. I picked up the cinderblocks and was trying to get an idea how they were going to sit and decided it would probably be easier to level them if I poured a cement foundation for them to sit on... the cement should pretty much self level itself I figured, instead of me trying to dig out dirt just perfect... so I widened my trenches a bit and put some rebar on risers in them and then started pouring cement. I had previously bought a cement mixer for $100 because I knew I was going to be doing some cement work (was more or less planning to use it for the mortar for the blocks and then some cement to fill the blocks, but have now used it to mix 36 bags (2160lbs) of cement. I probably need another 5-6 bags to finish leveling the foundation, but I ran out of bags. I will go pick up another 10 bags in the next day or two to finish the foundation then I can start setting the blocks.


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## Riverdale (Jan 20, 2008)

Watching this with a lot of hope. I live about and hour north of you (just west of Alma), and the wife would like a greenhouse.....


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

Riverdale said:


> Watching this with a lot of hope. I live about and hour north of you (just west of Alma), and the wife would like a greenhouse.....


Awesome! I think you are the closest to home I've seen on here so far! 

I haven't progressed on the greenhouse at all this week because I had a busy work week and then this past weekend was really busy, took my two hogs to the butcher shop saturday then drove up to the in-laws (Marlette / thumb area) for an April/May birthday party with the wife's entire family, then mothers day yesterday so we spent the night up there saturday and went down to the Armada flea market with her folks and her sister. Got home mid afternoon but aside from mowing the yard before it rains tonight/tomorrow I didn't really feel like doing much after walking around the flea market for a few hours and then driving 2 hours home... 

I'm hopeful for this to work well and be able to run it year round. Only time will tell.

If the weather holds out tonight I might start setting the blocks in place for a test fit to check and see if I'm leveled out enough or if I need to get some more concrete to finish leveling it (but I also need to make a call and see if my chicken processor wants to cut some birds up for me this week, otherwise I will have to butcher 20 birds this week before they get too much bigger, so that might stop me from working on the greenhouse until next weekend...). I have four bags of mortar mix so maybe that will be enough to do minor leveling if I'm close enough. I need to pick up a few more bags of concrete one way or another to fill the inside of the bricks once I get them mortared in place, and will pick up the treated boards that will get anchored into the concrete inside the cinder blocks, and the longest/biggest screws I can find to sink in to the concrete in the blocks before it sets up.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

I haven't taken pictures but I did get a chance to spend a few hours working on the GH on Sunday. I have my blocks set and mortared in place, I started filling the blocks with concrete and I bought the treated boards that will sit on top of the blocks and the lag bolts that will run down in to the blocks to be anchored in the concrete. I got one side filled and the board anchored in place, I almost finished the second side before running out of concrete. I need to get another 15-20 bags of concrete to finish filling the rest of the blocks to anchor my treated board. I think I am going to dig out the area where my 55 gal drums will sit and pour a cement pad for them to sit on too for safety sake. Concrete is fairly inexpensive, and I have the mixer so I might as well use it...


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

Progress remains slow, but I am making progress at least... yesterday I finished filling all of the cinderblocks with cement and anchored my base board in to the cement with long lag bolts. I poured a little more concrete around the base of the blocks on the inside and outside to help make sure they are anchored good. 

Next I need to dig out the dirt along the north wall and going to pour a cement slab for the water barrels to sit on. 

Then I need to dig my trench to bury my PVC underground which will be ran up to the peak of the greenhouse once it is built to be able to pull warm air from the peak down underground to store the heat in the winter time. 

Then I can buy gravel to fill the trench back in and maybe gravel my floor. 

Then I need to move my IBC totes in to their position.

Then I can finally start building walls!


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

a few pics, I'm obviously an amateur when it comes to concrete work. I need a few more bags to get it leveled out, but it's close although not the prettiest... I might leave it unless I get the barrels in there and decide they don't sit level. I will start digging my trench to bury my PVC for the underground heating / cooling probably friday because I want to give the concrete a couple days to set up good before I dig the dirt out next to it, and I have other things going on Wednesday and Thursday so Friday will be my first chance to work on it again.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

I spent several hours digging dirt over the last couple of days. I didn't get it dug out as deep or as wide as I originally planned, but it's about 3ft wide and 2-3ft deep the width of the greenhouse (16ft)... I am going to run with it and see how it works because I am tired of digging and I have to be able to afford to buy enough pea stone to fill this hole back in!


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

My progress remains rather slow on getting my greenhouse up and going... I will probably get the plumbing ran tonight or thursday so I can start filling the hole back in, but I'm down to 8 weeks before my kid is due to arrive and my weekends between now and then are pretty full so not sure how realistic it is to think I'll get it built this year... I do plan to have a couple of weeks off when the baby is born so might be able to spend some time on it then when mom and baby are sleeping, otherwise maybe if hunting season goes like it did last year I might be able to get some help from my dad in November but by then we'll probably have a foot of snow this year knowing my luck. Still hoping to have it enclosed before snow though even if it's not insulated yet...


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

I managed to get half a yard of gravel in the trench on Friday. As it turns out my trailer is only rated for 1800lbs so I can't do more than about half a yard at a time, and my Avalanche I don't want to put gravel in the back of it, and my Silverado I have taken the insurance and plates off of with plans to sell it, but even the Silverado is only a half ton so would only get about half a yard in it too... so it might take me a few trips to get enough gravel for the entire greenhouse floor, but I found unloading the first half yard it was easiest to use a bucket to scoop the gravel up and carry it to the trench to dump rather than shoveling it, so I've decided I'm going to pick up another half yard on my way home tonight which will hopefully mostly fill the trench in, then the rest of the floor of the greenhouse I'm not going to worry about right now, it won't be that much more difficult to carry buckets of gravel through the door than it is to carry it how I did this first load... so I'm going to go pick up most of the lumber all at once and get this show on the road... if my kid doesn't show up and slow things down... we only have 2 weeks left until my wife's due date so kid could be here any day now (but I think I'll actually be able to work on the greenhouse quite a bit once the kid shows up because I'm taking 2 weeks off, so when mom and baby are sleeping I can go make noise to wake them up (hopefully the house is insulated well enough to allow me to run the air compressor without being too noisy to keep them awake...)


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

one other note on the underground plumbing - I was reading on subterranean heating and cooling systems a bit more and found where they said one of the big failure reasons for them is that they fill up with water due to the hot air going in to cold pipes underground and condensing so water build up happens, so I decided to drill 1/8" holes about every 12" all along the underground pipes plus I drilled a hole in the low point of each fitting to hopefully allow moisture to drain out. They say you should wrap the pipes with something that doesn't allow bugs to get up in to the holes you drilled, but I did not do that so hopefully it will be OK, I figure it will probably be a few years before it got filled up with enough dead bugs to really impact it with a 3" PVC pipe, so it's a risk I'm willing to take (eventually I may end up digging this system up to make it larger anyways, for now it's just 3 sections of 10ft pipe, if it works fairly well I may eventually dig up the rest of the floor in the greenhouse and run pipes through the entire floor instead of just that 3ft section.)


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

last night I got another load of gravel. My trailer tires are only rated for about 900lbs a piece (1800 total) so my first load the place I went would only sell me half a yard of gravel because they said the gravel weighs about 2800lbs per yard. I went to another local place yesterday just to compare prices (I paid about $27 for half a yard of 6A limestone gravel the first load, I paid $41 at the other place and got about 3200lbs and that included a $15 charge for having them load the gravel for me... you can shovel it yourself and not pay the $15 but I figure I have to unload when I get home, I'm not going to load it myself too for $15...) I jumped out of the truck to see how much they were dumping in and told them to stop when I saw the trailer springs start to drop but I was already overloaded with 3200lbs of pea stone gravel. I was a bit worried because the tires were squatting pretty badly, but I managed to make it home driving 35mph with my hazards on for the 8 mile journey... there were a few people that were probably ------ off following me, but most of them didn't try to pass me so can't get too ------ at me. This load was enough to finish filling the trench so I decided to move my IBC totes in to the greenhouse too. They were located over by my barn on the far side of my yard and were really too heavy for me to move by myself that distance so I got the lawn mower out and a rope and tied the rope to the back of the mower and dragged them over to the greenhouse =).

I had to dig a little more dirt to get the IBC's leveled out where I want them, but this is pretty much where they'll be, I'll have to move them again once I start insulating inside the greenhouse but I should be able to build the greenhouse with them sitting in place. So now I just need to make a trip to the lumber yard one of these nights to pick up lumber and I can start building the greenhouse walls =).


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

Saturday I went and bought most of the lumber for the greenhouse. Here is how far I made it Saturday afternoon before my wife's water broke and we headed to the hospital and have spent this week getting used to life as new parents...


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

I got a little more done today, hopefully I'll have the walls finished before the weekend and might be able to get some help lifting the beam into place.


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## Riverdale (Jan 20, 2008)

Looking forward to seeing the finished project.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

Progress is slow again, just working on it between taking care of the baby and letting the wife nap, but I've got the east wall just about as far along as the west wall now, need to go up a little higher yet.. I also planted the aquaponic system to see what I can learn in the meanwhile as I build the greenhouse...


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

And dinner tonight: bacon, tomatoes, green beans, all home grown/home raised... This is what it's all about!


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

my dad is up to visit for a few days so I took advantage of having an extra pair of hands, well word got out to my uncle Mike so he wanted to come help too as an excuse to see my dad, then he called my uncle Wayne so I ended up with 3 extra helpers today and we made some good progress on the greenhouse. Had to rip apart a little bit that I had put up to change it up a bit and make it a little more stable but now we have the roof ready to go up, I just need to run and pick up some shingles and tar paper and will start roofing it tomorrow hopefully if the weather cooperates.


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## stanb999 (Jan 30, 2005)

Making good progress. &#9786;

Get some greens and lettuce starts going. You will heed them to plant in a few weeks. Ive planted greens as late as October for a Christmas harvest.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

I have already planted a couple kinds of lettuce, kale, radish, Swiss chard, then last night I planted some tomatoes, peppers and cilantro. I don't know if I will have the greenhouse far enough along to grow through the winter, but should at least be able to extend the season and get a head start on next year if I don't have it completely insulated to be able to keep it warm yet. These plants are mostly just a test to see what I can learn about aquaponics right now since I have read it takes a couple years to really get things figured out.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

more progress pics


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## Solar Geek (Mar 14, 2014)

rininger85 said:


> Moving on to the greenhouse design...
> 
> The next thing I learned was that I needed to give up on the simplistic straight walls... there is a small shed-greenhouse down the road from my in-laws is what I was trying to base my design off of, but they don't run their greenhouse in the winter from what I've seen, so I looked up the angle of the sun at my house on winter solstice and made the _main glass wall sit at an angle 90 degrees to the sun position in the winter. This will give maximum penetration of the sun at the sun's lowest point in the sky. The upper glass wall will be located at an angle that coincides with the sun's angle at the summer solstice (highest point in the sky) and also positions the roof so the sun will not shine on the barrels at that point. I've been told that the upper windows need to be frosted, but all of the glass going in to the greenhouse I already have, so I am going to proceed with using glass up there and will scratch up the inner pane or just hang shade cloth inside if I need to reduce the amount of sun in the summer time._
> 
> ...


We are also planning a greenhouse attached to a second 3 car garage, with the green house being the 3rd bay, separated from the other 2 with sliding barn doors and opening onto our fenced garden. We live in an insulated concrete form house - central WI so similar cold and hot temps to MI. We are aggressively passive solar and had solar architects plan our south windows. 

Our roof line protects us till about now from ANY incursion of sun into our home. But for the greenhouse we will have a gable on the greenhouse with 100% southern exposure - gable will be 20' tall. 
*
FYI, our solar architects planned for the sun to come 16' into our home. TO do that required windows 7' tall (they are 5' casements with 2' awning windows on top) and very important - set 2' off the floor. So the total height of the windows is 9'. The length is 133" (not feet!)*
*
I have Christmas pictures of this system working perfectly. Your 16' x 16' greenhouse can achieve this without any skylights (we call them leaker lights as all skylights leak at some point!) if you put windows stacked upon windows. Our center 6' window in this array does not open. *But I will tell you we had to get solar shades so we don't have to wear sunglasses at Christmas - had to hand those out the 1st year to all guests!

We heat our house most of the winter with the solar window heat but have "real" hvac (for when we are traveling or lazy) and a Lopi woodstove for at night as the house is fairly large and 2 stories. We also have a 18.2 kW PV system which powers the house (so we don't care if we use hvac) and will power the green house and garage bays. 

Last point, we will not have an overhanging roof to protect the plants from excessive heat in the summer. Along with solar shades (which unfortunately cut out much light), we are going to use several of those things you see on TV - the "Sundowner" roll out awnings- to more easily control the heat in summer. We will have an 8' concrete apron from the green house into our fenced garden and that will reflect light into the green house all year. 

Love what you are doing; hope our solar stuff helps you.


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## Crabby (Aug 25, 2016)

Great looking job on your greenhouse. Thanks


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

Solar Geek said:


> We are also planning a greenhouse attached to a second 3 car garage, with the green house being the 3rd bay, separated from the other 2 with sliding barn doors and opening onto our fenced garden. We live in an insulated concrete form house - central WI so similar cold and hot temps to MI. We are aggressively passive solar and had solar architects plan our south windows.
> 
> Our roof line protects us till about now from ANY incursion of sun into our home. But for the greenhouse we will have a gable on the greenhouse with 100% southern exposure - gable will be 20' tall.
> *
> ...


Nice! Glad to hear someone having success with solar heating (on a large scale it sounds like!) in our northern winters! I haven't had any "experts" look at my plans, but there are a few forums that I'm on that I've been reading what other people have done and trying to incorporate the best of what I see in to my system... the only issue is that most of the people on the forums I've seen are either southern U.S. or Australia (which I guess some of those do have as cold of a winter climate as we do as well being as far south of the equator as we are north...). Only time will tell how well my plans work. I have started my aquaponic system on a small scale right now (only about a dozen minnows in the bottom of an IBC tote feeding the top of the IBC tote grow bed). I can't say if it's due to getting it out of the light a little bit or if it is just that my lettuce has been planted long enough it's hitting a growth spurt, but since we got the roof over the greenhouse the lettuce has really started to kick in to high gear so I planted some other stuff the other night to see if I can get some late season veggies (I'm not thinking I'll have the greenhouse insulated before winter, my main goal is just to get it enclosed before winter so I can work on insulating it during the winter, so this system might have to be shut down for winter... will monitor the temperatures and see how long I can get it to run before having to shut it down, but at a minimum should get a head start on growing next season not having to worry about frost in April/May having too big of an effect inside the greenhouse).




Crabby said:


> Great looking job on your greenhouse. Thanks


Thanks Crabby. Having my dad here this past week has made a huge difference! I'm pretty ecstatic about the progress we made this past week, I was getting worried I might not get it enclosed before winter but now I'm pretty confident I'll be able to.


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## stanb999 (Jan 30, 2005)

rininger85 said:


> Nice! Glad to hear someone having success with solar heating (on a large scale it sounds like!) in our northern winters! I haven't had any "experts" look at my plans, but there are a few forums that I'm on that I've been reading what other people have done and trying to incorporate the best of what I see in to my system... the only issue is that most of the people on the forums I've seen are either southern U.S. or Australia (which I guess some of those do have as cold of a winter climate as we do as well being as far south of the equator as we are north...). Only time will tell how well my plans work. I have started my aquaponic system on a small scale right now (only about a dozen minnows in the bottom of an IBC tote feeding the top of the IBC tote grow bed). I can't say if it's due to getting it out of the light a little bit or if it is just that my lettuce has been planted long enough it's hitting a growth spurt, but since we got the roof over the greenhouse the lettuce has really started to kick in to high gear so I planted some other stuff the other night to see if I can get some late season veggies (I'm not thinking I'll have the greenhouse insulated before winter, my main goal is just to get it enclosed before winter so I can work on insulating it during the winter, so this system might have to be shut down for winter... will monitor the temperatures and see how long I can get it to run before having to shut it down, but at a minimum should get a head start on growing next season not having to worry about frost in April/May having too big of an effect inside the greenhouse).
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Please go and get one of Elliot Coleman's books. I have both. It will save you a ton of effort. Fruiting plants will not grow in the low light months without considerable artificial light. Even hardy greens will not grow much without artificial light after November 1st or before mid February. Those southern boys have more than temperature going for them. They get much closer to 12 hours of sun year round.

On a positive note, lettuce and greens can survive temps well below freezing. I had some last winter deal with 11F inside the greenhouse. So with proper planning you can likely have greens to harvest most if not all of the winter. 

P.S. the tropic of Capricorn runs right in the middle of Australia. So they are rather north... in the south.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

If we need to supplement light in the winter time to keep things growing we will. I will just have to add more solar power to run it =) Even just extending the season to Feb-Nov will be huge as our season right now is May or June through September or October... I have seen a few winter greenhouses in Minnesota and North Dakota who claimed to be passive solar with no additional heat or light supplementation though too (and they are farther north/colder yet than we are...), so time will tell what level of success I'll have and what we need to do to maximize the benefits of using the greenhouse.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

I haven't updated here in a while... The greenhouse is pretty much enclosed now. I hadn't accomplished much the last couple of weeks after my dad left but I spent most of yesterday and today working on it so it's pretty close to being enclosed. I have a small 4-5" piece to do at the top of the north wall and I need to put in the door, need to build the overhangs yet and box them in then box in the eaves and paint all of the wood that will remain exposed. Otherwise I'm on to insulation board and vinyl siding next.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

I've insulated the outside of the north wall and half of the west wall and a piece on the east wall. This foamular insulation is R5.0, 1" thick. Getting to the areas I have to cut out slows things down a bit.



















Then I started boxing in the soffit on the north side. I have the plywood over the bottom but need to box in the ends yet then I am thinking I will get metal flashing now to cover the wood instead of painting it all because I think it will make boxing in the soffit ends look better.









I insulated the inside of the north wall with roll fiberglas insulation (R13), then I got thinking about the amount of humidity I am going to have in there in the winter and not being able to open the windows to let it out, so I decided I need to cover the roll insulation to try and keep moisture out of it. I had just enough house wrap left to cover the inside of the north wall. Then I covered it with plywood so other than a small piece of plywood at the top and painting the north wall is pretty much finished so I can start putting my water barrels in. I have one piece of plywood left so I'm going to insulate the north part of the west wall and paint it while I'm at it, then I'll get the barrels painted black and get them filled with water to start warming them up.



















This is just a sneak peak at the inside of the greenhouse... someone asked me for a tour of the inside... it's tough to give a tour right now because it's a dirty workshop with all my tools laying out everywhere. But it beats having to pick my tools up every day and put them away...


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

I've finished insulating the outside of the greenhouse and painted the north wall inside the greenhouse a bright white to help reflect sunlight. I painted a few of my barrels black but have not started to fill them up yet to start forming my water barrel wall. I decided to dig a trench to bury a power line and ethernet cable from the house to the greenhouse. So I got that done this week, I still need to fill the trench back in and I want to buy a small breaker box for inside the greenhouse to be able to disconnect it from the grid from inside the greenhouse (I will have it fed from it's own breaker inside the house as well, but want the easy access to be able to kill power from the greenhouse too without having to go to the house... my polebarn is set up this way that it has breakers in the barn which are fed from breakers in the garage which are fed from the main box in the house... a lot more convenience factor than anything). I want to get wires ran in the greenhouse next before I insulate any more... always easier to add electric and boxes before insulation and plywood =)

I'm also working on building an arduino controller for the greenhouse to monitor the system and give remote access to the data (thus the reason I decided to run the electric and ethernet to the greenhouse instead of just waiting until I get the solar panels on the greenhouse, the solar panels are another project that will take me a while so will try to work on them over the winter to have them ready in the spring). 

I already have lettuce, onions, tomatoes, peppers, kale, swiss chard, and radishes growing in the greenhouse, but I planted 5 more kinds of lettuce, swiss chard, kale, radishes, beets, carrots, broccoli, peas and cabbage in there last night too. Time will tell how long I'll be able to grow them with the greenhouse not being complete but this is all a learning experience so we will take what we learn and apply it towards future years of growth. I've ran out of room to add anything else in my growbed since I'm only running off of one growbed right now... it will be a bit yet before I can add more growbeds.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

Not a lot happening in the greenhouse lately, been busy with some other house projects and hunting season. I did manage to finish insulating half of the ceiling and put plywood up and got the first coat of paint on the plywood while my dad was up visiting this past week, but I need to get another coat of paint on it and finish insulating the other half of the ceiling then get plywood up on it and paint it as well... and still have not finished the east and west walls, they are insulated but need to get plastic over the insulation then plywood up, but kind of holding off on that until I finish my controller and get it installed so I can run the wires before I put the plywood up. I will hopefully have some time this weekend to work on finishing the controller so I can install it. 

Our temperatures were holding strong in the 40's, 50's, even saw a few days last week in the 60's and one day hit 70 and then the day after being 70 we had our first snow and it's been in the 20s and 30s since then. I'm not tracking the temperature in the greenhouse yet until I get the controller installed but there is a noticeable difference in temperatures when I go out there. It is still warm enough to feel comfortable in the greenhouse without a coat on while outdoors you get cold pretty quick. I'm not sure that the water barrels are really doing anything yet. I don't know if it's because we haven't had much sun or if it's because the sun is not far enough south yet to really hit the barrels good... it seems like the sun is still at the point that gets some shade between the south glass wall and the upper glass wall, so maybe a little later in the season it will do better. I did check my water temp the other day and it was down to about 46 degrees in the trout tank. The trout seem happy as can be, but I don't know how well the plants like it. They are still growing, and I have my first tomato growing on the vine with several more buds flowering, but it does seem a bit slow probably due to water temps being lower. 

I think I might have lost a second tilapia in my indoor aquarium but it is hard to tell for sure as they are very active looking for food now every time I am near so it is hard to count without taking them out of the tank. The tilapia appear to have doubled in size already, they are some place in the 2-3" range now, and you can definitely start seeing some differences in their growth speeds, but I'm hoping that means the small ones are females so I know I will at least have a few females to try and form a breeding colony from. There is one that is quite a bit larger than the rest so I'm assuming it is a male and he seems to be pretty dominant chasing other fish off if they come in his area of the tank. I might need to upgrade them to a larger tank soon to keep them from getting too territorial. I need to clean out the 40B sump tank that still has saltwater in it from my big reef tank then I could move the tilapia in to it, or I have a brand new 55 gallon aquarium out in the greenhouse I could move indoors to move the tilapia into.


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## stanb999 (Jan 30, 2005)

Hows it going? Would love an update.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

I'm progressing pretty slowly. Not a lot of energy to do much as winter has set upon us. I pick my 4 month old son up after working all day and go home and have him to myself for about 2 hours before my wife gets home from work. By then it is dark out and I've sat around for 2 hours with the boy I don't really feel like getting up and accomplishing much after dark. So we typically eat dinner, I go out to do chores and come in and both of us play on the floor with the boy every night. Weekends I try to spend some time working on the greenhouse still among other projects that I'm working on at the same time, but coming in to the holiday season we've been busy a lot of the weekends too. 

I did finish insulating the ceiling of the greenhouse so it now has two layers of R5 insulation board, then I put plywood over top of it. I still have one half sheet of plywood to put up and the ceiling will be pretty much done. I had to cut the boards then bring them in the house to paint them. I placed a single layer of R5 insulation board over the upper glazing for the winter to help with heat loss. Eventually I will probably add another layer of insulation with the reflective surface on the plywood to increase my insulating properties and bounce back light that manages to bounce to the ceiling. I have R18 in my walls so I would like to have at least that in the roof since that's where most of the heat will be lost anyways. 

I still need to put plastic over my insulation on the east and west walls then put plywood on them as well, but they are mostly insulated, but I have a feeling that I'm still losing heat not having the plastic / plywood in place since it's not sealing the space.

As for how things are going for growing... not great. I'm not keeping it warm enough in there right now. Nothing has frozen yet but I believe my water temp is probably in the low 40's or maybe even high 30's right now (but it's also only about 7F outdoors right now). The fact that I haven't froze anything yet is encouraging, but I'm not sure how long I'll keep things going before I have to shut it down for the winter. I am still running it just to see what I can learn this winter to hopefully be in the position to keep it running through next winter (I never anticipated I would keep it running this winter because I still have quite a bit of work to do. I have not finished installing my water barrels for heat storage, I have not installed the PVC to the ceiling to circulate the warm air back underground, I have not built my solar heater, I have not lined the foundation with straw bales yet).

I have one small tomato on the vine and have a lot of buds on the tomato plants but I think the temperature has reached low enough that they are not growing. I added a supplemental light to give a little more light to the plants, but it is the weakest light fixture I have... I am planning on converting my other light fixtures that will give better coverage, but I need time to swap LED's out on them to get the right color spectrum for plants. After running this additional light for a couple of weeks I don't think it's light that is limiting me, I think it is the water temp that is shocking the plants and stalling their growth. I installed a heater in the fish tank two nights ago to slowly bring the temp back up (because I noticed the trout seem to be slowing their eating habits) and I'm hoping to keep water temp in the 50's which will hopefully get plants growing again although I'm sure they would prefer the 70's (but then my trout wouldn't be very happy, and my electric bill wouldn't either). It should help heat the air a bit too if I can get the water temp up to 50.

We'll see how things go... I will hopefully be able to run and get a bunch of straw bales this weekend to line the foundation of the greenhouse to help reduce any drafts that might be coming through there. We have enough snow now that I think it has probably lined the foundation pretty well, but I'll still put the straw bales there that way they will hopefully be a bit warmer than the snow as insulation. 

I won't be completely heartbroken if I am not able to run through this winter, but I will make every attempt I can to keep it running for as long as possible that way I know what I'm in for next winter. Worst case scenario I may go back to my original plan to install some sort of wood burner in the greenhouse if I'm not able to warm it up with my other attempts, but that will be a summer project if it comes to that.


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## stanb999 (Jan 30, 2005)

Here is a local farm who has passive greenhouses. Tho he doesnt do aquaponics but check out his design. 



http://4seasonsfarmmarket.m.webs.co...lbum?albumid=12467113&no_flash=1&dm_package=2


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

I managed to get the last piece of plywood on the ceiling this weekend, and I got most of the east and west walls covered in plastic. I still need to patch in a couple small pieces to finish covering the east and west windows to help insulate them. It was warm enough in there yesterday that the snow/ice was melting off the glass when I was working inside the greenhouse. I went back out there after dark and the couple of little areas where I did not cover the glass entirely the portion not covered was frosted and the rest of the window was not, so I'd say if I finish putting plastic up over the rest of the windows (not the south side) it will help a lot through winter. Now it's brutally cold out last night/today... think we have a high of 10F today.

I had another idea to create a greenhouse within the greenhouse by hanging plastic over my plants to see if it would help retain some heat (it should because I have placed a heater in the fish tank to try and bring the temp up a little bit to get the trout eating again... right now it's not really helping, I'm losing the heat too fast. I think I may end up building a wood box around the fish tank that I can pack with insulation to help retain the heat a bit better, and then I need more plastic because what I had left wasn't enough to drop down to the plants on the lower portion of the growbed, but was at least covering the top of the tomato plants).

I have a couple of 6x8 blue tarps that I am going to hang in there as well. One I think I will hang over the upper glazing that I already blocked off with insulation board, but thinking that the tarp will also be another layer of insulating in case I'm still loosing heat there. The other tarp I am going to hang over the door. I left the plastic from the wall covering the door and just put a slit in the middle of it, so I figured adding a tarp over the door will be one more way of knocking down cold air coming in through the door when I enter and leave (but also just because it's a reused door that isn't perfectly square and I did not finish filling all the cracks before it got too cold for caulk/spray foam to dry, so will help stop any drafts).

I'm really struggling to decide if I am going to take my annual vacation down to my property in TN between Christmas and New Years this year or not. My dad and I have met there every year for the past 8 years since we bought the property, and while we're not really hunting it very heavily right now we usually spend the week working on improving the property so it will be ready for us when we need to hunt it more heavily (and it is already paying off... my grandparents spent the month of November there and did manage to get 2 does, a 5 point, a 10 point and then my dad shot an 8 point on his way back home from Michigan to Florida... so they took 5 off of there this year which was good since my dad didn't get anything here in Michigan this year. My grandpa said he'd shoot a deer and an hour later there would be more deer on the trail so they never even went out to one of the several other blinds we've built the past few years.) Seems like everywhere we cut trails deer show up on the trails within a day or two, but this year they never even left our cabin. All 5 deer were shot out the cabin window (originally the cabin was built as an 8x8 hunting shack, we've just expanded out from there to have a decent little cabin to stay in when we're there, so the original part is still set up as a hunting shack).

I'm struggling to decide if I am going to go or not because of my projects I'm working on... I feel like I have so much to get done that having a week at home without having to work would help me get a long way on them, and also having a 4 month old at home I'm not sure that I want to leave my wife with him alone for a week... but at the same time it would be nice to get away... this will be a tough decision for me until the boy is at least 3 or 4 years old, then I will just take him with me to TN for the week... but until then it's just not a good place for such a little guy.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

Today is a very exciting day! Winter Solstice 2016! The days start getting longer again! More sunlight! That means hopefully the sun will start helping with the greenhouse a bit more now even though our worst winter weather is usually in January...


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## stanb999 (Jan 30, 2005)

Check here for your location. Http://sunrise-sunset.org

The plants will grow with vigor at 10 hours. Generally last two weeks of January of first 2 weeks of February. 


Did you ever get the grow lights?


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## bobp (Mar 4, 2014)

Have you ever seen a beer / soda can solar heater? Some good you tubes on them. Passive solar, that really works.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

stanb999 said:


> Check here for your location. Http://sunrise-sunset.org
> 
> The plants will grow with vigor at 10 hours. Generally last two weeks of January of first 2 weeks of February.
> 
> ...


I have just a small cheap LED grow light out there right now. I have not had a chance to update my other fixtures to get the right color spectrum. Just not enough hours in the day (and more importantly non-work days in the week). I had a week off last week but ended up spending most of the week at my property in TN, and my wife, son and myself have all been sick since Christmas so not getting much done as we're all pretty miserable the past few days. 

At this point my plants have pretty much died off. My tomato plants all wilted. My jalapeno plants the leaves have almost all fallen off. We did have a couple of days in the 40's this past week though which allowed the inside greenhouse temps to increase enough that a bunch of lettuce seeds I had planted a while back sprouted. So maybe my lettuce/kale/swiss chard etc. will keep going, but the tomatoes were the ones I was really hoping I could keep going. Just didn't make it far enough before winter hit to be able to keep it warm enough this year... but I'll keep working on it as I have time and money and will at a minimum get an early start on our garden for this coming summer. 



bobp said:


> Have you ever seen a beer / soda can solar heater? Some good you tubes on them. Passive solar, that really works.


Yes, I am planning on building a similar system as my plan #3 for heating the greenhouse. I just haven't had the time or money to get that far yet. We have a "professional" solar heater on our house that is pretty simple and very effective on sunny days. All it has is a big glass enclosure with black bubble wrap type of material (like a solar pool cover type of material). That heats the air that travels through the enclosure and there is a pump at the far end of the house to pull air through the system, then there is a small vent hole behind the enclosure through the wall of the dining room which has a flap in it to keep air from going back through the vent. When the system is running the pump draws air through that vent and then to the far end of the house to circulate it through the upstairs of our house.

I'm planning to use the metal downspouts for the solar heater instead of the pop cans because it seems like it should work more effectively/less work for sealing the cans together. So instead of a bunch of pop cans it will have a few pieces of metal downspout in the wooden box and air will pass through the downspout back and forth and then go in to the greenhouse. I have two walls inside the greenhouse left to put plywood up on, and then I'd also like to get the vinyl siding up on the greenhouse before I start working on the solar heater as well.

Right now everything is kind of on hold because I've been working a lot of OT, so I get up earlier than usual to go to work then by the time I get home I have 2 hours that is just me and my 5 month old son before my wife gets home, then I don't really feel like doing much once she is home and we eat dinner, then by the time I do my chores I typically only have an hour or two before I go to bed which I spend with the wife and son, so my only time to really work on the greenhouse is on weekends and I've just been busy lately with holidays so haven't got anything accomplished on the greenhouse lately.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

I finally gave up on my tomato plants. They had all wilted and the stalks were getting pretty weak so I ripped them out of the grow beds. It warmed up enough in the greenhouse this past week for a bunch of lettuce to sprout, plus now that the tomato plants are gone some of the other lettuce that was getting blocked seems like it is growing faster.

I am slowly working on a few different things... I picked up a few more sheets of plywood to work on one of the two walls that need finished. I also picked up the parts to build one of my filters for the fish tank. I started working on it Saturday but realized I was missing a part for the drain so put that on hold. I also started working on one of the solar heaters for the greenhouse. I have the box built, caulked the inside of it, need to caulk the outside of it then paint it inside and out then I'll start working on cutting the downspout down to size. 

I decided I was going to build three separate solar heaters. I am using recycled glass, so I thought it would be easier to make three small solar heaters instead of one large solar heater that way I would not need to try and seal the glass panes together. I'm not sure which way would be more effective, but it's what I decided to do so I'll have to live with it. Hopefully I'll have those two projects running in the next week or so. It is supposed to be 50F today so will be a nice day to work on projects if my wife gets home at a decent time or her cousin who is staying with us offers to watch the kid for a couple hours =)


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

I managed to finish all but one small piece of plywood on the west wall and about half of the east wall today. I need two more sheets of plywood to have the inside finished as far as putting up plywood goes. 

I have the first solar heater box built and sealed then painted the insides of it black today, need to paint the outsides white then I'll move on to the next stage of assembling it. 

I also finished building the first rff filter for the aquaponic fish tank but the uniseal I put in the fish tank is leaking... Must be ibc is too thin to seal against. I will try to silicone it and see if it will seal it otherwise I will need to get a bigger bulkhead fitting instead, so I ran the filter a few minutes using a five gallon bucket for a sump, but had to shut it down and put the pump back in the fish tank until I get the uniseal to quit leaking.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

some pictures of progress this weekend...

west wall plywood up except one small piece behind the fish tank (need to move the growbed and possibly the fish tank to be able to put the last piece up... it will wait a while...)









east wall still have a little more plywood to go up... I bought a couple more sheets yesterday, so I should have enough to finish it now I think.









My SLO (Solids Lift Overflow) pipe. Didn't really get a chance to see how well this will work because the uni-seal was leaking too much to run it through the filter for very long (and I need to get a bigger sump tank, was just using a 5 gal bucket for testing). I will change the top 90 to a T as well, forgot to buy a T for the 2" line... 









The start of the first solar heater. I have the inside of the box painted black now still need to paint the outside white. Then I need to cut the downspouts (which is the part I least look forward to... hate cutting any type of metal!)


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

One of my tilapia is brooding eggs! Going to have my first brood of tilapia fry in a few days!


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

Plywood is all up in the greenhouse (other than a couple small pieces that I need to finish running wires behind first). I had a HSM Friday, I went to the greenhouse for the first time in a couple of days and found that my fish tank was half empty. Apparently enough gunk has built up in the grow bed that it caused the water level to change in a certain area and started overflowing out the side of the growbed. Luckily my pump was suspended about half height in the fish tank, but it made me decide that it was time to get the pump out of the tank. So I pulled it out and extended the pipe so I could lower it down to the sump tank and run my filter. At first the filter wasn't running good but I figured it was airlocked because I had a 90 inside the tank instead of a T, so I pulled the SLO out completely for the time being and let the water flow straight out the tank. I'm not sure how well the filter is working so far, there seems to be some stuff getting through to the sump but a lot is settling in the sump, so I'll let it and use a wet/dry to clean it out as needed. Today I picked up the T fittings for the SLO's but have not reinstalled the SLO yet, but I did put the T in the tank so I'm not taking water directly off the surface because it was sucking the fish food out before the fish got a chance to eat it.

I built my grow beds today, and I ordered Firestone EPDM pond liner so should be able to get them lined hopefully by next weekend then I can start plumbing the drains and eventually be ready for media.

This is how I did the beds... I used 2x10's then plywood bottoms, then I put pieces of 2x4 or 2x6 across the bottoms to keep them from bowing, then more 2x4s or 2x6s running the length of the beds tying them all together and those boards sit on the cinderblock stands.









East grow bed... this will probably be a wicking bed. 8ft x 2ft









the south bed, 12ft x 2ft


















all of the growbeds from the door









growbeds from the fish tank


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## stanb999 (Jan 30, 2005)

Making great progress.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

I received my pond liner yesterday and have all of my bulkhead fittings for drains... goal this weekend is to get the beds lined and start getting the plumbing in place. I have lettuce rafts being delivered today, my biggest bed (12ft x 2ft) will be a DWC (deep water culture) bed. I am hoping to at least get that one up and running in the next week. It might take a while to get the other beds operational because I need some warmer weather to be able to wash gravel/media... need to be able to use the hose... but if I get the beds lined and the plumbing installed in the next week or two I'll be happy... then I might start hauling in gravel for the floor of the greenhouse so I can get rid of the muddy mess.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

getting closer... 

small bed of hydroton... found this for $28 per 1.75 cu ft... not sure if that is an OK price or not, but figured I would just use it for the smallest bed and try other things in the other beds for now.









dirt wicking bed... picked up a yard of really nice topsoil for $25, more expensive than it could have been but the other places around the area keep their topsoil outdoors so its frozen... so I paid more for stuff that is stored in a barn so it's not frozen.. I have enough left to probably fill another raised bed in the garden.









cut the lettuce rafts down to size so they fit in the bed now. 









I also temp hooked up the larger IBC to fill the beds from. I need to move the plants from the bed to the new beds, move the gravel from the existing bed to fill the gravel bed, remove the existing bed, move the fish in to the bigger tank, move the small tank and filter out of the way, build a platform to raise the small tank and filter, move the small tank and filter back in, hook them up to the drain, move the pump to the new sump, plumb the return line to the two fish tanks and then I'll be ready to go! That is a lot of work to be done and it all has to be done in one shot to keep from having everything shut down for too long or having ammonia issues from having the fish in the new tank without running the water through the grow beds for very long... I feel like I really need two consecutive days to work on it to make sure it gets done but might not happen this weekend because we have family commitments tomorrow so I'm not sure if I will start on this Sunday or not. I may start it sunday and then just call in and take monday off in case of emergency that I don't get it finished sunday.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

I woke up at 6am yesterday and got started on the greenhouse before daylight. I took as many plants as I could out of my test growbed and planted them in the DWC rafts and a few in the dirt wicking bed and a couple in the hydroton bed so I could sample different medias to see what we like best for each plant type. Then I shoveled the gravel out of the temporary bed in to the new gravel bed. Once that was finished I removed the temporary test bed and by then it was about 8am so I figured that was enough, if the neighbors didn't like me too bad so I got the saw and air nailer out and built the platform to raise the small fish tank and filters up. I drained the filter and started the stop watch to see how long the system was shut down before I got it running again because I had moved the air stones to the big tank but there was no filtration for a while (ended up being about 3 hours that it took me from the time I shut the system down until water was circulating again). When I moved the filter I found a small shriveled up trout that had jumped out must be after I set the filter in place a few weeks ago it somehow managed to jump out the side of the tank. So I'm down to 24 out of 26 trout now... not bad, the only two I've lost both jumped out of the tank. I started draining the fish tank while I started netting the trout and moving them to the larger tank.

jumper...









I measured and weighed a few of the trout as I was moving them. Many of them are in the 10-11" range and weigh between 12-13 ounces, but the biggest one managed to escape me until I had the tank almost completely drained. The biggest one was weighing in at about 16 oz (1 lb... about 450ish grams). I'm a bit surprised that they already weigh that much... I see people post that they have 500-600gram trout and I expect them to be a lot bigger than that... I'm hoping mine will be much larger by the time I process them (I may have to net them again and move some of the smaller ones back in to the smaller tank to give more room for them to grow).

It might not have been the best idea to drain 230 gallons on to the floor of my greenhouse... made for a wet muddy mess for most of the day before it finally absorbed in to the ground, but I got the tank out of the way and moved the stand in... it was too high so I had to move it and dig out part of it to drop it down / level it a bit. Got the small tank on top of it and started filling it back up so it could warm up in the nice warm sun (it was about 70F in the greenhouse by mid afternoon). I finished plumbing the return line and temp hooked up the drain from the big fish tank to feed the grow beds. Got everything running but I need to go back and add my filters back in but figured they would be OK for a few days. 

Instead of working on the filters I decided to plant the rest of the beds since it will be warm all week should be able to germinate seeds. So I marked off my beds for square foot planting and gathered seeds and got everything planted. We will need to start some more stuff for the garden in seed trays later but hoping it will germinate these seeds this week and they'll stay warm enough in the greenhouse now to start growing early.

dirt wicking bed









gravel bed









DWC raft bed









small tank / stand









hydroton bed









one more bed to fill... this will be lava rock but I need to pick it up still.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

testing new file upload... built a couple of new raised beds last week. Eventually I will probably completely fill the garden area and more with raised beds... seemed to grow better with less work last year.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

I haven't been around much the last couple of weeks. Been pretty busy at work and haven't really got much done at home. I'm still waiting for a little bit warmer weather before I really start working on the greenhouse again. I still have not hooked in my second fish tank or reconnected the filter, but everything seems to be running OK without it so for now I'm not worried. I've looked in the DWC bed and it is pretty dirty, but I don't think it will be difficult to siphon it out when I decide it is time to clean it. The roots of the plants seem pretty clean in the DWC so for now I'm not going to worry about it.

Harvested some swiss chard and kale the other night. I cut about this much kale again last night because I saw the plants are about to flower so took all the leaves off and will see if I can pull seeds otherwise will pull the kale and start something else.










This was some cilantro that was growing like crazy but got really woody and was done for so I pulled it along with all of the other cilantro that was in DWC. 










roots on the cilantro in DWC... seem clean enough to me so not worried about the accumulation in the bed right now.










I picked up some cornish X last weekend so these guys are a little over a week old now. May 21st they'll be ready for butcher.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

I started siding the greenhouse on Sunday.









Here's some pics of whats growing inside right now.









wicking bed has swiss chard, kale, broccoli, carrots, beets, radishes, lettuce, peas, cauliflower, and watermelon (will get moved outside once we plant the garden)








this is broccoli that I let go to see if I can get seeds from









lettuce getting big in DWC








I have carrots, 3 or 4 different kinds of lettuce, swiss chard, kale, peas all growing in DWC


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## chaossmurf (Jan 6, 2017)

silly question but....... wouldn't sidding it reduce the heat inside that your building the greenhouse to get te heat ???? ---that's the ENTIRE reason most people side their omes here in florida anyways ---maybe its just something that doesn't mke sence to e beause im in florida and not in a very cold state ---but it seems odd to me ??????


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

chaossmurf said:


> silly question but....... wouldn't sidding it reduce the heat inside that your building the greenhouse to get te heat ???? ---that's the ENTIRE reason most people side their omes here in florida anyways ---maybe its just something that doesn't mke sence to e beause im in florida and not in a very cold state ---but it seems odd to me ??????


Siding the greenhouse is more about making the wife happy that it kind of matches the house than anything... around here the only buildings that don't get some sort of siding are typically old buildings that are falling down and not worth saving, otherwise everything around here has some sort of siding. It just wouldn't fit in, and has been a bit of an eye sore all winter long having a pink insulation building in my backyard when my house is red brick on the bottom and white vinyl on the top. I would have liked to do the same on the greenhouse so it looks like the house but it would cost a lot more to do the brick to match, and it would make it a lot harder for future enhancements (i.e. I plan to add solar heaters, I would have to be able to drill through the brick which wouldn't be fun... it will be much easier to drill through vinyl siding once I am ready to add the solar heaters).

I don't really think it will have a major effect on the heat inside the greenhouse. I have R5 insulation board + R13 insulation in the walls + plywood inside and out, so total of about R19 or so (plus house wrap on the outside and plastic covering the insulation on the inside probably helps a little bit more too). So I don't think adding vinyl siding will really make a difference in letting it heat up... now there are things I could have done that would have helped it warm up more (i.e. if I had built the entire walls out of concrete / cement blocks / bricks then the sun would warm them up would have helped warm the greenhouse... but being stick built I don't think it's going to make a difference. I guess I could have used black siding too to attract sun more, but then it would attract too much sun in the summer time). The bigger issue for passive solar is not letting heat escape once it is inside... it's important to have a lot of glazing for the sun to get in and have them at the correct angles for the sun (i.e. my main south glass wall is 90 degrees to the sun at the winter solstice when we have the least amount of light so there is less sunlight bouncing off the glass not making it's way into the greenhouse), but anything that is not glazing needs to be well insulated so it slows the loss of heat. Then barrels line the north wall full of water, so the sun heats the water in the barrels on the north wall and stores heat which then slowly dissipates overnight to help stabilize the temperature a bit. The barrels also need to be in a position where the sun does not hit them in the summer time, so the glazing needs to be at proper angles for summer, having the barrels in the shade in summer will help cool the air inside the greenhouse.

I could have also used a dark metal for the roof or dark shingles would have also helped heat the greenhouse up a little more, but then I would have to deal with more heat in the summer too. There is a lot to consider when designing a passive solar greenhouse and I did my best to do as much research as possible before starting, but really only time and experience will tell if it works as expected... there aren't many people with passive solar greenhouses in my type of climate, so what works for people in slightly warmer climates might not work for my climate (I think if you look back at some of Stan's posts in this thread he's pretty adamant that none of this is going to work in my climate, but my goal is to prove him wrong).


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## chaossmurf (Jan 6, 2017)

yeah ive been watching the greenhouse posts ---just the siding just semed odd to me ---mainly figured it was a cosmetic reasoning for adding it ---but just had to ask  wives sometimes dictate actions more than reasoning does  I really want one eventually so I have someone to tell me im wrong all the time too


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## stanb999 (Jan 30, 2005)

rininger85 said:


> Siding the greenhouse is more about making the wife happy that it kind of matches the house than anything... around here the only buildings that don't get some sort of siding are typically old buildings that are falling down and not worth saving, otherwise everything around here has some sort of siding. It just wouldn't fit in, and has been a bit of an eye sore all winter long having a pink insulation building in my backyard when my house is red brick on the bottom and white vinyl on the top. I would have liked to do the same on the greenhouse so it looks like the house but it would cost a lot more to do the brick to match, and it would make it a lot harder for future enhancements (i.e. I plan to add solar heaters, I would have to be able to drill through the brick which wouldn't be fun... it will be much easier to drill through vinyl siding once I am ready to add the solar heaters).
> 
> I don't really think it will have a major effect on the heat inside the greenhouse. I have R5 insulation board + R13 insulation in the walls + plywood inside and out, so total of about R19 or so (plus house wrap on the outside and plastic covering the insulation on the inside probably helps a little bit more too). So I don't think adding vinyl siding will really make a difference in letting it heat up... now there are things I could have done that would have helped it warm up more (i.e. if I had built the entire walls out of concrete / cement blocks / bricks then the sun would warm them up would have helped warm the greenhouse... but being stick built I don't think it's going to make a difference. I guess I could have used black siding too to attract sun more, but then it would attract too much sun in the summer time). The bigger issue for passive solar is not letting heat escape once it is inside... it's important to have a lot of glazing for the sun to get in and have them at the correct angles for the sun (i.e. my main south glass wall is 90 degrees to the sun at the winter solstice when we have the least amount of light so there is less sunlight bouncing off the glass not making it's way into the greenhouse), but anything that is not glazing needs to be well insulated so it slows the loss of heat. Then barrels line the north wall full of water, so the sun heats the water in the barrels on the north wall and stores heat which then slowly dissipates overnight to help stabilize the temperature a bit. The barrels also need to be in a position where the sun does not hit them in the summer time, so the glazing needs to be at proper angles for summer, having the barrels in the shade in summer will help cool the air inside the greenhouse.
> 
> I could have also used a dark metal for the roof or dark shingles would have also helped heat the greenhouse up a little more, but then I would have to deal with more heat in the summer too. There is a lot to consider when designing a passive solar greenhouse and I did my best to do as much research as possible before starting, but really only time and experience will tell if it works as expected... there aren't many people with passive solar greenhouses in my type of climate, so what works for people in slightly warmer climates might not work for my climate (I think if you look back at some of Stan's posts in this thread he's pretty adamant that none of this is going to work in my climate, but my goal is to prove him wrong).



I hope you do!


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## jwal10 (Jun 5, 2010)

Sorry, I didn't get back to this thread. All the pictures make it take forever to load. You have gotten a lot done. Surprising what you can grow with a greenhouse in colder climates. Even though many will scoff at the idea being worth while. I know it extends my season by 2 months on each end and maintains the circle for the rest of the year with seed and mother plants. I have a gravity fed spring that pushes a small amount of water through a black poly pipe coiled inside a heat box. The warm air rises in the box and vents out the top, heating the greenhouse and shop. The warm water drops into the fish tanks keeping them warm and is skimmed off at the end into the insulated makeup tank. When the make up tank is full it overflows to an outside fish pond where roof run off and overflow from the grey water pond collects. This is diverted to the farm pond to maintain it's level to grow wild rice. I was going to install a 12v pump to lift water into an insulated holding tank to recirculate and then use a gravity drip system to water the strawberries but this system works well. 2 watering cans full, filled off the makeup tank to water the strawberries each week is easy during the winter and is easier when I move the strawberries outside in the spring to get the new plants ready for the next season. No messing with an irrigation system. I get strawberries during the winter, a new flush in the spring and again in the fall to freeze, then those plants fill 1/3 of my raised beds that are on a 3 year rotation. Everything has a reason and a season. 1 enterprise feeds another here. Garden waste feeds the rabbits, chickens and goats, their manure makes compost that feeds the gardens. We use the best. Hot water, heat, fish, meat, vegetables, flowers and fiber. Complete circle of life....James


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

stanb999 said:


> I hope you do!


Me too! There aren't a lot of examples of it this far north so I might fail, but I sure hope I don't... 



jwal10 said:


> Sorry, I didn't get back to this thread. All the pictures make it take forever to load. You have gotten a lot done. Surprising what you can grow with a greenhouse in colder climates. Even though many will scoff at the idea being worth while. I know it extends my season by 2 months on each end and maintains the circle for the rest of the year with seed and mother plants. I have a gravity fed spring that pushes a small amount of water through a black poly pipe coiled inside a heat box. The warm air rises in the box and vents out the top, heating the greenhouse and shop. The warm water drops into the fish tanks keeping them warm and is skimmed off at the end into the insulated makeup tank. When the make up tank is full it overflows to an outside fish pond where roof run off and overflow from the grey water pond collects. This is diverted to the farm pond to maintain it's level to grow wild rice. I was going to install a 12v pump to lift water into an insulated holding tank to recirculate and then use a gravity drip system to water the strawberries but this system works well. 2 watering cans full, filled off the makeup tank to water the strawberries each week is easy during the winter and is easier when I move the strawberries outside in the spring to get the new plants ready for the next season. No messing with an irrigation system. I get strawberries during the winter, a new flush in the spring and again in the fall to freeze, then those plants fill 1/3 of my raised beds that are on a 3 year rotation. Everything has a reason and a season. 1 enterprise feeds another here. Garden waste feeds the rabbits, chickens and goats, their manure makes compost that feeds the gardens. We use the best. Hot water, heat, fish, meat, vegetables, flowers and fiber. Complete circle of life....James


I need to finish sealing my foundation, I believe I lost a lot of heat through the foundation this past winter, but I just ran out of time to finish it before winter with a newborn in the house. At a minimum we'll also gain at least a couple of months on either side of our growing season too, because we typically end our garden at the very latest by October, but I was able to keep things alive in to December this past year and I didn't have the foundation sealed and the inside of the greenhouse was not fully insulated / plywood up yet at that point, plus we typically can't plan on getting anything into the ground before mid to late May here because April still runs the risk of frost most of the month (and we still have snow on the ground many years in April). With the greenhouse it started warming up enough for things to grow starting in March, and I was able to keep some plants alive all winter although not growing, so those are the ones that are in my DWC now. I am just now sprouting tomatoes mid April, but I think that will improve next year as well once I finish a couple projects on the greenhouse to warm it up a bit more (I don't have all of my water barrels in yet either, I'm still several short). 

Tonight is going to be our first trout dinner too, so I'll report on just how delicious our trout are soon, I'm not sure if I would be able to keep them alive any other way, the greenhouse kept the air temp warm enough so the water didn't freeze and gave them a place to grow. Even my indoor aquariums with no heaters in them would probably be in the mid to upper 60's just due to the air temp in the house which wouldn't be as ideal for them, so there is no question that the greenhouse will be a treasured addition for many years to come... the real question is just if we are going to be able to grow inside the greenhouse through the winter or not. I will hopefully finish my projects on the greenhouse this summer and give it one more winter as a "passive solar" greenhouse to see how we do next winter, then if we aren't able to keep it warm we'll assess if we want to add a wood burner to help warm it in the winter.


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## stanb999 (Jan 30, 2005)

rininger85 said:


> Me too! There aren't a lot of examples of it this far north so I might fail, but I sure hope I don't...
> 
> 
> 
> ...



How are this going? Been wondering.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

I haven't got a lot done lately, I don't have a lot of time during the week to get anything done after work, and now the past four weeks my Saturday mornings are shot for getting anything done because my 9 month old started swimming classes, by the time we get home the morning is gone... So I get a little bit done Saturday afternoons and part of the day Sunday but then I have to come in to watch the little guy so my wife has a chance to clean the house and has been cooking meals for most of the week on Sunday's to save time during the week. 

What I have got done lately... I finished siding the east wall of the greenhouse and about half of the west wall. I need to finish trimming around the Windows before I can finish the other half, then the south wall is small and will go up quick. 

This past weekend I bought a yard of crushed concrete and hauled it five gallon bucket at a time into the greenhouse to level my floor. I also bought ten yards of topsoil that we need to move by the wheelbarrow load from the driveway to where we need it. I have already filled in several low spots that had standing water, then I have two new raised beds I built in the garden that I need to fill so will haul topsoil out to fill them, and if we run out of other uses the rest will just go on the garden to start enhancing our clay soil. 

We spent a while in the greenhouse over the weekend splitting seedlings out. I moved my seedling shelf down because the height I had put it I had to stand on the beds to check the seedlings, so now it is at a height I can see from the ground, my wife will still need a stool to look in them without taking them down first, so I will probably build small benches that can double for a place to sit. Now that I have a level floor I moved two barrels into the area in front of my barrels and carried out an interior door that I took down from inside the house that we decided we didn't want up, so I made a workbench out there to set stuff on, and also put another shelf up over my wicking bed to put seeds on. We filled all of the seed pots we have left and are preparing to start the rest of the seeds for the garden.

I have tomato plants in seed pots that are close to two feet tall already that we need to get planted soon. We had a couple of nights near freezing the past few nights, I think after tomorrow we should be in the clear to start moving things outside.

I added a mini low house over my raised bed that I built last year so I will move the tomatoes to it later this week because it will be enough to protect them from frost, but figured the freezing nights would be too much. 

I built two potato towers and got our potatoes planted this weekend. Trying vertical towers to see if it works better. 

We have been harvesting trout, we have ate four of them so far and I think I've put 11 more in the freezer. I think I have 9 more in there I need to clean, but with the colder nights my water temp dropped back down so it's not warm enough for the tilapia yet. 

My plants in the greenhouse are growing pretty well, my greens are huge and need cleaned out my tomatoes in the grow bed are still small I think due to water temps. I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow if I remember... I'm sure this post is already plenty long.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

East wall almost done just a small piece to finish once I do the south wall to make them line up... West wall half done...










Raised bed low house...









Dirt pile I need to finish moving.... Long way to go...









Last nights dinner









Lettuce example... Got huge...


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## jwal10 (Jun 5, 2010)

Looking good....James


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

here are inside the greenhouse picture updates... crushed concrete floor... not the prettiest, need to wash the concrete but it's better than being uneven floor and mud...









work table, seedling pots ready to be seeded









you can see the tomato plants that need to be moved outside in the seedling pots above the brown fish tank, they are close to 24" tall already I would bet... I will plant them deep when we move them outdoors that way they aren't too lengthy.









salad greens going crazy in DWC and the pea stone bed. I am at a point where I need to clean out all of my greens and start over because I let them get out of control... so I am slowly clearing out the DWC first then will start replanting the DWC staggered so the plants are different ages so they mature as we need them rather than having all these huge plants at once.









wicking bed with another shelf above it with more tomato plants started, these were ones we thinned out of the other pots and had them sitting down lower in the greenhouse so they probably weren't as warm, and might not have got as much light so they didn't get huge quite as quickly, which is OK since we aren't ready to move them outside yet.


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## stanb999 (Jan 30, 2005)

All looks fantastic!


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

I finished putting all of my trout in the freezer. Now I am slowly moving more and more tilapia out to the greenhouse. I ended up putting one of my heaters in the water to try and help warm it up because the water temps are still dropping nightly seems how our air temps are still down in the 40's and 50's at night. 

I built three more raised beds in the garden, this is an old pic after I built them I didn't take one after this past weekend when I filled two of them up, have to finish filling the last one when I get time. I added a 4ft tall welded wire fence around the garden to help deter the deer, rabbits, and raccoons. I still need to pick up two 4x4 posts to mount my gate on, and will cover the gate in welded wire too because I just bought the cheapest tube gate I could (about $60). The garden area I fenced off is 44ft x 46ft, we most likely won't use all of it this year because we will do most of our planting in the raised beds, the only things that won't be in raised beds are gourds and other spreading vine crops (cucumbers/pickles) I think with 6 raised beds (12ft x 3ft for each bed) we should have enough space to plant everything else.









We already have tomatoes and peppers in the low tunnel raised bed, then we planted one raised bed with almost all beets for my wife but then some turnips too, the third raised bed we have carrots, onions, radish and garlic planted in. Then we have 3 beds left to plant.

Normally we go to my family's cabin over Memorial weekend, but I think we are staying home this year because my wife has something going on Friday night, then it sounds like they are having water problems at the cabin right now, replaced the well pump but still unable to get water in the cabin so think we are just going to stay home and get some projects further along this weekend. I need to butcher my chickens this weekend because they are all 8 weeks old now and will start dying if they get much bigger, so my weekend will be bloody. Hopefully I can get some work done on some other projects over the long weekend too.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

I added NFT tubes to the greenhouse today. I had to rework my water lines to raise them up so I could use the same water supply pump I was already using, just split the supply in two and bumped the pump up a little faster speed. I'm getting close to the max head height of the pump now, I have a bigger pump that I put on my fish tank in my house since the pump in the greenhouse was originally my fish tank pump, so I could swap them out if I decide I need more flow but it seems to be doing ok so far. 

I will use the NFT tubes for herbs and maybe some strawberries. Should be able to get about 50 plants in there depending on what plants I put in, might not use all the spots if I put bushier plants in. Will use a pool noodle to hold rock wool in place to start seeds in.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

Garden progress


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

I don't have a lot growing in the greenhouse right now since most of what we're growing can grow in the garden right now, but I do have about a dozen tomato plants growing in there that are all 6ft or so right now. I have strung them up to the clothes rod that I have suspended above this bed and they are getting taller than that, so now I have ran string from the top over to the center of the greenhouse to let them keep growing. I'll have a canopy of tomatoes soon. They are all setting fruit but I am keeping them pruned back pretty heavily so they don't just explode and make it difficult to access (because the tomatoes in my garden I didn't trim very well and now they are all grown together very hard to access). I've been picking a few ripe cherry tomatoes out of the greenhouse every couple of days, and getting a couple handfuls of cherry tomatoes out of the garden every couple of days. My pepper plants in the greenhouse have all started setting fruit although they are still pretty small. The pepper plants are mixed in the bed with the tomatoes in this first picture. The peppers in the garden have gone crazy and have tons of peppers that are pretty good sized so should be able to start harvesting them soon.

















We decided to harvest all of our beets from the garden last weekend because my wife pulled some radishes from the next bed over and found they had root maggots in them so tossed all of the radishes, decided to pull all of the beets before they got in them too. She canned at least a dozen cans of beets, and I think we may still be able to get another planting of beets in before winter if we get another bed opened up (I went ahead and replanted this bed that had beets in it with several different kinds of lettuce because we don't have any lettuce in the greenhouse right now due to the heat.) You can see in the far bed here the cabbage and broccoli plants are progressing pretty nicely but I discovered cabbage worms in my other bed with cabbage and broccoli in it so I mixed up some BT and sprayed everything down with it, then the next day I went out to look and the cabbage worms disappeared overnight, but now I have some sort of little beetle on the cabbage in this picture. I haven't identified what they are yet to figure out what to do to get rid of them. I did order a bunch of ladybugs to release in the greenhouse for a natural predator because I think I have thrips in there, so maybe some of those will migrate to the garden to help take care of some pests too.










picture of the beetles that are on the cabbage now... they are tiny tiny tiny had to zoom in with the phone camera to get their markings to show up.


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## stanb999 (Jan 30, 2005)

So you know for next time. They were cabbage root maggots. They attack things in the cabbage family. Brassicas, turnips and rutabaga, and radishes. They won't bother your beets. The best way to avoid them is not have any in the ground for the month of July. 

Here is what we do. Plant asap in spring. Pull everything by the 3rd week of June. Plant a fall crop in mid to late August.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

Thanks Stan. We're still trying to figure out all of our planting dates. We ended up planting several things this spring that probably shouldn't have been planted because they like cooler weather, but we planted them anyways to try them out... I'm working on a fall planting schedule now and quickly running out of time to get fall crops planted outdoors (but still have beds full of other stuff, so not sure how much we'll get in). I did buy more PVC conduit to make more low tunnel covers for the raised beds to hopefully get us a few more weeks for stuff that we're just planting in the garden for fall harvest now. Part of our problem is that we didn't stay on top of the days to harvest for the radishes either... they only take like 28 days but we haven't done a good job keeping track of that, so I did start a spreadsheet now which I'm logging when I plant things and when I'm supposed to harvest then adding reminders to my calendar on my phone to actually harvest stuff when we reach the harvest date.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

I haven't taken any recent pictures of things in the greenhouse but my tomato and pepper plants in there have gone crazy. The tomatoes have grown to the ceiling and I've trellised them off on an angle creating a canopy then I topped them to try and get them to stop growing and start fruiting. I think since it has stayed consistently 82F in the greenhouse all summer long that the tomatoes have actually been kind of slow at setting fruit (or it could be that I was overzealous pruning them), now the temperature is getting down in the 70's in the greenhouse at night and the tomatoes are starting to set fruit a lot faster, plus the peppers are ripening. I have started a bunch of lettuces again to start filling my DWC bed up as it start cooling in the greenhouse. 

The garden is still going good. We've made a lot of improvements to the garden this year. We've put down mulch in most of the garden to cover the weed mat, so it looks pretty awesome out there now. We still need to put some more down once we pull up our vine crops for the year.









Yesterday I expanded the garden fence out another 16ft. We decided we are going to add a PVC hoophouse this fall to give us more room to start seeds in the spring. I cut back some weeds to reclaim part of the field, mowed, picked rocks, mowed again, picked rocks again, then put down the plastic that I had left (was supposed to be for making low tunnels over the raised beds, so I'll have to get more in the next couple of weeks to be ready to extend our season in the garden with low tunnels over the beds). I have a little bit of weed mat left that I will put over the plastic, but it didn't hold up great against the weeds until we mulched, so I figured I would put plastic down first then weed mat over it should hopefully suffocate weeds, then once we get the hoophouse up and have everything mulched again we can poke holes through the plastic to allow for drainage. Ran out of plastic so didn't get the whole area covered yesterday.










So here we are starting to plan next year's garden already. The brown beds shown here are existing beds we're growing in this year, we are going to add a few more beds because we are going to move our permanent crops in to the garden. The beds on the side running perpendicular to the rest of the beds will be asparagus, strawberries, and rhubarb because they are not growing well where we have them now, so we are going to move them in to raised beds this fall to hopefully give them better growing soil. The bare space between beds and the new hoophouse will remain empty for growing our zucs, gourds, cucs etc, but I think I will add trellising for them next year so we can grow more with less space.










The new hoophouse will be 16ft wide x 40ft long which puts the center about 8ft tall (well I'm actually debating about going 19ft wide which would put the center 10ft tall, I need to make sure we will be able to stand in the walkways of the 16ft wide version, otherwise I'll go with 30ft hoops instead of 25ft hoops to get more height). We will have one large raised bed in the middle which will be 25ft long x 6ft wide. We will have a 4x8ft work table at the far end of the hoophouse and benches along both south and north sides for setting seed trays on... the main reason for this hoophouse really is for seed starting space because we ran out of space quickly in the 16x16 winter greenhouse... so this will give us more room to start seeds in the spring as well as doing the additional growbeds to experiment with what grows best where because we should be capable of a few different climates next year with this addition... we can grow in the small greenhouse which we've seen stays about 82F all summer long even at night, then we'll have the hoophouse which I imagine will be closer to 100F during the day but cool considerably at night, then we'll have the outdoor beds in the garden which will be open but can be covered for early planting and late harvest.

I am planning on putting an IBC tote inside the hoophouse with the current plan being that I will plumb a drain and use it for watering the beds in the hoophouse. I currently am dumping fish tank water on the ground out of my fish tanks in our house, so I will pump that water out to this IBC when I do water changes and use it to water the beds in the hoophouse.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

Haven't done a very good job of posting pictures this summer so here's a few from the past few weeks.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

Looking through the canopy before I butchered my plants about a week ago... Was starting to see gray mold so I thinned them out to get better airflows


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

After thinning. I might have gone too far, I am going to lower them down and restring them so they aren't just in the peak. It might be getting too cold now for them to have much growth but still tomatoes ripening.


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## Riverdale (Jan 20, 2008)

Can you share your plans for your hoop house?


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## Riverdale (Jan 20, 2008)

I do got to get down and see your set up. It's only about 45 minutes........


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

Here is my hoop house thread. I just covered it today. Will work on getting it ready through the winter. Glad to show you our setup anytime you make it down this way. Still a lot of work to be done but it's getting closer.
https://www.homesteadingtoday.com/index.php?threads/565287/


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## Riverdale (Jan 20, 2008)

rininger85 said:


> Here is my hoop house thread. I just covered it today. Will work on getting it ready through the winter. Glad to show you our setup anytime you make it down this way. Still a lot of work to be done but it's getting closer.
> https://www.homesteadingtoday.com/index.php?threads/565287/


I like it. I do have a suggestion if you are interested. A friend in Colorado used welded wire (like your garden fence) under the plastic to help support it.


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## chaossmurf (Jan 6, 2017)

ive got a question for you ----- whats the best paint to paint on plastics ------non-spraycan types ---mainly because im not wanting to have it all rub off of the plastic ibc totes


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

Riverdale said:


> I like it. I do have a suggestion if you are interested. A friend in Colorado used welded wire (like your garden fence) under the plastic to help support it.


With everything already being installed I don't see a need to pull it back off to try and reinforce it more right now... we should know in the next 2 months how it stands up to Michigan winter snow load... I don't think it will be a problem based on seeing the guy down the road's hoop house. He is less than 2 miles from me so should have a pretty similar weather pattern and it was fine for 6 years with no reinforcement and no center brace for support (his is only 8ft wide where mine is 16ft wide, but I think with my center brace being permanent I should hopefully be OK)



chaossmurf said:


> ive got a question for you ----- whats the best paint to paint on plastics ------non-spraycan types ---mainly because im not wanting to have it all rub off of the plastic ibc totes


Not sure. I have one IBC tote I bought that has already been painted... it looks like they used spray paint and doesn't look like they did anything to prep it since it is still smooth didn't get roughed up or anything... hasn't had a problem with paint coming off. At work we paint our fire trucks with acrylic urethane paint... I know we some times have requests to paint the black plastic rear view mirror housings to match the cab color and they do some kind of surface prep then paint it with the same acrylic paint... so that seems to stick fine. I would think any type of latex paint would be fine too. If you are really concerned about it not coming off you probably want some kind of chemical cleaner to clean the plastic first to get the paint to stick... I don't think it's worth it though because as I mentioned the paint hasn't come off the tank that I bought which is painted.

I spray painted my plastic barrels in my greenhouse using black rattle cans (cheap ones from walmart) and it hasn't come off and I did zero prep, didn't even wipe the dirt off just started spraying.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

December 31, 2017 still lots of greens in the greenhouse AP system. Air temps getting down to about 39F at night. I put two 300W aquarium heaters in the DWC bed to try and heat the water hoping it will bring the air temp up with it. My water temp is about 52F in the fish tank, it is warm enough that the fish have started eating again. I went out this morning and it was 10F outside, 46F in the greenhouse with a mostly cloudy day. I ran the heater to bump it up to 60F and will go out in a couple hours and see if it maintained it or just fell back down. I put the insulation back up over my upper windows so it might hold heat a little better.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

1/2/18 tomatoes have blooms but not setting fruit. My heater should be delivered today other items delayed until Sunday


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

Had this on the porch when I got home tonight. Unfortunately the regulator won't be here until Sunday they are saying (supposed to be tomorrow but they say usps truck broke down and delayed delivery three days... Not sure I buy it...)


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

I got the heater installed several weeks ago. I ran it off and on for the first week or two until I ran out of propane in the partial tank I had. Then I refilled one and bought a second to test how long a tank would last running all the time. On low a 15# tank lasted about 3-4 days. I ran out both tanks so I could compare the two and make sure it was similar timing. The heater shuts down to pilot when it gets above 50 in the greenhouse and I was seeing up to about 60 in there. That was enough to get my tomatoes and strawberries to start setting fruit and my peppers started ripening that survived the winter. Then I refilled both tanks and have been running the heater just on pilot and it has kept the greenhouse in the mid to upper 50s with no problem, and as of right now I'm at about 10 days on a 15# tank running on pilot. We are getting warmer weather now so it's not the best test but I'm sure we will get another cold spell before winter is over.

I planted a few more tomato plants, an early girl variety that is supposed to be 49 days, so hopefully we will have tomatoes again soon. I also have a bunch of Roma's started that I will transplant out there in the next week or so.


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## rininger85 (Feb 29, 2016)

The last tank of propane I put on 2/13 on just the pilot light. It was enough to keep the greenhouse mid 50s and I just ran out of propane today so about 3 weeks of burning on pilot for a 15 lb tank. I'll take that as acceptable compared to 3 days on low to keep the greenhouse closer to 60... Cherry tomatoes are ripening, strawberries are growing, of course my greens are going crazy.

I released 1500 ladybugs in the greenhouse last night and have 5 preying mantis cacooons that should take 2-6 weeks to hatch and supposed to be 50-200 mantis per caccoon so they will be split between hoop house and greenhouse once they hatch to help take care of pest issues.


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