G.H. Noob thread. .?'s on my mind

[Bud-Boy]

I have recently decided to attempt to severely reduce my reliance on the elec co. by utilizing the abundance of sun soaked, private, medically compliant property I now live on.
Put it in the sun

So I'd like to invest my time in green house fun.

I can easily construct a solid hoop house but i have a few needs

It has to be heated and insulated, or does it....
I just realized I have 2 options in shape type
Quadrilateral or hoop house
Guess it depends on my plan

My original idea was about 100ft of hoop house, very short, for "indoor" size plants. So let's start with that idea. Answers for that one will help shape my other option, or most likely, another project.

Once I get this posted, I'll spend time going through this forum section and hunt around the farm supply places

 

[Bud-Boy]

How do I heat the hoop house?
Thought about piles of compost
Or having a lung area or shed, heating that air with a propane heater and pump it through the used area of the hoop. Utilizing a manifold type dispersion along the floor level pointing inward from the outer edges.
I'd like thermostatically controlled top vents..... Eventually.

 

[Bud-Boy]

How do I keep the heat in?

I thought of double hoop house
A slightly larger one above the used area
Would that air layer insulate efficiently?
How about better grades of cover?

 

[Mt. Goat]

Check out teksupply.com for some really sweet agricultural supplies, buildings, heating options, etc.

If I had grid power and a big grow budget, I'd look into these two layer hoop houses where a fan is running all the time pumping air into the space between the layers. Insulation value on this is pretty good for a greenhouse. Also check out the triple wall lexan for good insulation.

The thermostatically controlled vents are fairly inexpensive. I'd like to incorporate those on my next greenhouse too.

Also, I have no personal experience with this, but have seen successful grows using radiant heat piping in the root zone to keep plants happy in colder weather. This is generally a really efficient way to heat using a gas water heater.

 

[Cannabis]

Yes I've heard about doing it with the small gas water heater too, where you dont store the heat in a water tank, you store the heat in your floor, passing the water through the heater to re-heat it, and using a thermostat or a timer in ghetto cases I suppose.

There's also the Rocket Mass Heater, a form of wood burning stove. I don't say I think you're gonna build one of those but they are a greenhouse-tinkering pothead's ultimate 'oh wow that's cool' toy. It's a catalytic wood stove, you build into the floor. The floor IS the stove.

You know how a wood stove often has that extra section above where the woodsmoke's burned, and the efficiency gets really high, and almost nothing but steam and some warm air comes out, because there's no creosote.

Well, your wood burning stove's mechanical form factor, is designed around, dumping heat into your den.

Your Rocket Mass Heater's mechanical form factor, is designed around dumping heat into the floor: because the fire is built into the floor, and the chimney carries the heat, under the floor. The length of the floor.

There's conduction of heat away, around the place, where the fire is burning. This section is insulated - around where the fire burns, - with perlite, soit doesn't leak heat to the floor around the stove, defeating it's ability to re-ignite wood smoke from the initial burn,

and spread the heat across, and through, the conducting floor of the structure.


There are several you-tube videos on them.

They burn the wood and subsequent smoke very efficiently.


People do things like going ahead, and adding a catalytic screen, to make the smoke start burning at lower temps, and they do things like lining the initial firebox, with 1/2 or 3/8 iron pipe, and having that iron pipe, heat up: and it's super heated air, expand and be pulled into the place where secondary burning of the smoke is going on, so nearly every molecule of smoke is burned; just like any other stove - only for - if you'll allow the pun - 'dirt' cheap.

Online forums have homeowners claiming that they are :

heating a small cottage with the sticks they picked up from trees around their yard. All winter long.

***nearly every one who built one, and said they had a stove before, said they cut wood usage, from forty to fifty-five percent.

I saw people say they thought it somewhat a marvel how previously they bought wood, using pallets for kindling;

after cutting usage down so much, they kept their chainsaw, but used it to simply hack pallets into chucks of low quality pine with hardwood nailed onto it, and then high quality hardwood, self-feeding sticks, from the pallet's treads.

All firewood costs, except owning a saw, I've seen it being said, vanished.

For those interested in these there are groups of people online, on you-tube and on their own forums; the things are called ROCKET MASS STOVES or
ROCKET MASS HEATERs.

You'll know you're there when you see people building one the length of the floor of a room.

A campsite backpack stove this is not. LoL.

----------------------

A tent in a tent, is easy to build into a greenhouse. You pull a string or lightweight, non stretch cord of some kind, the length of the greenhouse,

and hang a sheet of plastic.

When ya do of course, it falls down, on the sides. You stretch out the corners, and fake some doors/ends on it,
with plastic and some clips.

But the center of that A frame constantly falls inward.

What ya do about that is,
go along the length of the thing and every once in awhile you put a little square patch - of duct tape -
on the plastic sheeting, on both sides.

You then, poke a small round hole in this, that you can just pass a peg, with a string tied around it's middle, through.
Push peg-tied-string through hole,
pull peg flat against reinforced duct-tape patch,
and small size of hole, stops string wriggle, from letting the peg somehow pull back through.

Pull outward appropriately, and tie off to inner frame, of main, larger, greenhouse.

Of course in the construction world a peg of this kind can be as simple as long-enough drywall screws or nails.

The principle's identical to the strings that hold the sides out of an old-style A-frame tent. You just make the reinforcement patch from duct tape, and since you don't have to be careful about water getting in, that hole you push the nail through, before you pull it back flat against the A-frame to hold the sides out, isn't detrimental to how the A-frame operates. Indeed the body of the peg's gonna be blocking even most air travel through the hole, as long as the hole's small enough.

There are variations on this, but I think the easiest, is "reinforced patch, & peg-button" method of holding the sides of the tent out.

 

[Bud-Boy]

Mt. Goat good info. I'll check those out. Having read the next post already, I can see its gonna be traditional vs radical/experimental
cannabis now that's the kind of thinking id like to explore. I do have nearly unlimited firewood. Bet il'll need a day to start the journey down the rabbit hole.

I love new concepts

 

[Bud-Boy]

RMH is going to be the way. hittin up craigslist and town for ducting and bricks...

 

[Bud-Boy]

its a start

the outline in the middle is where the thermal battery is going
the circle will be the heat riser
I extended the outline to 24 feet so the back end has 8 ft clearence in back

dug out drainage from the hill yesterday and laid out some test patches of base

I live in DG and clay
lovin it

 

[Bud-Boy]

Clay mine

and test cob

but it rained

 

[Cannabis]

Hopefully it's going to be a rockin deal. You're definitely gonna be the reason for a lot of people's greenhouses being warmer, after they see yours.

 

[Bud-Boy]

getting the area prepped for assembly
poles equaled out, and lots of leveling

 

[Bud-Boy]

the test area
a little crumbly but solid
more clay

 

[Bud-Boy]

drainage

 

[Bud-Boy]

its all recycled 1 " pvc pieced n glued together

 

[Bud-Boy]

framed


off to look for more clay

 

[Bud-Boy]

Right up the road
tons of clay
this patch was much more vibrant red in person

start screening and mock stove building....

right after i get some plastic on it

 

[Bud-Boy]

36 inches of 1/2 inch rebar spaced 4 ft apart sticking 18 inches above level
spacers between top of earth and level line on rebar
18 ft, 1 inch pvc coupled and glued
duct tape assembly
gorilla tape reinforced
ends of pvc side brace, end closest to ground will be staked into ground for added stability

recycled general purpose plastic for cover (this year)

 

[theJointedOne]

Nice bud boy... i love gh's

hoops are nice, i do recommend as much lateral support as you can, you can get some 1x4's at pretty good lengths and screw it into the pvc hoops a couple feet from the ground..also take into consideration big storms...ive had a few gh's collapse under the weight of snow and heavy rain...even if you take your eyes off it for a couple hours you can come back and its pooled up pretty heavy. Some veritcal support works good, i had to throw a few 8ft tposts up to support the middle beams and it ended up working really well for a long term sollution.

mr heaters on a 5 or 10 gallon propane tank are a simple way to heat up a small space quickly and cheap..

looks like you have enough room to build a few more hehe how about some deps?

 

[theJointedOne]

be careful with recycled plastic...it seems economical but a lot of old stuff, depending on quality of course, is already broken down by uv rays, which eventually will turn an old piece of plastic into tiny speckles of plastic all over your property...

 

[Bud-Boy]

Thanks TheJointedOne
theres more support to be incorporated, i just did a base itemization
this plastic was used for about two weeks to shield from rain, its not near that flake stage yet

believe me, i know about that stuff
theres alot of selfish folk around here that allow that stuff to get to that point cuz its just sitting in discard piles
its everywhere out here in our "remote" area

It'll be replaced at first signs of structural weekness

Depro...
that's what the next HH is going to be for
probably start identical to this project
but cycle through to be the summer dep for the OG's x L.A. con
after its used as another flower cycle