Passive Solar Greenhouse Construction
Written by on February 21, 2020
Having a constant supply of food grown yourself brings great satisfaction. Also, producing seedlings for your landscape needs in large quantities is kind to the budget. Being less dependent on food sources far from home saves shipping costs, store overhead cost, and YOUR time traveling to get food you need! There is great benefit in growing your own plants, including taste due to freshness of your own homegrown produce. Another is the nutritional benefit from food grown in your own greenhouse!
I thought I would start a new thread about another project I’m currently building. My REAL job has been keeping me occupied totally lately (designing new homes) and I’ve not posted in quite a while. Anyway, the plan is to build a greenhouse down here in Louisiana to take advantage of our mild winters. I hope to get it done this spring/summer so that I can begin seedlings for our yard, and then vegetables and citrus in the future. I just completed a concrete driveway, and had to wait until it was put in so that I could plant shrubbery in the right places. It just feels like the right time to take the plunge and just do it.
Passive solar design simply means that the greenhouse does not require an active heating system, such as electric or gas powered heaters. It uses the energy from the sun collected during the day and stores it inside mass, which in this case will be a concrete block wall and barrels of water alongside the wall. The heat will slowly be dissipated back into the interior area at night, keeping the temperature (hopefully) above freezing. If the temperature in my area stays below freezing for an extended length of time, I’m sure it will require some sort of additional heat source.
Here is the floor plan of the greenhouse:
Here is the way the front should look:
The upper windows will open for venting during the unbearably hot summers here. They also have screen on them to prevent predators from coming inside.
The rear storage room will be for my mowers and yard tools, as well as fishing supplies for my pond which is behind the building.