Greenhouse design thoughts.
So here are my second round of design thoughts.
The greenhouse will be framed with salvaged
wood, and the front face, which will be vertical, and the east and west facing sides,
will be clad with salvaged glass windows, with an inner layer of some sort of greenhouse film stapled to the wood. Insulation
panels will be stored elsewhere, and fitted to the east and west sides in the winter, when they would become a disadvantage if
left clear. The rear wall will be cinder block for thermal mass part way up, maybe to three feet, at which point it becomes framed.
The south roof is covered with polycarbonate, while the north roof is insulated. To reflect light back to the plants, from the top of
the cinder block wall an inner reflective wall slopes up to meet the ridgepole. Any ideas as to using the hidden space behind this,
besides its insulating dead air value? Any walls which are not thermal mass or glazed have reflective white plaster on them, and
will be insulated with strawclay.
Around the northeast, north, and northwest sides will be an arch of small fruit
trees. In front of
the house the earth mounding, which wrapped around the foundation of the structure, will be extended into suntrap arms,
within which will be sited a
pond to reflect light to the greenhouse, and will receive cleaned greywater from it. The foundation will
be a rubble trench with a poured
concrete top, and cinderblocks on top of this. The North roof will have a second layer lying on it,
which can be flipped over to lay on the South side on cold nights, for more insulation. The main path of the greenhouse will be
sand, with will double as a
rocket stove thermal mass. There will be a fish tank with an aquaponics media be on top of it. Tall plants
and objects will be to the back: the tropic "jungle," the reedbed for the greywater, the raised aquaponics tank. In the front will be
an inground bed, with shelving above it for seedling starting. Some of the beds will be equipped with a climate battery system.
This will be a simplification of John Cruickshank's version. A
local gardener simply built a
raised bed three feet high, ran pipes
through it, and filled it with a deep sheet mulch of wood chips and horse manure. A small fan pushes air through it. On a cold
but clear winter day, he can raise the temperature in the bed by four degrees, and then it drops by the same amount that night,
as the pipes return warm air to the greenhouse. By rebuilding this bed fairly often, some of the advantages of a
compost pile
will be gained.
Rabbits may be kept in the building to raise the
CO2.
Greywater will come from showers and a washing machine, which together will produce 700 gallons of water in a week. The reed beds will be forty square feet, two feet deep, filled with gravel,
and planted with common reeds (as far as I know, they can take the year around heat) and various tropic bog plants. Maybe the dwarf
bananas, too. Then the water will overflow to the
pond, and from there to the gravel storage
underground. From there, a small
solar operated pump will move it to an elevated barrel, where gravity can
feed it to soaker lines in the gardens.
