darren summerson

Rose Gardener wrote:

Terry Ruth wrote: With condensation, mold is just a matter of time, isn't it?

mine isn't up and running yet, so I can't confirm my theory, or what I've read on it.

But, the pipes I'm using are drainage pipe 3", which are perforated and water runs through easily. I'm burying them with a little clean gravel above and below, so any water will drain out. Also thinking about the angle so I literally don't drain the ground and cause the water to flow back towards the greenhouse. The only solid pipe I'm using is from the ceiling height to ground level of the air intake pipes in side the greenhouse, as I want to extract the warmest air from the top, however in winter logically you want the coldest air from ground level, I'm yet to find a solution here, other than a half way house of a mid height pipe.

In summer with the air cooling there should be water draining out of the pipes into the gravel, in winter when I hope the air to be warming, potentially the air will pick up any moisture in the pipe.

[quote=Paul LadendorfNot sure what your definition of "warm" is but I'm just trying to keep my gh from freezing. I agree that some supplemental heat will probably be needed for at least a month or so in my Chicago climate.
.

warm? I guess for Dec/ Jan, hoping for 10 degrees C so plants will hang in there! perhaps in Nov and Feb slightly more sunlight so a little warmer. I imagine the climate here isn't vastly different to there, a few months every winter where it will remain permanently below zero, decent snow cover and frost penetrating fairly deep in the ground. I am putting my pipes around a metre down, where lack of bed rock will allow.

I imagine the lack of data is down to the huge number of variables, but I don't intend to buy any plans etc.. I just going to go for it, over engineering where possible, without extreme expenditure.

Interesting stuff!

I am constructing a greenhouse from bare earth up with something similar, and found this thread looking for info.

So thought I'd share my thinking, as I'm not far enough gone to have any stats. The green house will be 5mx11m, (sorry I'm a brit living in Sweden - I've had feet conditioned out of me) and the usual pitched roof, so roughly 2.5m high. I have 100m of 4" plastic drainage pipe, going into the ground, in loops of 15m or there abouts. Fans, I'm going to trial small fans such those for computers, but not sure if they have the push or draw to change the air volume 5 times per hour. Inside I'm going to partition it, so winter heating will be limited to roughly a third of the summer volume.

Power, I already have some old batteries and have invested in a 100w panel, which as some have said will be struggling in peak winter to keep the power demands of a fan system going.

I imagine that unless you throw some serious money at this kind of system, there will be a month or two in winter when it struggles to work and stay warm, the opposite with cooling in summer. So conventional venting may be needed and some kind of heating too.

There seems to be so much logic in this kind of system, but so little hard data available too.