Brainstorm with me? Rocket mass heaters, pizza ovens, greenhouse designs.

Looking for info from those experienced in Greenhouse heating….and general brain storming for greenhouse design.

Hi all,

We have a large deer shed here which has been left empty except for the starling community housing for the last 25 years.

We’re finally at the point where we are ready to start its conversion to a tall greenhouse. It’s a significant project and we want to do it once, properly.

It gets cold here. The sun is low. We aren’t aiming to heat the space consistently during the winter, but mitigate frost damage on our frost sensitive trees during the worst of it. I like the idea of a pizza oven-to encourage us in to the space more often. But it could be a rocket mass heater. Or just an old pot belly stove (I have one I’ve been dragging around for years). We have lots of firewood trees to coppice. Does anyone have any experience with these types of decisions? I’d
love to hear from the community on these issues.

Our semi formed plan -

* pour a concrete nib wall about 1200m around the base, leaving the lower planks and using the higher planks as boxing.  

* replace the tin on the north, east and west walls with twin walled polycarbonate.

* insulate the south wall.

* the roof was replaced with good quality colour steel recently (before our time) so we’re planning to hold off on replacing that in the hope that there will be enough light with the tall walls and lower sun during the winter.

* The deer shed is in the area of the property that we have recently planted with fruit and nut trees and are now staring on the understory plantings. Our 6 chickens also free range in the area.

* There is a significant shed next door which was once a hangar for the previous owners plane. It now holds a small climbing wall, a dart board and lots of drying garlic. I have hopes of setting up a pub with no money in the future to create and build on connections within our local community.

Extra background for context:

My man and I bought the land on the way to Milford Sound just outside Te Anau, South Island of New Zealand in Feb ‘22. It has great infrastructure (an old government 70acre deer block) three ponds and some decent areas of mature natives. But almost no food except weak pasture for grazing animals. We’ve been chipping away planting food forests with the aim of pro-social prepping and learning to grow as many diverse crops for both humans and the more than humans with as little external inputs as possible. I am a Soil nerd interested in building ecological connections. In a nutshell my aim is to promote diverse thriving ecological systems

Hey.
I am no expert, just an enthusiastic amateur!
Your project is exciting, maybe it could be two stories?
BTW, what is a deer shed?

Edit: I answered my own question.
Deer sheds are barns for deer.
In New Zealand the farming of deer has been developed extensively.
Here's a link with explanations:https://teara.govt.nz/en/deer-and-deer-farming/page-3

Hi William. Thanks for the reply. A deer shed is a signal of brutal animal treatment to be honest. It’s a dark shed where farmed deer were herded in to with internal sorting areas. As far as I know the main purpose other than drenching etc was to remove the deer velvet.

When I see these sheds it signals that there have been a lot of terrified animals through the doors.

This is actually one of the main reasons I want to turn the building into something positive. A ‘DEER’ shed into a DEAR shed :-). I’m already planning the sign.