I am building a monitor barn in Wisconsin (as a house) and it includes a greenhouse all along one side. A monitor barn has a two story middle with a single story wing off each side. My worry - when snow slides off the middle section, how can I keep it from breaking through my greenhouse roof below? I was thinking of using double-wall poly as the roof material. This is a wood framed building. Any ideas?
Neat idea for a home!
Very exciting, it gives me all kinds of ideas!
Now first of all I believe snow guards are the conventional solution.
These are "racks" that hold snow on the roof until it melts.
Commonly used on metal roofs, which are extra slick.
Now on to some crazy ideas!
If you had an uninsulated roof or used electrical melting cables, you could keep the monitor design, no problem.
Since you are enjoying a living space in a greenhouse, I doubt you want to spend thermal energy that way.
If you center roof has a steep enough angle, there shouldn't be any accumulation of snow on it.
That creates other complications, but it should work.
A Gothic arch or gambrel roof might do the trick.
Alternatively, you could skip the monitor design, while keeping the flanking greenhouse.
Instead of the greenhouse roofs being lower than the center roof, they would start right where it ends.
Essentially you would have a standard gabled roof, but the lower half on each side would be glazing instead of opaque.
You could even extend the roof like all the way to the ground, so basically you would have two story house built into an A frame.
The space that is usually "wasted" in an A frame would be your greenhouse space, and A frames are considered excellent for dealing with snow loads
You could have a flat roof in the center section.
Your roof framing and decking would need to be very strong, and you would want parapets all the way around, but snow would accumulate and not fall, plus the roof could be used for gardening ,etc.
Most simple of all, maybe you don't need glazing on the greenhouse roofs.
Winter sun is low in the sky and mostly should enter via the vertical glazing.
By using a conventional opaque roof on the greenhouses , you can insulate it.
You could even make them flat roofs,build the greenhouses as elevated decks, accessible from the second floor of the center monitor section, enclosed with glazing underneath.
The deck can stand up to ice and snow, and an under deck drainage system keeps rain and meltwater out of the greenhouse.
Any snow that piled on top of the deck would be extra insulating!
Ok, enough crazy ideas for now, thanks for the prompt, I really enjoyed it!
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