Monday, December 29, 2014
attached Lean-to hoophouse
Over the Winter break from school, I got it in my mind to build a lean-to style greenhouse. At first I was going to build it solely from wood, but after I started pricing it out, I realized we couldn't afford to do it that way. After thinking for a bit, I got the idea to recycle stuff we had on hand. - In the mid 2000's, I'd built a hoop house with some thick plastic water pipe back, and for the last few seasons it had sat at the edge of the property looking sad and shabby. As of this writing the new structure is still in it's early stages but I am hopeful it'll work out well. Eventually we want to replace the deck on the south side of the house with a sunspace, so this will be a good test run. In researching the project on line, I found this article from UVM with lots of good info.
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Got the plastic on last evening, so although it doesn't shed the snow as I'd hoped, just a few taps on the inside and the snow sheets off. It looks like it'll make it so that I don't have to shovel off the deck for the rest of the season. I do still need to make the two end walls and the door, and insulate the floor but it is pretty close to being functional. I've seen videos where people who have similar attached greenhouses open an exterior window to allow heat from the greenhouse into the living space, but obviously you need to be home to do that. The hoophouse encloses a homebrewed hot air solar panel that Steve Thomas and I did as a YCORE project - he and I built it and then a bunch of YCORE folks came over and helped me finish up the wiring. It didn't end up doing all that much in terms of heating the place up, but I am hopeful that it'll be much more effective once the hoophouse is enclosed, and since it is automatic, it'll kick on and off by itself and pump more heat into the space than it did when directly exposed to outside air.
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