Greenhouse -- greenhouse_12_21.jpg

First | Previous Picture | Next Picture | Last | Thumbnails


There's the north wall all cozy. We've got standard R-11 insulation in the N wall and ceiling, covered by that bubble-wrap/foil insulation which adds a couple more R's. We used the shiny stuff because it reflects light back into the greenhouse.

Interestingly, in the fall when there were cabbages growing there under the roof, in front of the barrels, they were tilted to face south a bit. But with the bounced ambiant light, they have actually straighted up quite a bit.

You can see we wrapped all the PVC for water between the barrels - but I'll bet it's frozen solid. It runs down to a faucet on the east (right) end. We'll see in the spring whether it leaks. No sign of leakage yet, tho one of the barrels is leaking a little - which might be due to its own weakness rather than ice. We'll see.

That line to the left of the end barrel has a shut-off valve, which is closed, and goes out through the wall to the outside barrel which catches water from the gutter. We drained that outside barrel when it started getting cold.

Update: Later in the season as we refined our technique, we added an additional layer of the shiny insulation between the barrels and the outside wall, added bags of loose insulation in the space underneath the barrels, and covered the top of each barrel with a loose piece of the shiny insulation at night. The barrels had begun to freeze about 1/2 to 1" around the outside edges and the top at night (especially on the west end) but adding this additional bit of insulation mostly stopped that.

The waterlines, tho they froze, did not break or leak.